“I thought you’d be eager to entertain those bachelor friends you mentioned, so I lost no time in getting a second room ready for them.”

“Well, I don’t know.”  Burns was mounting the stairs, his arm about his wife’s shoulders.  “By the way, Ellen, I don’t believe I ever went up these stairs before.  Comfortable, aren’t they?  I’m glad there’s covering on them.  I never like to hear people racketing up and down bare stairs, be they never so polished and fine.  That comes of my instincts for quiet on my patients’ account, I suppose.  About the guests—­we don’t need to have any for a year or two, do we?”

“Why, Red!” Ellen began to laugh.  “I thought you were the most hospitable man in the world.”

“All in good time,” agreed her husband, comfortably.  He looked in at the door of the gray-and-rose room, as he spoke.  “Well, well!” he ejaculated.  “Well, well!”

And again he was silent, staring.  When he spoke: 

“Would you mind going over there and sitting down in that willow chair with the high back?” he requested.

His wife acceded, and crossing the room smiled back at him from the depths of the white willow chair, her dark head against its cushioning of soft, mingled tints of pale gray and glowing rose.  Red Pepper nodded at her.

“I thought so,” said he.  “This is no guest-room.  This is your room.”

“Oh, no, dear.  My place is downstairs, with you—­unless—­you don’t want me there.”

He crossed the room also and stood before her, his hands thrust into his pockets.  “This is your room,” he repeated.  “It’s easy enough to recognize it.  It looks just like you.  I’ve been uncomfortable about you downstairs, whenever I had to leave you.  You’ll be safe here, with every window wide open.”

She looked up at him, mutely smiling, but something in her eyes told him that all was not yet said.  Red Pepper leaned still lower and kissed her.

“It will be easy enough to have an extension of the telephone brought up here,” he added—­and found her arms about his neck.  But she shook her head.  “Don’t settle it so quickly,” she urged.

“You said there was another guest-room,” he reminded her presently.  “The bachelor’s room.  Is it next door?”

They went together to look at the bachelor’s room.  Burns surveyed it with satisfaction.

“The jolliest room for the purpose I ever saw,” he confessed.  “And I know the bachelor who will sleep in it.  He’s downstairs now, in the small room out of ours.”

“Bob?  Why, Red—­”

“We’ll have a door cut through.  The telephones shall be in there, then they won’t disturb you.  They won’t bother Bob a minute.  And when I come in at 2 a.m.  I can slip in here, shove the boy over against the wall, and be asleep in two minutes.”

“Red!  All my preparations for the bachelor!  The desk,—­the reading-light by the bed—­”

“They suit me admirably.  I never saw a better arrangement.  The two rooms together make a perfect suite—­when the door is cut through.”