“And where will you put our guests?  There’s only one more room on this floor, of any size.”

“Let’s go and see.”

Catching up a brass candlestick from the bachelor’s desk, Burns lit it and proceeded to explore, Ellen following.  There were dancing lights in her eyes as she watched him.

“Here’s your fourth room,” said he, throwing open a door at the back of the hall.

“This box?  It can’t be made a really comfortable room, even if I do my best with it.  Your bachelor will not stay long.”

“Best not make him too comfortable.  Nobody wants him to stay long.”  And Red Pepper closed the door again, with an air of having settled the matter to his entire satisfaction.  “Besides,” he added, “if he’s really a desirable chap, and we want him around more than a day or two, he can bunk in my old room downstairs.  When he’s not there I’ll use it for an annex to my offices.  Somebody’s always needing to be put to bed for an hour or two.  Amy Mathewson will revel in that extra space.  Her long suit is making people comfortable, and smoothing the upper sheet under their chins.”

“Redfield Pepper, please consider this carefully,” said his wife, as they returned to the gray-and-rose room.  “Remember how long you have had that downstairs room,—­you are attached to it, perhaps, more than you think.  You have been a bachelor yourself a good while—­”

“And am supposed to be old and set in my ways,” interpolated her listener.  He stood before her with folded arms, a judicial expression on his brow.  Beneath his coppery hair his black eyebrows drew together a little above a pair of hazel eyes which sparkled with a whimsical light which somewhat impaired the gravity of the expression.

“You are wonted to your ways—­naturally,” Ellen pursued.  “It will not be so convenient for you, having your rooms up here.  I am quite contented there, with you, and not in the least afraid with Cynthia sleeping down there too—­and the little bachelor.  Think twice, Red, before you decide on this arrangement.”

He glanced at the wall between the two rooms.  “Where would be a good place to have the door cut through?  What’s behind that curtain?  A clothes-press?”

He advanced to the curtain and swept it aside.  It hung in a doorway, and was of a heavy gray material, with an applied border of the gray-and-rose chintz.  As he moved it light burst through from the other side of the wall, and Burns found himself looking into the “bachelor’s room” next door.

He turned, with a shout of laughter.  “You witch!” he cried, and returning to his wife laid a hand on either richly colouring cheek, gently forcing her face upward, so that he could look directly into it.  “You meant it, all the while!”

“Don’t be too sure of that.  If this room looks like me, the one downstairs certainly looks like you.  I don’t want to take you out of your proper environment.”

“My environment!” he repeated, and laughed.  “What is it, now, do you think?  Not bachelor apartments, still?”