Burns chuckled.  “Won’t they?  By George, I wish they wouldn’t!  Then I could find time to spend an uninterrupted hour with my wife, at least once a day.”

“Do be reasonable, Red.  Ellen, will you make him see it’s a very simple thing I’m asking of him?  Just to stand by you and shake hands for a couple of hours.  Then he can go out and stand on his head on the lawn, if he wants to.”

“To relieve the tension?” her victim suggested.  “That’s an excellent idea—­real compensation.  But as the blood will be all at the top, anyway, after two hours’ effort at being agreeable, saying the same idiotic things over and over, and grinning steadily all the time, I think I’d prefer soaking my head under a pump.”

“Do what pleases you, if you’ll only let me have my way.”

Burns looked at Ellen again.  “What do you say, dear?  Must these things be?  Do you want to be ’received’?”

“Martha has set her heart on it,” said she, gently, “and it’s very dear of her to want to take the trouble.  She promises really to make it very informal.”

“Informal!  I wish I knew what that word meant.  Don’t I have to wear my spike-tail?”

“I’m afraid you do—­since Martha wants it in the evening.  The men in a place like this are not available for afternoon affairs.”

“If I must dress, then I don’t see what there is informal about it,” argued her husband, with another glance at his watch.  “My idea of informality is not a white necktie and pumps.  But I suppose I’ll have to submit.”

He came around the table, and Ellen rose to receive his parting kiss.  With his arm about her shoulder, and his chin—­that particularly resolute chin—­touching her hair, he looked at Martha.  “Go on with your abominable society stunt,” said he.  “I’ll agree to be there—­if I can.”

His eyes sparkled with mischief, as Martha jumped up, crying anxiously: 

“Oh, that’s just it, Red!  You must be there!  We can’t have any excuses of operations or desperately sick patients.  We never yet had you at so much as a family dinner that you didn’t get up and go away, or else weren’t even there at all.  Even your wedding had to be postponed three hours.  That won’t do at this kind of an affair.  Ellen can’t be a bridal pair, all by herself!”

“Can’t she?” His arm tightened about his wife’s shoulders.  “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  If I have to leave suddenly I’ll take her with me.  That’ll make it all right and comfortable.  If you and Jim will retire too, the company can have a glorious time talking us over.”

He stooped, whispered something in Ellen’s ear, laughing as he did so, then kissed her, nodded at Martha, and departed.  From the other side of the closed door came back to them a gay, whistled strain from a popular Irish song.

“He’s just as hopeless as ever,” Martha complained.  “I thought you would have begun to have some effect on him, by this time.  The trouble is, he’s been a bachelor so long and has got into such careless notions of having his own way about everything, you’re going to have a bad time getting him just to behave like an ordinary human being.”