“You don’t need any.  Decent manners and the grin will do.  Had anything to eat yet?”

“What’s got to be eaten?” Burns demanded, unhappily.

“Punch, and ices—­and little cakes, I believe.  Cheer up, man, you don’t have to eat ’em, if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks for that.  I’ll remember it of you when greater favours have been forgotten.  Martha has her eye on me—­I must go.  I’ll get even with Martha for this, some time.”  And the guest of honour, stuffing his handkerchief out of sight and thrusting his coppery, thick locks back from his martyred brow, obeyed the summons.

The next time Macauley caught sight of him, he was assiduously supplying a row of elderly ladies with ices and little cakes, and smiling at them most engagingly.  They were looking up at him with that grateful expression which many elderly ladies unconsciously assume when a handsome and robust young man devotes himself to them.  Burns found this task least trying of all his duties during that long evening, for one of the row reminded him of his own mother, to whom he was a devoted son, and for her sake he would give all aging women of his best.  Something about this little group of unattended guests, all living more or less lonely lives, as he well knew them in their homes, touched his warm heart, and he lingered with them to the neglect of younger and fairer faces, until his host, again at his elbow, in a strenuous whisper admonished him: 

“For heaven’s sake, Red, don’t waste any more of that rare sweetness on the desert air.  Go and lavish your Beau Brummel gallantry on the wives of our leading citizens.  Those new Winterbournes have sackfuls of money—­and a chronic invalid or two always in the family, I’m told.  A little attention there—­”

“Clear out,” Burns retorted shortly, and deliberately sat down beside the little, white-haired old lady who reminded him of his mother.  As he had been standing before, this small act was significant, and Macauley, with a comprehending chuckle, moved away again.

“Might have known that wouldn’t work,” he assured himself.  He strolled over to Ellen, and when, after some time, he succeeded in getting her for a moment to himself, he put an interested question.

“What do you think of your husband as a society man?  A howling success, eh?  He’s been sitting for one quarter of an hour by the side of old Mrs. Gillis.  And a whole roomful of devoted patients, past and future, looking daggers at him because he ignores them.  How’s that for business policy, eh?  Can’t you bring him to his senses?”

“Are you sure they’re looking daggers?  I passed Mrs. Gillis and Red just now, and thought they made a delightful pair.  As for business policy, Jim,—­a man who would be good to an old lady would be good to a young one.  Isn’t that the natural inference,—­if you must think about business at all at such an affair.  I prefer not to think about it at all.”