“Here we are!  Behold Sunny Farm, the dream of Doctor and Mrs. Red Pepper, given tangible shape.  Not a bad-looking old rambling place, is it?”

Macauley brought his car to rest beside the long green roadster already there.  Its occupants jumped out and strolled up the slope toward the white farmhouse, across whose front and wing stretched long porches, on one of which stood a steamer chair and a white iron bed, each holding a small form.  Upon the step sat Ellen Burns and a nurse in a white uniform; by the bed stood Burns himself.

Miss Mathewson’s observant eyes were taking veiled note of her recent charge as he went up the steps and approached the bed.  The little patient upon it had not lifted his head, as had the child in the chair, to see who was at hand.

“Oh, the little pitiful face!” breathed Charlotte Ruston in Amy’s ear, as she looked down into a pair of great black eyes, set in hollows so deep that they seemed the chiseling of merciless pain.

“This is Jamie Ferguson,” said Burns, with his hand on the boy’s head.  “He is very happy to be here in the sunshine, so you are not to pity him.  Come here, Bob, and tell Jamie you will play with him when he is stronger.  He knows wonderful things, does Jamie.  And this is Patsy Kelly, in the chair.”

There was a pleasant little scene now enacted upon the porch, in which Bob and Tom were introduced to the small patients, and everybody looked on while shy advances were made by the well children, to be received with timid gravity by the sick ones.  Through it all Red Pepper Burns was furtively observing the demeanour of Dr. John Leaver.

He had hardly taken his eyes from Jamie Ferguson.  Into his face had come a look his friend had not seen there since he had been with him, the look of the expert professional man who sees before him a case which interests him.  He stood and studied the child without speaking while Bob and Tom remained, and when the small boys, too full of activity to stay contentedly with other boys who could not play, were off to explore the place, Leaver drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

Burns glanced at his wife, and gave a significant nod of his head toward the interior of the house.  Ellen rose.

“Come Martha, and Charlotte,” said she, “and let me show you over the rooms.  I’m so proud of the progress we have made in the fortnight since the house was vacated for us.”

She led them inside.  Amy Mathewson went over to the chair and Patsy Kelly, turning her back upon the pair by the bed.

“When did you come, Patsy?” she asked.

“We come the morn,” said Patsy, a pale little fellow of nine, with a shock of hair so red that beside it that of Red Pepper Burns would have looked a subdued chestnut.  “In the ambilunce we come.  I liked the ride, but Jamie didn’t.  He was scared of bein’ moved.”

“Jamie is not so well as you.  How fine it is that you can lie in this chair and have your head up.  You can see all about.  Isn’t it beautiful here?”