“Will you go back with me in the Imp, or at your leisure with the crowd in the car?” Burns asked Leaver, in an undertone.  “My wife will be glad to go in either car; she suggested your taking your choice.”

“If the Macauleys will not misunderstand, I should prefer to go with you,” Leaver replied.

“They won’t.  Two medicine-men are supposed always to wish for a chance to hobnob, and we’ll put it on that score.  I really want to consult you about Patsy’s case.”

“Not going with us?  Willing to forsake three fair ladies for one red-headed fiend, just because you know he’s going to give us his dust?  I like that!” cried Macauley, who could be trusted never to make things easy for his friends.

“Abuse him as you like.  He’s off with me at my request,” called Burns, pulling out into the road and turning with a sweep.

Martha Macauley looked after the Green Imp’s rapidly lessening shape through the dust-cloud which it left behind.  “I never thought till to-day that Dr. Leaver seemed the least bit like a noted surgeon,” said she, as they waited for Macauley to get his car underway.  “I could never imagine his acting like Red, and rushing enthusiastically from bedside to operating-room, pushing everything out of his way to make time to cut somebody to pieces and sew him up again, for his ultimate good.  But to-day somehow, he seemed more—­what would you call it—­professional?”

“That’s the word,” her husband agreed.  “It’s the word they juggle with.  If a thing’s ‘professional,’ it’s all right.  If it’s not, it may as well be condemned to outer darkness at once.”

CHAPTER XIII

A CRISIS

“Little wife?”

“Yes, Redfield Pepper—­”

“I’m as nervous as a cat up a tree with a couple of dogs at the foot!”

“Why, Red, I never heard you talk of being nervous!  What does it mean?”

“An operation to-morrow.”

“But you never are ‘nervous,’ dear.”

“I am now.”

“Is it such a critical one?”

“The most critical I ever faced.”

Ellen looked at her husband, or tried to look, for they were moving slowly along the street, at a late hour, Burns having suggested a short walk before bedtime.  It was quite dark, and Ellen could judge only by her husband’s voice that he spoke with entire soberness.

“Can you tell me anything about it?” she suggested, knowing that relief from tension sometimes comes with speech.  Any confession of nervousness from Red Pepper Burns seemed to her most extraordinary.  She knew that he often worked under tremendous tension, but he had never before admitted shakiness of nerve.

“Not much, if anything at all.  It’s a particularly private affair, for the present.  It’s a queer operation, too.  I may not handle a knife, tie an artery, or stitch up a wound—­may do less than I ever did in my life on such an occasion, yet—­I’ll be hanged if I’m not feeling as owly about it as if it were the first time I ever expected to see blood.”