RED AND BLACK

“‘So here’s to Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns, bearer of a
heavier cross than I have ever borne, and winner of one
more shining....’”

RED AND BLACK

By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of
“Mrs. Red Pepper,” “Red Pepper Burns,”
“Red Pepper’s Patients,” “Twenty-Fourth of June,”
Etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
FRANCES ROGERS

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

TO
“MY BEST FRIENDS”

CONTENTS

RED AND BLACK

RED AND BLACK

CHAPTER I
ACROSS THE SPACE

THEIR first sight of each other—Red and Black—was across the space which stretches between pulpit and pew. It’s sometimes a wide space, and impassable; again, it’s not far, and the lines of communication are always open. In this case, neither of them knew, as yet, just what the distance was.

Black—Robert McPherson Black—if you want his full name, had been a bit nervous in the vestry where he put on his gown. He had been preaching only five years, and that in a Southern country parish, when a visiting committee of impressive looking men had come to listen to him—had come again—and once more—and then had startled him with a call to the big suburban town and the fine old, ivy-grown church generally known as the “Stone Church.”

“But, gentlemen,” he had said, swinging about quickly in his study chair when Mr. Lockhart, the chairman of the committee, had asked him if he would consider a call—“I’m—I’m—why, I’m not good enough for you!”

The committee had smiled—it was quite a remarkable committee, and had a sense of humour. At least Samuel Lockhart had, and one other of the five who were waiting upon Mr. Black in his study after the evening service.

“Meaning virtue—or ability?” inquired the chairman, with his friendly smile.

“Both. You see—well, to put it honestly—I’m just a country boy as yet, born in Scotland and brought up in your South. I haven’t had the training——”

“Very good things have come out of the country—and Scotland—and the South,” Mr. John Radway had suggested. “And I believe you are a graduate of—a perfectly satisfactory college and seminary, and have built this church up from desertion to popularity——”

Well, they had had it out on those lines, and others, in the next hour, the committee falling more and more in love with its candidate—if so emotional a phrase may be used of the feelings stirred in the breasts of five middle-aged, steady-going, sensible men—as they watched the young man’s face go from pale to red and back again, and heard him tell them not only what he thought he was not, but what he thought they might not be either—in so frank and winning a way that the more he wasn’t sure he’d better come the surer they were he must!

In the end he came—called and accepted, after the modern methods, wholly on the judgment of the committee, for he had refused absolutely and finally to come and preach a candidating sermon. So when he emerged from the vestry door, on that first May Sunday, he faced for the first time his newly acquired congregation, and the church faced for the first time its minister-elect. Which was wholly as it should be, and the result was a tremendously large audience, on tiptoe with interest and curiosity.

Red was not in the congregation when Black first came in through the vestry door. Instead, as usual, he was racing along the road in a very muddy car, trying to make four calls in the time in which he should really have made two, because his wife had insisted very strenuously that he should do his best to get to church on that particular morning. It seemed that she had learned that the new minister was from the South, and she, being a Southerner, naturally felt an instant sense of loyalty. It was mighty seldom that Red could ever be got to church, not so much because he didn’t want to go—though he didn’t, really, unless the man he was to hear was exceptionally good—as because he couldn’t get around to it, not once in a blue moon—or a Sunday morning sun. And if, by strenuous exertion, he did arrive at church, there was one thing which almost invariably happened—so what was the use? The young usher for Doctor Burns’ aisle always grinned when he saw him come in, because he knew perfectly that within a very short time, he, the usher, would be tiptoeing down the aisle and whispering in the ear below the heavy thatch of close-cropped, fire-red hair. And then Doctor Burns’ attending church for that day would be over.

The chances seemed fair, however, on this particular morning, because Red did not come into church till the preliminary service was well along. He stole in while the congregation was on its feet singing a hymn, so his entrance was not conspicuous; but Black saw him, just the same. Black had already seen every man in the congregation, though he had noted individually but few of the women. He saw this big figure, stalwart yet well set up; he saw the red head—he could hardly help that—it would be a landmark in any audience. He saw also the brilliant hazel eyes, the strong yet finely cut face. To put it in a word, as Redfield Pepper Burns came into the crowded church, his personality reached out ahead of him and struck the man in the pulpit a heavy blow over the heart. Too strong a phrase? Not a bit of it. If the thing has never happened to you, then you’re not a witness, and your testimony doesn’t count. But plenty of witnesses can be found.

Robert Black looked down the aisle, and instantly coveted this man for a friend. “I’ve got to have you,” he said within himself, while the people went on singing the last stanza of a great hymn. “I’ve got to have you for a friend. I don’t know who else may be in this parish but as long as you’re here there’ll be something worth the very best I can do. I wonder if you’ll be easy to get. I—doubt it.”

Now this was rather strange, for the family with whom he was staying while the manse was being put in order for the new minister had spoken warmly of Doctor Burns as the man whom they always employed, plainly showing their affection for him, and adding that half the town adored the red-headed person in question. When that red head came into church late, looking as professional as such a man can’t possibly help looking, it was easy enough for Black to guess that this was Doctor Burns.

Across the space, then, they faced each other, these two, whose lives were to react so powerfully, each upon the other—and only one of them guessed it. To tell the truth, Red was more than a little weary that Sunday morning; he was not just then electrically sensitive, like the other man, to every impression—he was not that sort of man, anyhow. He had been up half the night, and his hair-trigger temper—which had inspired the nickname he had carried from boyhood—had gone off in a loud explosion within less than an hour before he appeared in the church. He was still inwardly seething slightly at the recollection, though outwardly he had returned to calm. Altogether, he was not precisely in a state of mind to gaze with favour upon the new man in the pulpit, who struck him at once as disappointingly young. He had been told by somebody that Robert McPherson Black was thirty-five, but his first swift glance convinced him that Robert had not been strictly truthful about his age—or else had encouraged an impression that anybody with half an eye could see was a wrong one. He was quite evidently a boy—a mere boy. Burns liked boys—but not in the pulpit, attempting to take charge of his life and tell him what to do.

Therefore Red looked with an indifferent eye upon the tall figure standing to read the Scriptures, but acknowledged in his mind that the youth had a pleasing face and personality—Red liked black hair and eyes—he had married them, and had never ceased to prefer that colouring to any other. He admitted to himself that the intonations of Black’s voice were surprisingly deep and manly for such a boy—and then promptly closed his mind to further impressions, and ran his hand through his red hair and breathed a heavy sigh of fatigue. Vigorous fellow though he was at forty years, it was necessary for him to get an occasional night’s sleep to even things up. If it hadn’t been for his wife’s urging he might have been snatching forty winks this minute on a certain comfortable wide davenport at home. These Southerners—how they did hang together—and Black wasn’t a real Southerner, either, having spent his boyhood in Scotland. Red could have heard the new man quite as well next Sunday—or the one after. He glanced sidewise at his wife, and his irritation faded—as it always did at the mere sight of her. How lovely she was this morning, in her quiet church attire. Bless her heart—if she wanted him there he was glad he had come. And of course it was best for the children that they see their father in church now and then.... But he hoped the boy in the pulpit would not make too long a prayer—he, Red, was so deadly sleepy, he might go to sleep and disgrace Ellen. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But he didn’t hear the prayer—and not because he went to sleep. It was during the offertory sung by the expensive quartette (which he didn’t like at all because he knew the tenor for a four-flusher and the contralto for a little blonde fool, who sometimes got him up in the night for her hysterics—though he admitted she could sing), that the young usher came tiptoeing down the aisle and whispered the customary message in the ear beneath the red thatch. Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns had been in church precisely eleven minutes this time before being called out. What in thunder was the use of his coming at all? He gave an I-told-you-so look at his wife as he got up and hung his overcoat on his arm and went up the aisle again, his competent shoulders followed by the disappointed gaze of Black from the pulpit. The doors closed behind him, and the young usher exhibited his watch triumphantly to another young usher, making signs as of one who had won a bet. Eleven minutes was the shortest time since February, when on a certain remembered Sunday Burns had never got to his seat at all, but had been followed down the aisle by the usher practically on a run. Somebody had got himself smashed up by a passing trolley almost outside the door of the sanctuary. Being an usher certainly had its compensations at times.

Yes, Black was disappointed. Of course he faced a large and interested congregation, and everybody knows that a minister should not be more anxious to preach to one man than to another. Unfortunately, being quite human, he sometimes is. On this occasion, having suffered that blow over the heart before mentioned, he had found himself suddenly peculiarly eager to speak to the red-headed doctor—from the pulpit—and convince him that he himself was not as young as he looked—and that he could be a very good friend. Red looked to him like the sort of man who needed a friend, in spite of all Black’s hostess had said to him about Burns’ popularity and his enormous professional practice. During those eleven minutes, through part of which Black had been at leisure to glance several times at Red, he had received the distinct impression that he was looking at a much overworked man, who needed certain things rather badly—one of which was another man who was not just a good-fellow sort of friend, but one who understood at least a little of what life meant—and what it ought to mean.

Thus thinking Black rose to make his prayer—the prayer before the sermon. His thoughts about Red had made him forget for a little that he was facing his new congregation—and that was a good thing, for it had taken away most of his nervousness. And after the prayer came the sermon—and after the sermon came a very wonderful strain of music which made Black lift his head toward the choir above him with a sense of deep gratitude that music existed and could help him in his task like that. At this time, of course, he didn’t know about the “four-flusher” tenor, and the little fool of a blonde contralto who always felt most like smiling at the moment when he was preaching most earnestly. When he did know—well—in the end there were two new members of that quartette.

So this was how Black and Red met for the first time—yet did not meet. Though, after the seeing of Red across the as yet undetermined distance between pulpit and pew, there followed a thousand other impressions, and though after the service Black met any number of interesting looking men and women who shook his hand and gave him cordial welcome, the memory he carried away with him was that of R. P. Burns, M.D., as the man he must at any cost come to know intimately.

As for Red—his impression was another story.

“Well, how did the Kid acquit himself?” he inquired, when he met his family at the customary early afternoon Sunday dinner. There was quite a group about the table, for his wife’s sister, Martha Macauley, her husband, James Macauley, and their children were there. All these people had been present at the morning service.

Macauley, ever first to reply to any question addressed to a company in general, spoke jeeringly, turning his round, good-humoured face toward his host:

“Why not fee young Perkins to leave you in your pew for once, and hear for yourself? I’ve known you turn down plenty of calls when they took you away from home, but, come to think of it, I never knew you to refuse to cut and run from church!”

Burns frowned. “You’re not such a devoted worshipper yourself, Jim, that you can act truant officer and get away with it. If you knew how I hated to move out of that pew this morning——”

“Yes, you’d got all set for one of those head-up snoozes you take when the sermon bores you. Well, let me tell you, if you’d stayed, you wouldn’t have got any chance to sleep. He may be a kid—though he doesn’t look so much like one when you get close—lines in his face if you notice—he may be a kid, but he’s got the goods, and by George, he delivered ’em this morning all right. Sleep! I wasn’t over and above wide awake myself through the preliminaries, but I found myself sitting up with a jerk when he let go his first bolt.”

“Bolt, eh?” Burns began to eat his soup with relish. As it happened he had had no time for breakfast, and this was his first meal of the day. “Jolly, this is good soup!” he said. “Well!—I thought they always spoke softly when they first came, and only fired up later. Didn’t he begin on the ‘Dear Brethren, I’m pleased to be with you’ line? I thought he looked rather conventional myself—and abominably young. I’m not fond of green salad.”

“Green salad!” This was Martha Macauley, flushing and indignant. “Why, he’s a man, Red, and a very fine one, if I’m any judge. And he can preach—oh, how he can preach!”

“I’m not asking any woman, Marty.” Burns gave his sister-in-law a cynical little smile. “Trust any woman to fall for a handsome young preacher with black eyes and a good voice, whatever he says. To be sure, Ellen——”

“Oh, yes—you think Ellen is the only woman in the world with any sense. Well, let me tell you Len ‘fell for him,’ just as much as I did—only she never gives herself away, and probably won’t now, if you ask her.”

Burns’ eyes met his wife’s. “Like him, eh, Len?” he asked. “Did the black eyes—and his being a Southerner—get you, too?”

Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns was an unusual woman. If she had not been, at this challenge, she would have answered one of two things. Either she would have said defiantly: “I certainly did like him—why shouldn’t I, when Jim did—and he’s a man! Why are you always prejudiced against ministers?” or she would have said softly: “If you had heard him, dear, I think you would have liked him yourself.” Instead she answered, as a man might—only she was not in the least like a man—“It’s hard to tell how one likes any minister at first sight. It’s not the first sermon, but the twentieth, that tells the story. And plenty of other things besides the preaching.”

“But you certainly got a good first impression, Len?” Martha cried, at the same moment that James Macauley chuckled, “My, but that was a clever stall!”

Mrs. Burns smiled at her husband, whose hazel eyes were studying her intently. Red never ceased to wonder at the way people didn’t succeed in cornering Ellen. She might find her way out with a smile alone, or with a flash of those wonderful black-lashed eyes of hers, but find her way out she always did. She found it now.

“Mr. Lockhart told me confidentially this morning that Mr. Black said he wasn’t good enough for us. So at least we have been forewarned. He’ll have to prove himself against his own admission.”

“Wasn’t good enough, eh?” growled Red Pepper, suddenly and characteristically striking fire. “Did he think we wanted a ‘good one’—a saint? I don’t, for one. My principal objection to him, without having heard him, is that he looks as if his mother parted his hair for him before he came, and put a clean handkerchief in his pocket. Jolly—I like ’em to look less like poets and more like red-blooded men! Not that I want ’em beefy, either. Speaking of beef—I’ll have another slice. This going to church takes it out of a fellow.”

Jim Macauley howled. “Going to church! Coming away, you mean. Just a look-in, for yours. As to the way you like your preachers, my private opinion is you don’t like ’em at all.”

“Mr. Black doesn’t look like a poet, Red.” It was Martha Macauley again. She and her brother-in-law seldom agreed upon any topic. “He has the jolliest twinkle in those black eyes—and his hair is so crisp with trying to curl that it doesn’t stay parted well at all—it was all rumpled up before the end of his sermon. And he has a fine, healthy colour—and the nicest smile——”

Burns sighed. “Jim, suppose there was a man up for the governorship in our state, and we went around talking about his eyes and his hair and his smile! Oh, Christopher! Don’t you women ever think about a man’s brains?—what he has in his head—not on it?”

“It was you who began to talk about his looks!” Mrs. Macauley pointed out triumphantly.

“Check!” called James, her husband. “She scores, Red! You did begin a lot of pretty mean personal observations about his mother parting his hair, and so forth. Shame!—it wasn’t sporting of you. The preacher has brains, brother—brains, I tell you. I saw ’em myself, through his skull. And he’s got a pretty little muscle, too. When he gripped my hand I felt the bones crack—and me a golf player. I don’t know where he got his—but he’s got it. These athletic parsons—look out for ’em. They’re liable to turn the other cheek, according to instructions in the Scriptures, and then hit you a crack with a good right arm. It struck me this chap hadn’t been sitting on cushions all his life. You’ll outweigh him by about fifty pounds, but I’ll bet he could down you in a wrestling match.”

“Yes, and I’ll bet you’d like to see him do it,” murmured Red Pepper, becoming genial again under the influence of his second cup of very strong coffee, which was banishing his weariness like magic, as usual. “Well, you won’t right away, because we’re not likely to get to that stage of intimacy for some time. Ministers and doctors meet mostly in places where each has a good chance to criticize the other’s job. When I come to die I’d rather have my old friend, Max Buller, M.D., to say a prayer for me—if he knows how—than any preacher who ever came down the pike—except one, and that was a corking old bishop who was the best sport I ever met in my life. Oh, it isn’t that I don’t respect the profession—I do. But I want a minister to be a man as well, and I——”

“But it isn’t quite fair to take it for granted that he isn’t one, is it, Red?” inquired the charming woman at the other side of the table who was his wife.

James Macauley laughed. “Innocent of not being a man till he’s proved guilty, eh, Red?” he suggested. “You know I really have quite a strong suspicion that this particular minister is a regular fellow. The way he looked me in the eye—well—I may be no judge of men——”

“You’re not,” declared his opponent, frankly. “Any chap with a cheerful grin and a plausible line of talk can put it all over you. You’re too good-natured to live. Now me—I’m a natural born cynic—I see too many faces with the mask off not to be. I——”

“Yes, you! You’re the kind of cynic who’d sit up all night with a preacher or any other man you happened to hate, and save his life, and then floor him the first time you met him afterward by telling him you hadn’t any bill against him because you weren’t a vet’rinary and didn’t charge for treating donkeys.”

“Call that a joke—or an insult?” growled Red Pepper; then laughed and switched the subject.

But next Sunday he did not see fit to get to church at all, and on the following Sunday he couldn’t have done it if he’d tried, not having a minute to breathe in for himself while fighting like a fiend to keep the breath of life in a fellow-human. And between times he caught not a sight of Robert Black, who, however, caught several sights of him. R. P. Burns was in the habit of driving with his face straight ahead, to avoid bowing every other minute to his myriad acquaintances and patients. Though Black tried very hard more than once to catch his eye when passing him close by the curb, he had a view only of the clean-cut profile, the lips usually close set, the brows drawn over the intent eyes. For Red was accustomed to think out his operative cases while on the road, and when a man is mentally making incisions, tying arteries, and blocking out the shortest cut to a cure, he has little time to be recognizing passing citizens, not to mention a preacher whom he persists in considering too much of a “kid” for his taste, in the pulpit or out of it.

But Black, as you have been told, was of Scottish blood, and a Scot bides his time. Black meant to know Red, and know him well. He was pretty sure that the way to know him was not to go and hang around his office, or to call upon his wife with Red sure to be away—as Black discovered he always was, in ordinary calling hours. He knew he couldn’t go and lay his hand on Red’s shoulder at a street corner and tell him he wanted to know him. In fact, neither these nor any other of the ordinary methods of bringing about an acquaintance with a man as a preliminary to a friendship seemed to him to promise well. The best he could do was to wait and watch an opportunity, and then—well—if he could somehow do something to help Red out in a crisis, or even to serve him in some really significant way without making any fuss about it, he felt that possibly the thing he desired might come about. Meanwhile—that blow over the heart which he had received at the first sight of the big red-headed doctor continued to make itself felt. Therefore, while Black went with a will at all the new duties of his large parish, and made friends right and left—particularly with his men, because he liked men and found it easier to get on with them than with women—he did not for a day relax his watch for the time when he should send a counter blow in under the guard which he somehow felt was up against him, or forget to plan to make it a telling one when he should deliver it.

CHAPTER II
HEADLINES

“HARPS and voices!” ejaculated Robert Black, quite unconscious of the source of his poetic expletive, “how are my poor little two hundred and thirty-one books going to make any kind of a showing here?”

Small wonder that he looked dismayed. He had just caught his first sight of the dignified manse study, with its long rows of empty black walnut bookcases stretching, five shelves high, across three sides of the large room. The manse, fortunately for a bachelor, was furnished as to the main necessities of living, but it wanted all the details which go to make a home. Though the study contained a massive black walnut desk and chair, a big leather armchair, a luxurious leather couch, and a very good and ecclesiastically sombre rug upon its floor, it seemed bare enough to a man who had lately left a warm little room of nondescript furnishing but most homelike atmosphere. To tell the truth, Black was feeling something resembling a touch of homesickness which seemed to centre in an old high-backed wooden rocking-chair cushioned with “Turkey red.” He was wondering if he might send for that homely old chair, and if he should, how it would look among these dignified surroundings. He didn’t care a picayune how it might look—he decided that he simply had to have it if he stayed. Which proved that it really was homesickness for his country parish which had attacked him that morning. Why not? Do you think him less of a man for that?

“Oh, yours’ll go quite a way!” young Tom Lockhart assured him cheerfully. “And you can use the rest of the space for magazines and papers.”

“Thanks!” replied Black, rather grimly grateful for this comforting suggestion. He and the twenty-year-old son of his hostess had become very good friends in the two days which had elapsed since Black’s arrival. He had an idea that Tom was going to be a distinct asset in the days to come. The young man’s fair hair and blue eyes were by no means indicative of softness—being counteracted by a pugnacious snub nose, a chin so positive that it might easily become a menace, and a grin which decidedly suggested impishness.

“I’ll help unpack these, if you like.”

Tom laid hold of the books with a will. Black, his coat off, set them up, thereby indisputably demonstrating that two hundred and thirty-one volumes, even though a round two dozen of them be bulky with learning, certainly do fill an inconceivably small space.

“Well, anyhow,” he said, resting from his labours, and determinedly turning away from the embarrassing testimony of the bookshelves as to his resources, to the invitation of the massive desk to be equipped with the proper appliances to work, “a few pictures and things will help to make it look as if somebody lived here. I’ve several pretty good photographs and prints I thought I’d frame when I got here—I’ve been saving them up for some time.”

He exhibited the collection with pride—they had lain across the top of the books. Tom Lockhart hung over them critically.

“They’re bully!” was his judgment. “Not a bit what I’d have expected. Not a saint or a harp among ’em. Oh, gee!—that horse race is great! Where’d you get that? I mean—it’s foreign, isn’t it?”

Black laughed. “That’s just a bit of a hurdle race we had in a little town down South. I’m on one of those horses.”

“You are! Oh, yes—I see—on the front one! Why, say—” he turned to Black, enthusiasm lighting his face—“you’re one of those regular horse-riding Southerners. This is on your family estate, I’ll wager.”

Black’s face flushed a little, but his eyes met the boy’s frankly. “I was born in Scotland, and came over here when I was sixteen. I worked for the man who lived in that house back there at the left. He let me ride his horses. I broke the black one for him—and rode him to a finish in that race. I was only seventeen then.”

Tom stared for a minute before his manners came to the rescue. “That’s awfully interesting,” he said then, politely. Black could see the confusion and wonderment in his mind as plainly as if the boy had given expression to it. If the information had let Tom down a little, the next instant he rallied to the recognition that here was a man out of the ordinary. Tom was not a snob, but he had never before heard a minister own to “working” for anybody, and it had startled him slightly. But when he regarded Black, he saw a man who, while he looked as if he had never worked for anybody, had not hesitated to declare that he had. Tom thought he liked the combination.

“If you could tell me of a good place to get these framed,” Black said, gathering up the photographs and prints as he spoke, “I believe I’ll have it done right away. It’s the one thing that’ll make this big house seem a little more like home.”

“That’s right. And I can tell you a peach of a place—in fact I’ll take you there, if you want to go right now. It’s on our way back home. By the way—” young Tom glanced round the big bare room—“if there’s any stuff you want to get for the house to give it a kind of a jolly air, you know, you’ll find it right there, at Jane Ray’s. She can advise you, too.”

“I don’t suppose I’ll get anything but the frames,” Black answered cautiously, as the two went out together. He had received an advance on his new salary, and therefore he had more money in his pocket than he had ever had before at one time, but he was too much in the habit of needing to count every penny to think of starting out to buy anything not strictly necessary. And already he knew Tom for the usual careless spender, the rich man’s son. Very likely, he thought, this place to which Tom was to take him was the most expensive place in the suburban town. On second thought, he decided to take along only two of his pictures—till he knew the prices he must pay.

It had not been a particularly busy morning for Jane Ray. She was occupied with only one customer at the moment when Robert Black and young Thomas Lockhart came down the side street upon which fronted her shop—a side street down which many feet were accustomed to turn, in search of Jane and her wares.

The customer with whom she was occupied stood with her at the rear of the shop before several specimens of antique desks and chairs. All about were other pieces, some of them proclaiming themselves rather rare. Jane Ray herself also looked rather rare—for a shopkeeper, inasmuch as she did not look like a shopkeeper at all, though the chaste severity of her business attire rivalled that of her latest acquired possession over which that morning she was gloating—a genuine Adam mirror. This mirror reflected faithfully Jane’s smooth, chestnut brown head, her slightly dusky skin with an underlying tinge of pink, her dark eyes which held a spice of mischief in spite of their cool alertness of glance, her faintly aggressive chin—which meant that she could argue with you about the value of her goods and hold her own, and in the end convince you, without making you unhappy about it—which is a rare accomplishment, especially in so young a woman as was Miss Ray.

Robert Black and Tom, the latter self-constituted guide to furnishing a manse with what might be called its superfluous necessities, entered the shop and stood waiting. Jane saw them in her Adam mirror, but she continued to discuss with her other customer the relative merits of a Chippendale desk having all manner of hidden springs and drawers in it, with those of a Sheraton pouch-table, a work-table with a silken bag beneath it, and essentially feminine in its appeal. The customer was making a present to his wife, and had fled to Jane in this trying emergency—as did many another man. Jane always knew.

“Isn’t this some place?” murmured young Lockhart, proudly, hanging over a glass show-case on a cherry gate-table. “Ever get into a woman’s shop that catered to men like this one? Look at this case of pipes—aren’t they stunners? She knows all there is to know about every last thing she sells, and what’s more, she never keeps anything but good stuff. Some of it’s pretty rare, and all of it’s corking. Look at those cats’ eyes!”

But Black had caught sight of certain headlines in a New York daily lying beside the case of semi-precious stones which had attracted Tom. It was a late morning edition, and this suburban town lay too far from New York for the later morning editions to reach it before early afternoon—anyhow, they were not to be had at the news-stands before two o’clock, as Black had discovered yesterday. He seized the paper, wondering how this woman shopkeeper had achieved the impossible. He was a voracious reader of war-news, this Scotsman by blood and American to the last loyal drop of it. But he was not satisfied with America’s part in the great conflict. For this was April, nineteen sixteen, and the thing had been going on for almost two years.

He devoured the black headlines.

“NO BREAK IN THE FRENCH LINES YET.
SEVENTH WEEK OF THE STRUGGLE AT VERDUN
TOTAL GAIN ONLY FOUR TO FIVE MILES
ON A THIRTY-FIVE MILE FRONT.”

He flamed into low, swift speech, striking the paper before him with his fist. Tom, listening, forgot to gaze upon the contents of the case before him.

“Those French—aren’t they magnificent? Why aren’t we there, fighting by their sides? Oh, we’ll get there yet, but it’s hard to wait. Think of those fellows—holding on two long, anxious years! And they came over here—Lafayette and the rest—and poured out their blood and their money for us. And we think we’re doing something when we send them a little food and some tobacco to buck up on!”

“I say—do you want to fight—a minister? Why, I thought all your profession asked for was peace!” Young Tom’s tone was curious. He did not soon forget the look in the face of the man who answered him.

“Peace! We do want peace—but not peace without honour! And no minister fit to preach preaches anything like that! Don’t think it of us!”

“Well, I used to hear Doctor Curtin—the man before you. He seemed to think—— But I didn’t agree with him,” Tom hastened to say, suddenly deciding it best not to quote the pacific utterances of the former holder of the priestly office. “I thought we ought to go to it. If this country ever does get into it—though Dad thinks it’ll all be settled this year—you bet I’ll enlist.”

“Enlist! I should say so!” And Black took up the paper again, eagerly reading aloud the account which followed the headlines of the sturdy holding of the fiercely contested ground at Verdun—that name which will be remembered while the world lasts.

He looked up at length to find that the other customer had gone, and that Miss Ray, the shopkeeper, had come forward. He looked into a face which reflected his own pride in the French prowess, and forgot for the instant that he had come to buy of her or that she was there to sell.

“It’s great, isn’t it—the way they are holding?” she said, in a pleasant, low voice.

“Great?—it’s glorious! By the way—how do you get hold of this late edition so early?”

“Have it sent up by special messenger from the city. Otherwise it would be held over with the rest of the papers till the two o’clock train.”

Tom broke in. “Pretty clever of you, I say, Miss Ray. Just like the rest of your business methods—always ahead of the other fellow!”

“Thank you, Mr. Lockhart,” Miss Ray answered. “It wouldn’t do to let one’s methods become as antique as one’s goods in this case, would it?”

“Miss Ray, I want to present my friend, Mr. Black.” Tom forgot his new friend’s title as he made this introduction, but of course it didn’t matter. Though Miss Ray seldom attended church anywhere, she could hardly fail, in the talkative suburban town, to know that at the “Stone Church” there was a new man. “He wants to get some of his pictures framed, and of course I led him here,” added Tom, with his boyish grin. He looked at Miss Ray with his usual frankly admiring gaze. No doubt but she was worth it. Not often does a woman shopkeeper achieve the subtle effect of being a young hostess in her own apartments as did Jane Ray. And, as every woman shopkeeper knows, that is the highest, as it is the most difficult, art of shopkeeping.

She scanned the pictures—one that of the hurdle race, the other a view of a country road, with a white spired church in the distance. In no time she had them fitted into precisely the right frames, these enhancing their values as well-chosen frames do. Delighted but still cautious, Black inquired the prices. Miss Ray mentioned them, adding the phrase with which he was familiar, “with the clerical discount.”

“Thank you!” acknowledged Black. “What are they without the discount, please?”

Miss Ray glanced at him. “I am accustomed to give it,” she observed.

“I am accustomed not to take it,” said the Scotsman, firmly. “But I’m just as much obliged.”

She smiled, and told him the regular price. He counted this out, expressed his pleasure in having found precisely what he wanted, and led the way out.

Jane Ray looked after his well-set shoulders, noting that he did not put his hat upon his close-cut, inclined-to-be-wirily-curly black hair until he had reached the street. Then she looked down at the money in her hand. “Wouldn’t take a discount—and didn’t ask me to come to his church,” she commented to herself. “Must be rather a new sort.” She then promptly dismissed him from her thoughts—until later in the day, when the memory was brought back to her by another incident.

It was well along in the afternoon, and she had just sold a genuine Eli Terry “grandfather” clock at a fair profit, and had bargained for and secured several very beautiful pieces of Waterford glass which she had long coveted. A succession of heavy showers had cleared her shop, and she had found time to open a long roll which the expressman had delivered in the morning, when the shop door admitted a person to whom she turned an eager face.

“Oh, I’m glad it’s you!” she said. “Come and see what I have now!”

“Nothing doing,” replied R. P. Burns, M.D., with, however, a smile which belied his words. “I want a present for a sick baby I’m going to fix up in the morning. One of those painted Russian things of yours—the last boy went crazy over ’em. No time for antiques.”

“This isn’t an antique—it’s the last word from the front, and you’ll go crazy over it,” replied Miss Ray. Nevertheless she left the roll and went to a corner in the back of the shop given over to all sorts of foreign made and fascinating wooden toys. She selected a bear with a wide smile and feet which walked, and a gay-hued parrot on a stick, and took them to the big man who was waiting, like Mercury, poised on an impatient foot. While he counted out the change she slipped over to her roll of heavy papers, took out one, and when he looked up again it was straight into a great French war poster held at the length of Jane’s extended arms. He stared hard at it, and well he might, for it was by one of the most famous of French artists, whose imagination had been flaming with the vision of the desperate day.

“Well, by Joe!” Burns ejaculated, his hurry forgot. “I say——”

The poster’s owner waited quietly, lost to view behind the big sheet. Burns studied every detail of the picture, losing no suggestion indicated by the clever lines of the inspired pencil. It was only a rough sketch, impressionistic to the last degree, yet holding unspoken volumes in each bold outline. Then he drew a deep breath.

“Where did you get it?” he asked, as Jane lowered the poster. His eye went back to the roll lying half opened on a mahogany table near by.

“They were sent over by an officer I know—straight from Paris. That isn’t the most wonderful one by half, but I want you to see the rest when you’re not so rushed for time.”

“I’m not particularly rushed,” replied Burns, with a grin. “At least, I can stop if you’ve any more like this. I have to tear in and out of your place, you know, because there’s always some idiot lurking behind one of your screens to leap out and ask me searching questions about patients. If you’ll bar your doors to the public some day, I’ll come and spend an hour gazing at your stuff. Let’s see the posters, please.”

Jane spread them out, one after another, till half the shop was covered. Burns walked from poster to poster, intent, frowning with interest, his quick intelligence recognizing the extraordinary impressions he was getting, his own imagination firing under the stimulus of an art at its marvellous best. Before one of the smaller posters he lingered longest—a wash drawing in colour of a poilu holding his child in his arms, with its mother looking into his face.

“He’s just a kid, that fellow,” he said, in a smothered tone, “just a kid, but he’s giving ’em both up. He won’t come back—somehow you know that. And—it doesn’t seem to matter, if he helps save his country. See here—you ought to do something with these. If the people of this town could see them, a few more of them might wake up to the idea that there’s a war on somewhere.”

“As soon as some English ones come I’ve sent for I intend to have an exhibition, here in my shop, and sell them—for the benefit of French and Belgian orphans. I expect to get all kinds of prices. Will you auction them off for me?”

“You bet I will—if I can do it explosively enough. I’d do anything on earth for a little chap like that.” He indicated a wistful Belgian baby at the edge of a group of children. “Here are our youngsters, fed up within an inch of their lives, and these poor little duffers living on scraps, and too few of those. Oh, what a contrast! As for ourselves—we come around and buy antiques to make our homes more stunning!”

He looked her in the eye, and she looked steadily back. Then she went over to an impressive Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a black-bound book. Returning, she silently held it out to him. It was a text book on nursing, one of those required in a regulation hospital course.

“Eh? What?” he ejaculated, taking the book. “Studying, are you—all by yourself? How far are you?” He flipped the pages. “I see. Are you serious?—You, a successful business woman? What do you want to do it for?”

“Absolutely serious. This country will go into the war some day—it must, or I can’t respect it any more. And when it does—well, keeping an antique shop will be the deadest thing there is. I’ll nail up the door and go ‘over there.’”

“And not to collect curios this time?” His bright hazel eyes were studying her intently.

“Hardly. To be of use, if I can. I thought the more I knew of nursing——”

“You can’t get very far alone, you know.”

“I can get far enough so that when I do manage to take a course I can rush it—can’t I?”

“Don’t know—hard to cut any red tape. But all preparation counts, of course. Well—I’ll give you a question to answer that’ll show up what you do know.”

He proceeded to do this, considering for a minute, and then firing at her not one but a series of interrogations. These were not unkindly technical, but designed to test her practical knowledge of the pages—which according to the marker he had found—she had evidently lately finished. The answers she gave him appeared to satisfy him, though he did not say so. Instead, closing the book with a snap, he said:

“When you sail my wife and I will be on the same ship. We’d be there now if we had our way—it’s all we talk about. Well——”

And he was about to say that he must hurry like mad now to make up for time well lost, when the shop door opened to admit out of a sharp dash of rain a customer who was trying to shelter a flat package beneath his coat. For the second time that day Robert Black was bringing pictures to be framed; in fact, they were the rest of the pile which he had not ventured to bring the first time, lest Miss Ray’s prices be too high for him.

Red gave him one look, and would have fled, but Black did not make for the big doctor with outstretched hand—in fact, he did not seem to see him. At the very front of the shop stood a particularly distinguished looking Hepplewhite sideboard, its serpentine front exquisitely inlaid with satinwood, its location one to catch the eye. It caught Black’s eye—but not because of any cunning design of maker or shopkeeper. Having filled the available space in the rear of the shop with her war posters, Jane had worked toward the front, and the last and most splendid of them she had propped upon the sideboard. In front of it Black now came to a standstill, and Red, intending to leave the place in haste at sight of the minister he was in no hurry to meet, involuntarily paused to note the effect upon the “Kid”—as he persisted in calling him—of the poster’s touchingly convincing appeal.

It was a drawing in black and white of a French mother taking leave of her son, that subject which has employed so many clever pens and brushes since the war began, but than which there is none more universally powerful in its importunity. The indomitable courage in the face of the Frenchwoman had in it a touch beyond that of the ordinary artist to convey—one could not analyze it, but it gripped the heart none the less, as Red himself could testify. He now watched it grip Black.

Without taking his eyes from the picture Black propped his umbrella against a chair, laid his hat and his package upon it, and stood still before the Frenchwoman and her boy, unconscious of anything else. And as he stood there, slowly his hands, hanging at his sides, became fists which clenched themselves. Red, observing, his own hand upon the big wrought-iron latch of the door, paused still a moment longer. The “Kid” cared, did he? How much did he care, then? Red found himself rather wanting to know.

Black looked up at last, saw the other man, saw that he was the quarry he was so anxious to run down, but only said, as his gaze returned to the poster, “And she’s only one of thousands, all with a spirit like that!”

“Only one,” Red agreed. “They’re astonishing, those Frenchwomen.” Then he went on out and closed the door behind him.

After he had gone he admitted to himself that since his wife was a member of this man’s church, and Black probably knew that fact, he himself might have stayed long enough to shake hands. At close range his eyesight, trained to observe, had not been able to avoid noting that Black was no boy, after all. There had been that in the face he had momentarily turned toward Red to show plainly that he was in the full first maturity of manhood. It may be significant that from this moment, in whatever terms Red spoke of the minister at home when he was forced by the exigencies of conversation to mention him at all, he ceased to call him “the Kid.” So, though Black did not know it, he had passed at least one barrier to getting to know the man he meant to make his friend.

CHAPTER III
NO ANÆSTHETIC

OF COURSE the day came, as it inevitably must, when Black and Red actually met, face to face, with no way out but to shake hands, look each other in the eye, and consider their acquaintance made? No, that day of proper introduction never came. But the day did come on which they looked each other in the eye without shaking hands—and another day, a long time after, they did shake hands. As to their friendship—but that’s what this story is about.

The day on which they looked each other in the eye first was on a Sunday morning, rather early. Black had done a perfectly foolhardy thing. It was a late June day, and the cherries in a certain tree just outside his bathroom window were blood-red ripe and tempting. Fresh from his cold tub—clad in shirt and trousers, unshaven—his mouth watering at the thought of eating cherries before breakfast, he climbed out of the window upon the sloping roof of the side porch, and let himself down to the edge to reach the cherries. He never knew how the fool thing happened, really; the only thing he did know was that he slipped suddenly upon the edge of the roof, wet with an early morning shower, and fell heavily to the ground below, striking on his right shoulder. And then, presently, he was sitting at the telephone in his study, addressing R. P. Burns, M.D., in terms which strove to be casual, inviting him to make a morning call at the manse.

“I’d come over myself,” he explained, “but I’m ashamed to say I’m a trifle shaky.”

“Naturally,” replied the crisp voice at the other end of the wire. “Go and lie down till I get there.”

“Please have your breakfast first,” requested Black, struggling hard to master a growing faintness. Whatever he had done to his shoulder, it hurt rather badly, though he didn’t mind that so much as the idea of disgracing himself in Burns’ eyes by going white and flabby over what was probably a trivial injury. To be sure he couldn’t use his arm, but it didn’t occur to him that he had actually dislocated that shoulder by so trifling a means as a slip from the manse roof. The manse roof, of all places! It wasn’t built for incumbent ministers to go upon, between a bath and a shave, and tumble from like a little boy—and on a Sunday morning, too!

The answer Red gave to Black’s suggestion that he have breakfast before coming resembled a grunt more than anything else. Black couldn’t determine whether the red-headed doctor meant to do it or not. The question was settled within five minutes by the arrival of Red, who came straight in at the open manse door, followed the call Black gave, “In here, please—at your left,” and appeared in the study doorway, surgical bag in his hand, and a somewhat grim expression—with which Black had already become familiar at a distance—upon his lips. Black sat in his red-cushioned wooden rocker, that most incongruous piece of furniture in the midst of the black walnut dignity of the manse study, and in it his appearance suggested that of a sick boy who has taken refuge in his mother’s arms. Indeed, it may have been with somewhat of that feeling that he had chosen it as the place in which to wait the coming of aid. Anyhow, his face, under its unshaven blur of beard, looked rather white, though his voice was steady.

“Mighty sorry to bother you at this hour, Doctor Burns,” he began, but was interrupted.

“Didn’t I tell you to lie down? What’s the use of sitting up and getting faint?”

“I’m all right.”

“Yes, I see! All alone here? Thought you had a housekeeper.” Red was opening up his bag and laying out supplies as he spoke.

“I have. She’s gone home for over Sunday.”

“They usually have—when anything happens. Well, come over here on this couch, if you can walk, and we’ll see what the trouble is.”

Black demonstrated that he could walk, though it was with considerable effort. Through all his undeniable faintness he was thinking with some exultation that this was a perfectly good chance to meet Red—and on his own ground, too. What luck!

Red made a brief examination.

“You’ve fixed that shoulder, all right,” he announced. “No matter—we’ll have you under a whiff of ether, and reduce it in a jiffy.”

“Thanks—no ether, please. You mean I’ve dislocated it?” inquired the patient, speaking with some difficulty.

“Good and proper. Here you are——” And without loss of time a peculiarly shaped article, made of wire and gauze and smelling abominably, came over Black’s face. It was instantly removed.

“I believe I said no ether, if you please!” remarked an extraordinarily obstinate voice.

“Nonsense, man! I’m only going to give you enough to relax you. I see some good stiff muscles there that may give me trouble.”

“Ether’ll make me sick, and I’ve got to preach this morning.”

“Preach—nothing!”

“It may be nothing,” agreed the patient, “but I’m going to preach it, just the same. And I won’t have an anæsthetic, thank you just as much, Doctor.”

Red said no more. No surgeon but is astute enough to tell whether a patient is bluffing or whether he means it. Unquestionably, though Black’s face was the colour of ashes, he meant it. Therefore Red proceeded to reduce the dislocation, without the advantage to himself—or to the patient—of the relaxing aid of the anæsthetic. It was a bad dislocation, and it took the doctor’s own sturdy muscles and all his professional skill to do the trick in a few quick, efficient moves and one tremendous pull. But it was all over in less time that it takes to tell it, and only one low groan had escaped Black’s tightly pressed lips. Nevertheless his forehead was wet and cold when he lay limp at the end of that bad sixty seconds.

A strong arm came under his shoulders, and a glass was held to his lips. “Drink this—you’ll be all right in a minute,” said a rather far-away voice, and Black obediently swallowed something which he didn’t much like—and which he probably would have refused to take if he had suspected that it was going to help buck him up the way it did. He had an absurd idea of not allowing himself to be bucked up by anything but his own will—not in the presence of Red, anyhow.

“Some nerve—for a preacher,” presently said the voice which sounded nearer now.

“Why—a preacher?” inquired Black, as belligerently as a man can who is stretched upon his back with his coat off, his arm being bandaged to his side, and a twenty-four hours’ growth of beard on his somewhat aggressive chin.

“Never mind,” Red commanded. “We won’t have it out now. I don’t blame you—that was hitting a man when he’s down.”

“I’m not down.” Black attempted to sit up. A vigorous arm detained him where he was.

“Just keep quiet a few minutes, and you’ll be the gainer in the end. By the way—can you shave with your left hand?”

“I never tried it.” Black’s left hand took account of his cheek and chin. “I was just going to shave when those—fool—cherries caught my eye.”

“Where’s your shaving stuff?”

Black looked up, startled. “Oh, I can’t let you——”

“Who’s going to do it? If you must preach, you don’t want to go to it looking like a pugilist, do you? Though I’m not so sure——” Red left the sentence unfinished, while a wicked smile played round his lips.

“I’ll do it myself—or send for a barber.”

“Oh, come on, Black! I’m perfectly competent to do the job, and now I’ve got my hand in on you I’d like to leave you looking the part you wouldn’t insist on playing if you weren’t pretty game. I’m not so sure I ought to let you——”

“I’d like to see you help it,” declared Black, and now he was smiling, too, and feeling distinctly better.

So it ended by Red’s going upstairs after the shaving materials, and then shaving Black, and doing it with decidedly less finish of style than might have been expected of a crack surgeon with a large reputation. He cut his victim once, and Black, putting up a hand and getting it all blood and lather, grinned up into Red’s face, who grinned back and expressed his regret at the slip. This does not mean that they had become friends—not from Red’s standpoint, at least, who would have befriended a sick dog and then shot him without compunction because he didn’t want him around. But it does mean that at last the two had met, on a man-to-man basis, and that Red’s respect for the man he had been in no hurry to meet had been considerably augmented. Black was pretty sure of this, and it helped to brace him more than the stimulant had done.

Two hours later Red cut a call on a rich patient much shorter than was politic, in order to get to the Stone Church in time to slip into a back pew. Before going in he gave young Perkins instructions not to call him out before the sermon ended for anything short of murder on the church doorstep, surprising that lively usher very much, since it was the first time such a thing had ever happened. In making this effort Red had Black in mind as a patient rather than a minister. A severe dislocation must naturally cause a certain amount of nervous shock which might prove disastrous to a man attempting to carry through a long service and spend most of the period upon his feet, within two hours after the accident occurred. Game though Black might be—well—Red admitted to himself that he rather wanted to see how the fellow whom he could no longer call “the Kid” would see the thing through.

Reactions are curious things. In this case, though it was true that Black had to steady himself more than once to keep his congregation from whirling dizzily and disconcertingly before his eyes, had to set his teeth and summon every ounce of will he possessed to keep on through the first three quarters of his service, after all it was Red who got the most of the reaction. For the sermon which Black preached contained a bomb thrown straight at the heads of a parish which, with half the world at war, was in its majority distinctly pacifist—as was many another church during the year of 1916. Black, before his sermon was done, had taken an out-and-out, unflinching stand for the place of the Church in times of war, and had declared that it must be on the side of the sword, when the sword was the only weapon which could thrust its way to peace.

Red, listening closely, forgetting that the man before him was his patient, found himself involuntarily admitting that whatever else he was, Robert McPherson Black was fearless in his speech. And there was probably no use in denying that the fellow had a way of putting things that, as James Macauley had asserted, effectually prevented the man in the pew from becoming absorbed in reveries of his own. It had been by no means unusual for R. P. Burns, surgeon, expecting to do a critical operation on Monday morning, to perform that operation in detail on Sunday morning, while sitting with folded arms and intent expression before a man who was endeavouring to interest him in spiritual affairs. On the present occasion, however, though the coming Monday’s clinical schedule was full to the hatches, Red was unable to detach himself for a moment from the subject being handled so vigorously by Black. Thus, listening through to the closing words, he discovered himself to be aflame with fires which another hand had kindled, and that hand, most marvellously, a preacher’s.

Young Perkins, hovering close to the rear seat into which Red had stolen upon coming in just before the sermon, considered the embargo raised with the closing words of Black, and had his whispered summons ready precisely as Black began his brief closing prayer. The scowl with which Red motioned him away surprised Perkins very much, causing him to retreat to the outer door, where in due season he delivered his message to the leisurely departing doctor—departing leisurely because he was eavesdropping.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he had overheard one man of prominence saying to another in the vestibule. “Strikes me that’s going pretty strong. What’s the use of stirring up trouble? That sort of talk’s going to offend. Pulpit’s not called upon to go into matters of state—particularly now, when public sentiment’s so divided. Somebody better put a flea in his ear, eh?”

The other man nodded. “I believe a good deal as he does myself,” he admitted, cautiously, “but I don’t hold with offending people who have as good a right to their opinions as he has. I saw Johnstone wriggling more than once, toward the last—and he’s about the last man we want to make mad.”

R. P. Burns laid a heavy hand on the speaker’s arm. Turning, the other man looked into a pair of contemptuous hazel eyes, with whose glance, both friendly and fiery, he had been long familiar. “Oh, rot!” said a low voice in his ear.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Think it out.” And Burns was gone, in the press, with the quickness now of one accustomed to get where he would go, no matter how many were in the way.

He marched around to the vestry door, where he found Black standing, his gown off, his face gone rather white, though it had been full of colour when Red saw it last.

“Faint?” he asked.

“No—thanks, I’m all right. Just thought I’d like a whiff of fresh air.”

“Take a few deep breaths. I’ll give you a pick-up, if you say so.”

Black shook his head. “I’m all right,” he repeated.

“Shoulder ache?”

“Not much. I’m all right, I tell you, Doctor. Can’t you get over the idea that a preacher is a man of straw? Why, I—will you try a wrestle with me, sometime—when my shoulder’s fit again?”

Red laughed. “Down you in two minutes and fifteen seconds,” he prophesied.

“Try it, and see.” And Black walked back into the church, his cheek losing its pallor in a hurry.

On that Sunday the Lockharts, his first entertainers, insisted that he come to dinner. Though he had kept his slung shoulder and arm under his gown, the facts showed plainly, and the congregation was full of sympathy. With his housekeeper away, Black could find no way out, though he would have much preferred remaining quietly in his study, with four cups of coffee of his own amateur making, and whatever he could find in his larder left over from Saturday.

So he went to the Lockharts’, and there he met a person who had been in his congregation that morning, but whom he had not noted. She had seen that he had not noted her, but she had made up her mind that such blindness should not long continue. Her appearance was one well calculated to arrest the eye of man, and Black’s eye, though it was accustomed to dwell longer upon man than upon woman, was not one calculated by Nature to be altogether and indefinitely undiscerning.

With Annette Lockhart, daughter of the house, the guest, Miss Frances Fitch, a former school friend, held a brief consultation just before Black’s arrival.

“Think he’s the sort to fall for chaste severity, or feminine frivolity, when it comes to dress, Nanny?”

Miss Lockhart looked her friend over. “You’re just the same old plotter, aren’t you, Fanny Fitch?” she observed, frankly. “Well, it will take all you can do, and then some, if you expect to interest Mr. Black. But—if you want my advice—I should say chaste severity was your line.”

“There’s where you show your unintelligence,” declared Miss Fitch. “I shall be as frilly as I can, because you yourself are a model of smooth and tailored fitness, and he will want a relief for his eyes. He shall find it in me. Really, wasn’t he awfully game to preach, with that shoulder?”

“He’s a Scot,” said Nan Lockhart. “Of course he would, if it killed him.”

The result of this exchange of views was that Miss Fitch appeared looking like a fascinating young saint in a sheer white frock. Had she a white heart? Well, anyhow, she looked the embodiment of ingenuousness, for her masses of fair hair were too curly to be entirely subdued, no matter how confined, and her deep blue eyes beneath the blonde locks might have been those of a beautiful child.

“Oh, I say!” ejaculated Tom Lockhart, when she first came downstairs, the transformation from her dark smoothness of church garb to this spring-like outburst of whiteness hitting him full in his vulnerable young heart—as usual.

“Well—like me, Tommy dear?” asked Fanny Fitch, letting her fingers rest for the fraction of a second on his dark-blue coat-sleeve.

“Like you!” breathed Tom. “I say—why did I bring him home to dinner? Now you’ll just fascinate him—and forget me!”

“Forget you? Why, Tom!” And Miss Fitch gave him an enchanting glance which made his heart turn over. Then she went on into the big living room, where Robert McPherson Black, damaged shoulder and arm in a fine black silk sling, the colour now wholly restored to his interesting face, rose courteously to be presented to her. Of course he did not know it, but it was at that moment that he encountered a quite remarkable combination of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Up to now he had met each of these tremendous forces separately, but never before all together in one slim girl’s form. And yet, right here, it must be definitely asserted and thoroughly assimilated, that Fanny Fitch was what is known as an entirely “nice” girl, and in her heart at that hour was nothing which could be called an evil intent. The worst that could be said of her was that she was ruthless in exacting tribute—even as Cæsar. And when her eye had fallen upon the minister, with his right arm out of commission but the rest of him exceedingly assertive of power, she had coveted him. To her, the rest seemed easy.

As to Black—he was not “easy.” In his very young manhood he had loved very much the pretty daughter of his Southern employer, but she had been as far out of his reach as the furthermost star in the bright constellations which nightly met his eye in the skies above him. When she had married he had firmly and definitely put the thought of woman out of his head, and had formulated a code concerning the whole sex intended to hold throughout his ministry. During his entire first pastorate he had been a model of discretion—as a young minister in a country community must be, if he would not have his plans for service tumbling about his ears. Fortunately for him he was, by temperament and by training, not over susceptible to any ordinary feminine environment or approach. He had a hearty and wholesome liking for the comradeship of men, greatly preferring it to the frequent and unavoidable association with women necessary in the workings of church affairs. Even when his eye first rested upon the really enchanting beauty of Miss Fanny Fitch, if he could have exchanged her, as his companion at the Lockhart dinner table, for R. P. Burns, M.D., he would have done it in the twinkling of an eye. For had not Red shaved him that morning, and wasn’t another barrier most probably well down? It was of that he was thinking, and not, just then, of her.

But she forced him to think of her—it was an art in which she was a finished performer. She did it by cutting up for him that portion of a crown roast of spring lamb which Mr. Samuel Lockhart sent to him upon his plate. Up to that moment, throughout the earlier courses, he had been engaged with the rest in a general discussion of the subject of the war, quite naturally brought up by the sermon of the morning. But when it came to regarding helplessly the food which now appeared before him unmanageable by either fork or spoon, he found himself for the first time talking with Miss Fitch alone, while the conversation of the others went ahead upon a new tack.

“Oh, but this makes me think of how many poor fellows have to have their food cut up for them, over there,” she was saying, as her pretty, ringless fingers expertly prepared the tender meat for his consumption. “While you were speaking this morning I was wishing, as I’ve been wishing ever since this terrible war began, that I could be really helping, on the other side. If it hadn’t been for my mother, who is quite an invalid, I should have gone long ago. You made it all so real——”

A man may tell himself that he doesn’t like flattery, but if it is cleverly administered—and if, though he is modest enough, he can’t help knowing himself that he has done a good thing in a fine way—how can he quite help being human enough to feel a glow of pleasure? If it’s not overdone—and Miss Fitch knew much better than that—much can thus be accomplished in breaking down a masculine wall of reserve. Black’s wall didn’t break that Sunday—oh, not at all—but it undeniably did crumble a little bit along the upper edges.

After dinner was over, however, as if he were somehow subtly aware that the wall was undergoing an attack, Black withdrew with the other men to the further end of the living room to continue to talk things over. He was at some pains to seat himself so that he was facing these men, and had no view down the long room to the other end, where the women were gathered.

Miss Fitch, looking his way from a corner of a great divan, sent a smile and a wave toward Tom, who, torn between allegiance to Fanny and his new and absorbing devotion to Black, had for the time being followed the men. Then she said negligently to Nan Lockhart:

“Your minister certainly has a stunning profile. Look at it there against that dark-blue curtain.”

Nan looked for an instant, then back at her guest. “Oh, Fanny!” she murmured, rebukingly, “don’t you ever get tired of that game?”

“What game, my dear?”

“Oh—playing for every last one of them!” answered Annette Lockhart, with some impatience. She was a dark-eyed young woman with what might be called a strong face, by no means unattractive in its clean-cut lines. She had a personality all her own; she had been a leader always; people liked Nan Lockhart, and believed in her thoroughly. Her friendship for Fanny Fitch was a matter of old college ties—Fanny was nobody’s fool, and she was clever enough to keep a certain hold upon Nan through the exercise of a rather remarkable dramatic talent. Nan had written plays, and Fanny had acted them; and now that college days were over they had plans for the future which meant a continued partnership in the specialty of each.

“Interested in him yourself, I judge,” Miss Fitch replied teasingly. “Don’t worry! The chances are all with you. He’s horribly sober minded—he’ll fall for your sort sooner than for mine.”

But a certain gleam in her eyes said something else—that she was quite satisfied with the beginning she had made. Another man might have taken a seat where he could look at her; that Black deliberately looked the other way this astute young person considered proof positive that he found her unexpectedly distracting to his thoughts.

When, at the end of an hour, Black turned around, ready to take his farewell, Miss Fitch was absent from the room. He glanced about for her, found her not, told himself that he was glad, and went out. As the door of the living room closed behind him, she came down the stairs, a white hat on her head, a white parasol in her hand. They passed out of the house door together. At the street Miss Fitch turned in the direction of the manse, two blocks away. Black paused and removed his hat—with his left hand he did it rather awkwardly.

“It’s been very pleasant to meet you,” he said. “Is your stay to be long?”

“Several weeks, I believe. Are you really going that way, Mr. Black—or don’t you venture to walk down the street with any members of your congregation except men?”

He smiled. “I am really going this way, Miss Fitch—thank you! Would you care to know where?”

“To Doctor Burns—with your arm, I suppose. Is it very painful?”

“It’s doing very well. Isn’t this a magnificent day? I hope you’ll have a pleasant walk.”

“I can hardly help it, thank you—I’m so fond of walking—which Nan Lockhart isn’t—hard luck for me! Good-bye—and I shall not soon forget what I heard this morning.”

Her parting smile was one to remember—not a bit of pique that he hadn’t responded to her obvious invitation—no coquetry in it either, just charming friendliness, exceedingly disarming. As he turned away, striding off in the opposite direction from that which he naturally would have taken, he was frowning a little and saying to himself that it was going to be rather more difficult to keep the old guard up in a place like this than it had been in his country parish. His good Scottish conscience told him that though in deciding on the instant to make Doctor Burns a visit he had committed himself to something he didn’t want to do at all—go and bother the difficult doctor with his shoulder when it wasn’t necessary—he must do it now just the same, to square the thing. Heavens and earth—why shouldn’t he walk down the street with a beautiful young woman in white if she happened to be going his way, instead of putting himself out to go where he hated to, just to avoid her? Not that he cared to walk with her—he didn’t—he preferred not to. And the doctor would think him a weakling, after all, if he came to him complaining, as was the truth, that his shoulder was aching abominably, and his head to match, and that his pulse seemed to be jumping along unpleasantly. Well——

Just then R. P. Burns went by in his car at a terrific and wholly inexcusable speed, evidently rushing out of town. Black, recognizing him, breathed a sigh of relief. But he went around seven blocks to get back to the Manse without a chance of meeting anybody in white. At a very distant sight of anybody clothed all in white he turned up the first street, and this naturally lengthened his trip. So that when he was finally within the Manse’s sheltering walls he was very glad to give up bluffing for the day, and to stretch himself upon the leather couch in the study where that morning he had doggedly refused an anæsthetic. He rather wished he had one now! Confound it—he felt that he had been a fool more than once that day. Why should ministers have to act differently from other men, in any situation whatever? He made up his mind that the next time he climbed out on a slippery roof on a Sunday morning—well, he would do it if he wanted to! But the next time he turned up a side street to avoid anybody—or changed his direction because anybody was going the same way——

When he woke an hour later it was because his shoulder really was extremely sore and painful. But he wouldn’t have called Burns if he had known that that skillful surgeon could take away every last twinge. Anyhow—Burns had shaved him that morning! There was that that was good to remember about the day. Sometime—he would come closer to the red-headed doctor than that!

CHAPTER IV
NOBODY TO SAY A PRAYER

MRS. HODDER, housekeeper at the manse, breathed a heavy sigh as she poured the minister’s breakfast coffee. He looked up, as she had known he would; his ear seemed to be sensitive to sighs.

“It’s queer, how things go for some people,” she said. “I can’t get over feeling that a body should have Christian burial, no matter what the circumstances is.”

“Tell me about it,” said Black promptly. Mrs. Hodder was not a talker—he did not think she was a gossip. She had been selected for him by his good friend Mrs. Lockhart, who had had in mind the necessity of finding the minister a housekeeper built on these desirable lines. Mrs. Hodder came as near such lines as seemed humanly possible, though she had her faults. So had the minister, as he was accustomed to remind himself, whenever he discovered a new one in his housekeeper.

So Mrs. Hodder told him, and as he listened a peculiar frown appeared between his eyebrows. The thing she told him was of the sort to touch him to the quick. The moment he had finished his breakfast—which he did in a hurry—he went into the study, closed the door, and called up a certain undertaker, whom—as is the case with the men of Black’s profession—he had come to know almost before he knew the leading men of his church.

“Oh, that’s nothing that need interest you, Mr. Black,” replied the man of gloomy affairs, in the cheerful tone he employed out of working hours. “It’s out in a community where there isn’t any church—folks are dead against the church, at that. Nobody expects any service—there won’t be but a handful there, anyhow. There’s only the girl’s grandmother for relatives—and the thing’s best kept quiet. See?”

“I see. What time are you to leave the house?”

“Ten o’clock. But you——”

“There wouldn’t be any actual objection to my coming, would there, Mr. Munson?”

“Why—I suppose not. They simply don’t expect it—not used to it. And in this case—if you understand——”

“I do understand—and I very much want to come. The trolley runs within two miles, I believe.”

“Why—yes. But I can send for you, if you insist—only—you know they’re poor as poverty——”

“I want the walk, and I’ll catch the trolley—thank you. If I should be a bit late——”

“Oh, I’ll hold the thing for you—and—well, it’s certainly very good of you, Mr. Black. I admit I like to see such things done right myself.”

The conversation ended here, and Black ran for his trolley, with only time to snatch a small, well-worn black leather handbook from his desk. He had no time for a change of clothes—which he wouldn’t have made in any case, though he was not accustomed to dress in clerical style upon the street, except in so far as a dark plainness of attire might suggest his profession rather than emphasize it.

He had two minutes to spare on a street corner, waiting for his car. On that corner was a florist’s shop. Catching sight of a window full of splendid roses he rushed in, gave an order which made the girl in charge work fast, and managed to speed up the whole transaction so successfully that when he swung on to the moving step he had a slim box under his arm. Only a dozen pink rosebuds—Black had never bought florist’s roses in armfuls—but somehow he had felt he must take them. How account for this impulse—since the Scotch are not notably impulsive? But—right here it will have to be confessed that Black had in his veins decidedly more than a trace of Irish blood. And now it’s out—and his future history may be better understood for the admission.

Some time after Black had caught his trolley, R. P. Burns, M.D., brought his car to a hurried standstill in front of Jane Ray’s shop in the side street, and all but ran inside. The shop was empty at the moment, and Jane came forward at his call. He put a quick question:

“Have you heard anything of Sadie Dunstan lately?”

“Nothing—for a long time. I can’t even find out where she has gone.”

“I can tell you—but it will startle you. There’s no time to break it gently, or I would. She got into trouble, and—came home to—die.”

Jane was looking him straight in the face as he spoke, and he saw the news shock her, as he had known it would. Sadie Dunstan was a little, fair-haired girl who had been Jane’s helper in the shop for a year, and in whom Jane had taken great interest. Then she had gone away—West somewhere—had written once or twice—had failed to write—Jane had unwillingly lost track of her. And now—here was Burns and his news.

“Where is she? Is she—still living?” Jane’s usually steady voice was unsteady.

“No. She’s to be buried—within the hour. I just found it out—and came for you. I thought you might like to go.”

“I’ll be ready in three minutes. I’ll lock the shop——”

Thus it was that two more people were shortly on their way to the place where little Sadie Dunstan, unhonoured and unmourned—except for one—lay waiting for the last offices earth could give her. But she was to have greater dignity shown her than she could have hoped.

“I did try to make a real woman of her,” said Jane, in a smothered voice, when Red had told her what he knew of the pitiful story. Passing the small house that morning he had seen the sign upon the door, and remembering Jane Ray’s lost protégée, had stopped to inquire. A neighbour had given him the tragic little history; the old grandmother, deaf and half blind in her chimney corner, had added a harsh comment or two; and only a young girl who said she was Sadie’s sister and had but an hour before suddenly appeared from the unknown, had shown that she cared what had happened to Sadie.

“You did a lot for her,” asserted Burns. “I think the girl meant to be straight. This was one of those under-promise-of-marriage affairs which get the weak ones now and then. Poor little girl—she wouldn’t have wanted you to know—or me. She didn’t give me a chance—though there probably wasn’t one, anyway, by the time she got back here. I’ve had her under my care many a time in her girlhood, you know—she was a frail little thing, but mighty appealing. This younger sister is a good deal like her, as she looked when you took her first.”

“I knew she had a sister, but thought she was far away somewhere.”

“In an orphanage till this last year. She’s only sixteen—a flower of a girl—and crying her heart out for Sadie. The grandmother’s a brute—the child can’t stay with her.”

“She’ll not have to. I can make it up to Sadie—and I will.”

Burns looked at the face in profile beside him. Jane Ray had a profile which might have been characterized as sturdily sweet; the lines were extremely attractive. Jane’s quiet dress, the simple hat upon her head, were the last word in expensive, well-conceived fashion, but Burns did not know this. He only knew that Miss Ray always looked precisely as she ought to look—very nice, and a little distinguished, so that one noticed her approvingly, and people who did not know her usually wondered who she was. He was thinking as he glanced at her now that if she meant to make it up to Sadie by taking her young sister under her care, that sister would have an even better chance than Sadie had had—and lost.

“I wish we had brought some flowers,” Jane said suddenly, as the car flew past the last houses of the main highway and began to climb the hills into the country backroads. “This is such a benighted little spot we’re going to—they may not have any at all.”

“Doubt it. But there wasn’t time to hunt up flowers if we wanted to get there. Munson’s in all kinds of a hurry to get this thing over. It’s his busy day—as usual, when it happens to be a poor case. We’ll do well if we make it now. Not much use in coming—there’ll be no service. But we can at least see the box go down!”

He spoke grimly. But Jane had caught sight of a rose-bush in a dooryard crowded with white roses, and cried out imperiously:

“Stop one minute, please, Doctor Burns. I’ll buy those roses or steal them. Please!”

The brakes ground, and Jane was out before the car stopped, pulling out a plump little purse as she ran. A countrywoman hurrying to her door to protest angrily at the spectacle of a girl filling her arms with white roses was met with the call: “I’m going to give you a dollar for them—please don’t stop me. It’s for a funeral, and we’re late now!”

“Highway robbery,” commented Burns, as Jane sprang in beside him. “But she’d have sold you her soul for a dollar—and dear at that.”

“Oh, don’t talk about souls, up here,” Jane protested. “If your fine new man at the Stone Church wanted a job worth while he’d leave the smug people in the high-priced pews and come up here to look after barbarians who’ll bury a poor girl without a prayer. Don’t I know, without your telling me, that there’ll be no prayer?—unless you make one?” She looked at him with sudden challenge. “I dare you to!” she said, under her breath.

Burns’ hazel glance, with a kindling fire in it, met hers. “I take the dare,” he answered, without hesitation. “I know the Lord’s Prayer—and the Twenty Third Psalm. I’m not afraid to say them—for Sadie Dunstan.”

The cynicism in Jane’s beautifully cut lips melted unexpectedly into a quiver, and she was silent after that, till the car dashed up the last steep hill. They came out at the top almost in the dooryard of a small, weather-beaten cottage in front of which stood an undertaker’s wagon, two men, and half a dozen women. These people were just about to go into the house, but stood back to let Doctor Burns—whom all of them knew—and Miss Ray—whom one of them knew—go in ahead.

As she went up the steps Jane braced herself for what she must see. Little fair-haired Sadie—come to this so early—so tragically—and nobody to care—nobody to say a prayer—except a red-headed doctor, whose business it was not. At least—she had an armful of white roses. She wanted to take one look at Sadie—and then lay the roses so that they would cover her from the sight of the hard eyes all about her. She would do that—just that. Why not? What better could she do? She drew her breath deep, and set her lips, and walked into the poor little room....

The thing she saw first was a glowing handful of wonderful pink rosebuds upon the top of the cheap black box—one could not dignify it by any other word than Burns had used—which held the chief position in the room. And then, at the foot of the box, she saw a tall figure with an open book in his hand come to do Sadie Dunstan honour. Jane Ray caught back the sob of relief which had all but leaped to her lips. She had not known, until that moment, how much she had wanted that prayer—she, who did not pray—or thought she did not.

Mr. Munson, in a hurry, watch in hand, allowed the few neighbours who had come barely time to crowd into the small room before he signalled the minister to go ahead and get it over. He was not an unfeeling man, but he had two more services on for the day—costly affairs—and both his assistants were ill, worse luck!, and he had had to look after this country backwoods burial himself. He had noted with some surprise the appearance of Doctor Burns and Miss Ray, though there was no use in ever being surprised at anything the erratic doctor might do. As for Miss Ray—he admired her very much, both for her charming personality and her business ability, which compelled everybody’s respect. He wondered what on earth brought her here—what brought all three of them here, slowing things up when the body might have been committed to the dust with the throwing of a few clods by his own competent fingers—and everybody in this heathen community better satisfied than the Stone Church man was likely to make them with his ritual. Thus thought Mr. Munson in his own heart, and all but showed it in his face.

But Black, though he held his book in his hand, gave them no ritual—not here in the house. He had meant to read the usual service, abbreviating and modifying it as he must. But somehow, as he had noted one face after the other—the impassive faces of the few men and women, the surlily stoic one of the old grandmother, the tear-wet one of the wretched young sister in her shabby short frock—and then had glanced just once at the set jaw of R. P. Burns and the desperate pity in the dark eyes of Jane Ray, he had felt impelled to change his plan.

Red, listening, now heard Black pray, as a man prays whose heart is very full, but whose mind and lips can do his bidding under stress. It was a very simple prayer—it could not be otherwise because Black was praying with just one desire in his heart, to reach and be understood by the one real mourner there before him. It is quite possible that he remembered less the One to whom he spoke than this little one by whom he wanted to be heard. It was for the little sobbing sister that he formulated each direct, heart-touching phrase, that she might know that after all there was Someone—a very great and pitiful Someone—who knew and cared because she had lost all she had in a hard and unpitiful world. And speaking thus, for her alone, Black quite forgot that Red was listening—and Red, somehow, knew that he forgot.

Jane Ray listened, too—it was not possible to do anything else. Jane had never heard any one pray like that; she had not known it was ever done. It was at that moment that she first knew that the man who was speaking was a real man; such words could have been so spoken by no man who was not real, no matter how clever an actor he might be. Something in Jane’s heart which had been hard toward any man of Black’s profession—because she had known one or two whom she could not respect, and had trusted none of them on that account—softened a little while Black prayed. At least—this man was real. And she was glad—oh, glad—that he was saying words like these over the fair, still head of Sadie Dunstan, and that the little sister, who looked so like her that the sight of her shook Jane’s heart, could hear.

Jane still held her roses when, after a while, the whole small group stood in the barren, ill-kept burial place which was all this poor community had in which to bestow its dead. It was only across the road and over the hill by a few rods, and when Mr. Munson had been about to send Sadie in his wagon, Black had whispered a word in his ear, and then had taken his place at one side of the black box with its glowing roses on the top. Red, discerning his intention, had taken two strides to the other side, displacing a shambling figure of a man who was slowly approaching for this duty. Mr. Munson, now seeing a revealing light, waved the unwilling bearer aside, and himself took the other end of the box. Together the three, looking like very fine gentlemen all—in contrast to those who followed—bore Sadie in decorum to her last resting place.

Now came the ritual indeed—every word of it—brief and beautiful, with its great phrases. When Mr. Munson, clods in hand, cast them at the moment—“ashes to ashes, dust to dust,”—Jane flung her white roses so swiftly down after them that the little sister never saw the dark earth fall. Then she turned and took the trembling young figure in her own warm arms—and looking up, over Sue’s head, Jane’s eyes, dark with tears, met full the understanding, joyfully approving eyes of Robert Black....

Striding down the hill, presently, having refused the offer of Mr. Munson to take him back in his own small car, Black was passed by Red and Jane, with a shabby little figure between them. At the foot of the hill the car stopped, and waited for Black to catch up. He came to its side, hat in hand, his eyes friendlily on Sue Dunstan, who looked up at him shyly through red lids.

“Will you ride on the running board—at least till we get to the trolley?” offered Red. “I thought you had gone with Munson. What’s the matter? Was he in too much of a hurry to look after the minister?”

“No, he asked me. But I want to walk, thank you. I’m pretty fond of the country, and don’t often get so far out.”

“It was very good of you to come,” said Jane Ray, gravely. “It—made all the difference. Mr. Munson told us he didn’t ask you—you offered. But it’s impossible not to wonder how you knew.”

“My housekeeper came from somewhere near this region—she told me. It was very easy to come—easier than to stay away, after knowing. What a day this is—and what a view! Don’t let me keep you—good-bye.” And he turned away even before Red, always in a hurry though he was, would have suggestively speeded his throbbing motor—a device by which he was accustomed to make a get-away from a passer-by who had held him up. As he went on Red put out an arm and waved a parting salute to the man behind him, at which Black, seeing the friendly signal, smiled at the landscape in general, addressing it thus:

“You wouldn’t do that, Red-Head, if you weren’t beginning to like me just a bit—now would you?”

The car was barely out of sight when he heard a shriek behind him, and turning, found himself pursued by one of the women who had been in the cottage. She was waving a parcel at him—a small parcel done up in a ragged piece of newspaper, as he saw when he had returned to meet her. She explained that it contained some few belongings of Sue Dunstan which the girl had forgotten.

“They ain’t much, but she might want ’em. She won’t be comin’ back, I guess—not if that Miss Ray keeps her that kept Sade before. She better keep a lookout on Sue—she’s the same blood, an’ it ain’t no good.”

“Thank you—I’ll take this to her,” Black agreed. His hat was off, as if she had been a lady, this unkempt woman who regarded him curiously. He was saying to himself that here was a place to which he must come again, it was so near—and yet so very, very far.

She would have stayed him to gossip about both Sadie and Sue, but he would have none of that, turned the talk his own way, and presently got away as adroitly as ever Red had done, leaving her looking after him with an expression of mingled wonder and admiration. Somehow he had given her the impression of his friendliness, and his democracy—and yet of the difference between herself and him. There was, once, a Man, beside a wayside well, who had given that same impression.

Until late evening he was busy; calls—a manse wedding—a committee meeting—an hour’s study—so the rest of the June day went. But just as dusk was falling he tucked the newspaper parcel under his arm and went down Jane Ray’s side street. He did not know at all if she could be found at this hour, but he had an idea that Jane lived above her shop, and that if she were at home a bell which he had seen beside the door would bring her.

The shop was softly lighted with many candles, though no one seemed to be inside. When he tried the door, however, it was locked, and he rang the bell. A minute later he saw Jane coming through the shop from the back, and the suggestion of the hostess moving through attractive apartments was more vivid than ever. The door opened. Black held out his parcel.

“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, Miss Ray, but I believe it’s something the little girl left behind, and I thought she might want it to-night. I couldn’t get here earlier.”

“Oh, thank you! Won’t you come in a minute and see Sue? I’d like you to see how different—and how dear—she looks. She’s just back in the garden.” Jane’s expression was eager—not at all businesslike. She might have been a young mother offering to show her child.

“Garden?” questioned Black, following Jane through the candle-lighted shop.

“Actually a garden. You wouldn’t think it, would you? But there is one—a very tiny one—and it’s the joy of my life.”

At the back of the shop she opened a door into one of the most inviting little rooms Black ever had seen—or dreamed of. Not crowded with antiques or curios—just a simple home room, furnished and hung with the most exquisite taste—a very jewel of a room, and lighted with a low lamp which threw into relief the dark polished surface of a table upon which stood a long row of finely bound books. But he was led quickly through this—though he wanted to linger and look about him—through an outer door of glass which opened directly upon the garden. Well!

“It’s not very much,” said Jane, “as gardens go—but I’m terribly proud of it, just the same.”

“It’s wonderful!” Black exclaimed. “What a spot—among all these old brick buildings! Why—it looks like an English garden; every bit of space used—and all those trim walks—and the seat under the trees. Great!” And his eye dwelt delightedly on the box borders filled with flowers, on the tall rows of blue delphiniums and hollyhocks against the walls, on the one great elm tree at the back of it all beneath which stood a rustic seat.

“But here’s something better yet,” said Jane’s voice quietly, beside him, and she brought him out upon the narrow, vine-hung porch which ran all across the back of the house. Here, on a footstool beside a big chair, sat Sue Dunstan, a little figure all in white, with hair in shining fair order as if it had just been washed and brushed, and shy eyes no longer red with tears. And Sue looked—yes, she looked as if she had forgotten everything in the world—except to love Jane Ray!

And then—she recognized the man who had stood at her sister’s feet that morning and said strange words which had somehow comforted her. A flood of colour rushed into her cheeks—she crouched upon the footstool, not daring to look up again. Black sat down in the chair beside her—he knew Jane had been sitting there before him. He said Miss Ray had let him come out for just a minute to see the garden, and wasn’t it a beautiful garden? He had known a garden something like that once, he said, and never another since, and he wondered if he could make one like it behind his house. Sue wasn’t sure—she shook her head—she seemed to think no one but Miss Ray could make such a garden.

Black didn’t stay long—he knew he wasn’t expected to. But he had made friends with Sue before he went—poor child, who had no friends. And he almost thought he had made friends with Jane Ray, too. Somehow he found himself wanting to do that—he didn’t quite know why. Perhaps it was because she was very evidently a friend of Red. Yes—he thought that must be the reason why she interested him so much.

As they came back through the shop Jane paused to snuff a flaming candle with an old pair of brass snuffers—her face was full of colour in the rosy light—and remarked, “I’m going to have an exhibition of war posters some evening before long, Mr. Black—for the benefit of French and Belgian orphans. Would you care to speak of it among your friends? I think you saw some of the first posters I received. I have more and very wonderful ones now—many of them quite rare already. I want to attract the people with plenty of money—and some interest in things over there.”