Come, I'll
have you at home before you know it. Charlotte is waiting with the
warmest welcome you will find on this side of the Atlantic!"
He hurried them away, but not so fast that Red Pepper Burns did not find
time to chuckle: "The power of association is beginning to tell already,
Jack. That was the most impetuous speech I ever heard from your lips. I
don't call such language really restrained--not from you."
Leaver turned, laughing, to Ellen. "One would think I had been the most
solemn fellow known to history," said he.
In two minutes he had bestowed his guests in a small but luxuriously
appointed closed car, had given the word to his chauffeur, and had taken
his place facing them. Burns examined the landau's interior with
interest.
"The evidence of a slight but unmistakable odour tells me that this
is the jewel-box in which Baltimore's gem of a surgeon keeps his
appointments," said he. "Well, the Green Imp's beginning to show traces
of her age, but her successor will be no aristocrat of this type. I'd
rather drive myself and freeze my face to a granite image than be
transported in cotton-wool, like this."
Leaver and Ellen laughed at his expression.
"Of course you would," Leaver agreed. "And equally of course every friend
and patient of yours would grieve to see you shut up behind glass windows
with another hand on the steering-wheel.
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