During dinner a telephone call summoned Leaver to a consultation.
Immediately at its close he went away, carrying Burns with him.
"You can't take me to a consultation, Jack," Burns had objected, with,
however, a betraying light of eagerness in his eye. He had been four
months away from work--he was hungry for it as a starving man for food.
"Can't I?" Leaver answered, coolly. "Come along and see. It's a chance
to give the patient the opinion of an eminent specialist just back from
Berlin."
"I'm no specialist."
"Aren't you? I think you are. Specialist in human nature, which, if the
reports of this case are true, is the particular sort of diagnosis called
for. Trust me, Red, and--put on your gloves!"
Burns had grinned over this suggestion. He hated gloves and seldom
wore them, but out of consideration for his friend--and Baltimore--he
extracted a pair of irreproachable ones, fresh from Berlin, and donned
them, with only a derisive word for the uselessness of externals as
practised by city professionals.
Left alone with Charlotte, in a pleasant corner of a stately library, by
an open window through which she had watched the departure of the two men
in the landau, Ellen turned to her.
"I can't tell you," she said, "how happy it makes me to see your
happiness. John Leaver is so exactly the man, out of all the world, who
is the husband for you.
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