hortest. Sorry. But they didn't let me know what they wanted me for,
and I'm caught. You'll have to drive home. Call up Johnny Caruthers and
let him bring back the Imp and Miss Mathewson. I can't be spared long
enough to go myself, so take her this note to tell her what to bring.
Get busy, now."

He handed Macauley a hasty scrawl on a prescription blank, and smiled at
the discomfited faces of his two friends showing plainly in the lights
which streamed from the house.

"You look blamed pleased over your job," growled Macauley.

"I like the job all right," admitted Burns; "particularly when
contrasted with--"

"You wouldn't say it if you'd caught one glimpse of Mrs. L." called
back Chester, as the Imp responded somewhat erratically to Macauley's
unaccustomed touch. But all the answer they got was, an emphatic "Don't
change gears as if you were running a thrashing machine, Mac."

It was two hours and a half later that Burns came out of the small
cottage again, wiping a damp face, his white shirt-front a pathetic
ruin, his hastily reassumed white waistcoat and tie decidedly the worse
for having been carelessly handled. But his face, when he turned it
toward the stars as he crossed the tiny patch of a flower-bordered yard,
was a contented one.

"It pays up all the arrears when you can leave a chunk of happiness
behind you as big as that one," he said to himself. Johnny Caruthers had
gone home by trolley long ago, and Miss Mathewson was to remain for
the night and return with the doctor when he came for his morning
after-visit. Burns sent the Green Imp off at a moderate pace, musing as
he drove through the now moderated and refreshing air of two o'clock in
the morning.

"Party must be about over by now; think it'll adjourn without seeing
any more of Red Pepper and his misused dress clothes," he reflected.
"I suppose those dancing puppets think they've had a good time, but
it isn't in it with mine. Bless the little woman: she's happy over her
first boy! He's a winner, too. As for Tom, I could have tipped him
over with a nod of the head when he was thanking me for leaving the
merry-go-round to stand by. It must feel pretty good to be the father of
a promising specimen like that. Must beat the adopting business several
leagues. And that's not saying that Bobby Burns isn't the best thing
that ever happened to R. P."

Philosophizing thus, he presently sent the Green Imp at her quietest
pace in at the home driveway. The