conventional
laws of photography.

"It's very nice--very nice," said Burns, indifferently. "But it's not in
it with the old lady by the fire. I'll run across and make sure of her
quarters, if you please."

"That will be wonderfully good of you," and the guest looked after her
host, dubiously, as he went out.

"Does one have to do everything he says, in these parts?" she inquired,
glancing from Mrs. Burns to Miss Mathewson, both of whom were smiling.
Her own expression was an odd mixture of interest and rebellion.

Miss Mathewson spoke first. "I have been his surgical assistant for more
than nine years," said she. "When I have ventured to depart from the line
he laid out for me I have--been very sorry, afterward."

"Did you ever venture to depart very far?"

"Do I look so meek?"

"You don't look meek at all, but you do look--conscientious." Miss Ruston
gave her a daring look.

Amy spoke with more spirit than the others had expected. "If I were not
conscientious I couldn't work for Dr. Burns."

"He doesn't look conscientious, to me," declared Miss Ruston. "He looks
adventurous, audacious, unexpected."

"Perhaps he is. But he doesn't expect his assistant nurse to be
adventurous, audacious, or unexpected!"

"Good for you!" Miss Ruston was laughing, and looking with newly roused
interest at this young woman, whom she had perhaps taken to be of a
more commonplace type than her words now indicated. "As for my friend,
Mrs. Burns--he is her husband, and she must have known what he was like,
since I, in one short hour, have already discovered two or three of his
characteristics! Well, here's hoping he's on my side, when he comes back.
If he's not--"

But when he came back he was on her side, reluctantly convinced by a
painstaking examination of the possibilities in the old cottage, and by a
man-to-man talk with its owner as to his good faith in promising to carry
out the lessee's requirements.

"Though what in the name of time possesses a stunning girl like that to
come here and shut herself up in Aunt Selina's old rookery, I can't make
out," the landlord, Burns's neighbour, had confessed.

"Possibly she won't shut herself up," Burns had suggested, though he
himself had been unable to discover the mysterious attraction of the
little old house. The garden promised better, he thought. He could
understand her being caught by the forsaken though powerful charm of
that. Doubtless it would furnish backgrounds for her