going to give us his dust?
I like that!" cried Macauley, who could be trusted never to make things
easy for his friends.

"Abuse him as you like. He's off with me at my request," called Burns,
pulling out into the road and turning with a sweep.

Martha Macauley looked after the Green Imp's rapidly lessening shape
through the dust-cloud which it left behind. "I never thought till to-day
that Dr. Leaver seemed the least bit like a noted surgeon," said she, as
they waited for Macauley to get his car underway. "I could never imagine
his acting like Red, and rushing enthusiastically from bedside to
operating-room, pushing everything out of his way to make time to cut
somebody to pieces and sew him up again, for his ultimate good. But
to-day somehow, he seemed more--what would you call it--professional?"

"That's the word," her husband agreed. "It's the word they juggle with.
If a thing's 'professional,' it's all right. If it's not, it may as well
be condemned to outer darkness at once."

CHAPTER XIII

A CRISIS

"Little wife?"

"Yes, Redfield Pepper--"

"I'm as nervous as a cat up a tree with a couple of dogs at the foot!"

"Why, Red, I never heard you talk of being nervous! What does it mean?"

"An operation to-morrow."

"But you never are 'nervous,' dear."

"I am now."

"Is it such a critical one?"

"The most critical I ever faced."

Ellen looked at her husband, or tried to look, for they were moving
slowly along the street, at a late hour, Burns having suggested a short
walk before bedtime. It was quite dark, and Ellen could judge only by her
husband's voice that he spoke with entire soberness.

"Can you tell me anything about it?" she suggested, knowing that relief
from tension sometimes comes with speech. Any confession of nervousness
from Red Pepper Burns seemed to her most extraordinary. She knew that he
often worked under tremendous tension, but he had never before admitted
shakiness of nerve.

"Not much, if anything at all. It's a particularly private affair, for
the present. It's a queer operation, too. I may not handle a knife, tie
an artery, or stitch up a wound--may do less than I ever did in my life
on such an occasion, yet--I'll be hanged if I'm not feeling as owly about
it as if it were the first time I ever expected to see blood."

Ellen put her hand on his arm, slipped it into the curve, and kept it
there, while he held it pressed close against him. "Red, have you been
workin