"You might suggest it to him," said Miss Ruston. She was looking straight ahead. She wore a hat of white linen, of a picturesque shape, such as are in vogue in the country in warm weather, and it drooped more or less about her face. Burns could not see her eyes when she looked forward, but he could see her mouth. It was an expressive mouth, and it looked particularly expressive just now. The trouble was that he could not tell just what it expressed.
"I'll do it, this afternoon, and keep it as a reminder of a patient of whom I think a heap. No, I can't do it this afternoon, either, for he won't leave Jamie till he can leave him comfortably over the first stage. But by to-morrow afternoon, perhaps. We'll have to catch him on the fly, for I'm confident he'll be off the minute the youngster is out of danger. Well, I hope you know my friend well enough to appreciate that he's about the finest there is anywhere?"
"I'm beginning to know you well enough, Dr. Burns, to see that you care more to have your friends appreciated than to win praise yourself."
"No, no—oh, Cesar, no! I've not reached such a sublime height of altruism as that. To tell you the honest truth—which is supposed to be good for the soul—I'm horribly envious of Jack Leaver for having done that stunt this morning."
"Envious? Of course you are. At the same time would you have taken it away from him and have done it yourself, if you had had the chance?"
"Trust a woman to confront a man with the unthinkable, and then expect him to take credit for not having been guilty of it! Would I have snatched a juicy bone away from a starving lion? That's what Leaver has been all these months. It's what any man gets to be when his job is taken away from him and he doesn't know when he will get another. No—at the same time that I'm envious I'm genuinely happy that the lion got his bone. He needed it. It's going to make a well lion of him; he is one now. You're glad, too, aren't you?"
He gave her one of his quick, discerning glances.
"Of course I am." She spoke quite heartily enough to satisfy him.
"Good! Then, if I can wheedle him before the camera, you'll be interested in making a picture of him that Ellen and I shall want to frame and look at every day?"
"I will give you my amateur's best, certainly, Dr. Burns."