CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH HE DEFIES SUPERSTITION
“Hades of Hymen! Red, are you making calls this morning?”
“Why not? I'm not to be married till noon, am I?”
“I say, take me with you, will you? I want to go along with a man who has the nerve to see patients up to the last minute before his wedding!”
“Takes less nerve than to sit around and wait for the fateful hour, I should say. Come on, if you think you'll have time to dress when you get back. It may be close work.”
“Haven't you got to dress yourself?” demanded Arthur Chester, settling himself in the car beside its driver. “Or shall you go to the altar in tweeds with April mud on your boots?”
“Rather than not get there, yes. But I can dress in half the time you can—always could, and necessity has developed the art. Look here, there isn't any April mud. The roads are fine.”
“Oh, I suppose if I were booked for a wedding journey in the Green Imp before the leaves were fairly out I shouldn't be able to see any mud myself. As it is, well, I don't know the colour of the bride's motoring clothes, but I presume they'll be adapted to the circumstances. I never saw her look anything but ready for whatever situation she happened to be in. That's a trick that'll serve her many a good turn as the wife of R. P. Burns, M.D., eh, Red?”
The Imp whirled about the country all the morning, having made an early start. The car was in fine fettle, like a horse that has been trained for a race. Although it was beginning its second season it had never been in better trim for business. The engine, having been cared for and seldom abused, was running more smoothly than when it had been first put upon the road. The Imp had had a fresh coat of the dark-green which gave it its name, and its brasswork was shining as only Johnny Caruthers by long and untiring labors could make metal shine. It had that morning acquired a luggage-rack attached to its rear, which was soon to receive a leather-covered motor trunk at that moment receiving its final consignments in the Macauley house; and there were several other new fittings about the machine which indicated that it was presently to be put to uses which had never been required of it before.
The Imp drew up in front of the hospital. Chester looked anxiously at his watch for the twenty-seventh time that morning. “For Heaven's sake, hurry, Red,” he urged. “Women are the dickens about having a wedding late, and it's ten minutes of eleven now. Noon comes sure and soon, and at noon, allow me to remind you—”