She buried her face on his shoulder, both arms about him, regardless of her finery. “You're the dearest, sweetest old trump of a brother that ever lived, and you smell like sunshine and fresh air!” she cried. Whereat he shook with laughter and patted her back as she clung to him.
“Promise me, Red,” she begged, lifting her head, “that you won't let anything—anything—keep you from going off with Ellen in the Imp. She's been so lovely about this horrid delay, but I'm always suspicious of you. Promise!”
“I promise you this,” agreed her brother: “Wherever the Imp and I go, after the minister has said the words, for this two weeks Ellen shall go with me.”
“Chester,” said Dick Warburton as he stood in that gentleman's company, looking over a stupendous assortment of wedding gifts, which, in spite of the fact that nobody outside the family had been asked to see Redfield Pepper Burns married, overflowed two large rooms into the upper hall and almost over the railing, “will you tell me who in the name of time sent that rat-trap? This is the most extraordinary display of gold, silver, and tinware that I ever saw, and I'm at the end of my astonishment. But that rat-trap, is it a joke?”
“No joke whatever—,” declared Chester. “It comes from one of Red's devoted friends—his own invention. And the point of the thing is that the making of that rat-trap is going to be the making of the worst dead-beat of a patient Red ever stood by. I really believe Joe Tressler's going to get a patent on it, which also will be Red's doing. But this is a special, particular rat-trap made of extra fine materials, suitable for a wedding gift!”
“Well, well,” mused Burns's brother-in-law. “And what millionaire sent the diamond pendant? By Jove, I haven't seen finer jewels than those this side of the water.”
“That came from the Walworths, I believe. Take it all together, it's a great collection, isn't it? It shows up the odder because Ellen wouldn't have the freak grateful-patient gifts put to one side—or even thrown into a sort of refining shadow. Fix your eye on that rainbow quilt, will you, Dicky, alongside of the Florentine tapestry? That quilt would put out your eye if you gazed upon it steadily, so let up on it by regarding this match-safe. Wouldn't that—”
“That came from Johnny Caruthers,” said a richly modulated low voice behind him. “Please set it down carefully, Mr. Arthur Chester.”
The two men wheeled to see the bride come to the defense of her wedding gifts. Behind her loomed her husband, laughing over her head, his eyes none the less tender, like hers, for the queer presents which meant no less of love and gratitude than the costlier gifts, of which there was no mean array.
“I see you've married him, patients and all, Ellen Burns,” declared Richard Warburton. “On the whole, it's your wisest course. The less he knows you mind their devotion to him—”