“He is home and all right. Do you want him professionally? He can't go out to-night.”
“I know he can't. But I had to know he got home. I—”
She sank down on the doorstep, shaken and sobbing. Chester stood looking down at het, wondering what on earth he was to say. What had Rose Seeley to do with Red? What had she to do with his losing control on the Red Bank hill? A quick thought crossed his mind, to be as quickly dismissed. No, whatever Red's private affairs were, they could have nothing to do with this Rose—too bruised and trampled a rose to take the fancy of a man like him even in his most evil hour.
Suddenly she lifted her head. “He saved my life and 'most lost his. They'd been making repairs on the hill and, some way, the lanterns wasn't lit. It's an awful dark night. He saw what he was comin' to and turned out sudden into the grass. He had to go into the ditch, then, not to run over me—and somebody else. He ran away!” Plainly that scornful accent did not mean Burns. “I didn't. I helped him get the car up. I got his engine goin' for him; he showed me how. His arm was broke. There ain't no house for a mile out there. I hated to see him try to come home alone. I've walked all the way—run some of it—to make sure he got here.”
“He got here,” murmured Chester, thinking to himself that this was the queerest story he'd over heard, but confident he would never have any better version of it and pretty sure that it was the true one.
“I suppose I'm a crazy fool to tell you, Mr. Chester,” said the girl thickly. “But you're a gentleman. You won't tell. No more will he. He didn't tell you how it happened, did he?”
She did not ask the question. She made the assertion, looking to him for confirmation. Chester gave it. “No, he didn't tell,” he said gravely.
When she had gone he crossed the lawn to his own home, musing. “For a 'plain, quiet dinner,'” said he, quoting a phrase of Burns's used when he gave Chester the invitation, “I think Red's has been about as spectacular as they make 'em. Bully old boys.”