Red Pepper's Patients / With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular

by Grace S. Richmond

She looked at him then, evidently startled. "Mr. King, will you drive on, please?" she said very quietly, but he felt something in her tone which for an instant he did not understand. In the next instant he thought he did understand it.

He spoke hurriedly: "You don't know me very well yet, do you? But I thought you knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't say a thing like that unless I meant all that goes with it—and follows it. You see—I love you. If—if you are not afraid of a man in a plaster jacket—it'll come off some day, you know—I ask you to marry me."

There was a long silence then, in which King felt his heart pumping away for dear life. He had taken the bit between his teeth now, certainly, and offered this girl, of whom he knew less than of any human being in whom he had the slightest interest, all that he had to give. Yet—he was so sure he knew her that, the words once out, he realized that he was glad he had spoken them.

At last she turned toward him. "You are a very brave man," she said, "and a very chivalrous man."

He laughed rather huskily. "It doesn't take much of either bravery or chivalry for a man to offer himself to you."

"It must take plenty of both. You are—what you are, in the big world you live in. And you dare to trust an absolute stranger, whom you have no means of knowing better, with that name of yours. Think, Mr. Jordan King, what that name means to you—and to your mother."

"I have thought. And I offer it to you. And I do know what you are. You can't disguise yourself—any more than the Princess in the fairy tale. Do you think all those notes I had from you at the hospital didn't tell the story? I don't know why you are selling books from door to door—and I don't want to know. What I do understand is—that you are the first of your family to do it!"

"Mr. King," she said gravely, "women are very clever at one thing—cleverer than men. With a little study, a little training, a little education, they can make a brave showing. I have known a shopgirl who, after six months of living with a very charming society woman, could play that woman's part without mistake. And when it came to talking with men of brains, she could even use a few clever phrases and leave the rest of the conversation to them, and they were convinced of her brilliant mind."

"You have not been a shopgirl," he said steadily. "You belong in a home like mine. If you have lost it by some accident, that is only the fortune of life. But you can't disguise yourself as a commonplace person, for you're not. And—I can't let you go out of my life—I can't."

Again silence, while the sunset skies slowly faded into the dusky blue of night, and the lights over the distant city grew brighter and brighter. A light wind, warmly smoky with the pleasant fragrance of burning bonfires, touched the faces of the two in the car and blew small curly strands of hair about Anne Linton's ears.