The head on the pillow turned at the slight sound beside it. Two wide eyes stared up at Burns. "You've made a mistake, I think," said the patient's voice, politely yet firmly. "My doctor has red hair. I know him by that. Your hair is black."
"I presume it is, in this light," responded Burns, sitting down by the bed. "It's pretty red, though, by daylight. In that case will you let me stay a minute?" His fingers pressed the pulse. Then his hand closed over hers with a quieting touch. "Since you're awake," he said, "you may as well have one extra bath to send you back to sleep."
The head on the pillow signified unwillingness. "I'd take one to please my red-headed doctor, but not you."
"You'd do anything for him, eh?" questioned Burns, his eyes on the chart which the nurse had brought him and upon which she was throwing the light of a small flash. "Well, you see he wants you to have this bath; he told me so."
"Very well, then," she said with a sigh. "But I don't like them. They make me shiver."
"I know it. But they're good for you. They keep your red-headed doctor master of the situation. You want him to be that, don't you?"
"He'd be that anyway," said she confidently.
Burns smiled, but the smile faded quickly. He gave a few brief directions, then slipped away as quietly as he had come.
It was well into the next week when one morning he encountered Jordan King, who had been out of town for several days. King came up to him eagerly. Since this meeting occurred just outside the hospital, where Burns's car had been standing in its accustomed place for the last hour, it might not have been a wholly accidental encounter.