last man on earth to do me the honour
of trusting me in a serious emergency?"

She turned away her head, gazing down at a fragrant border of
mignonette, while he watched her, a smile on his lips. She looked up
again. "I can't think, Red. It seems to me everybody trusts you."

"Not by a long shot, or the rest of the profession would stand idle. But
there's one man who I should have said, to use a time-honoured phrase,
wouldn't let me operate on a sick cat. And he's the man who is going to
put his life in my hands Wednesday morning at ten o'clock. Len, if I am
ever on my mettle to do a perfect job, it'll be then!"

"Of course. But who--"

"I should think the name would leap to your lips. Who's mine ancient
enemy, the man who has fought me by politely sneering at me, and
circumventing me when he could, ever since I began practice, and whom
I've fought back in my way? Why, Len--"

Her dark eyes grew wide. "Red! Not--Doctor Van Horn?"

"Even so."

"Oh, Red! That is a compliment--and more than a compliment. But I should
never have thought of him somehow because, I suppose--"

"Because nobody ever thinks of a doctor's being sick or needing an
operation. But doctors do--sometimes--and usually pretty badly, too,
before they will submit to it. Van Horn's in dreadful shape, and has
been keeping it dark--until it's got the upper hand of him completely.
Mighty plucky the way he's been going on with his work, with trouble
gnawing at his vitals."

"How did he come to call you?"

"That's what I'm wondering. But call me he did, yesterday, and I've seen
him twice since. And when I told him what had to be done he took it like
a soldier without wincing. But when he said he wanted me to do the trick
you could have knocked me down with a lead pencil. My word, Len, I have
been doing Van an injustice all these years! The real stuff is in him,
after all, and plenty of it, too."

"It is he who has done you the injustice," Ellen said with a little lift
of the head.

"I know I have given you reason to think so--the times I've come home
raving mad at some cut of his. But, Len, that's all past and he wipes it
out by trusting me now. The biggest thing I've had against him was not
his knifing me but his apparent toadying to the rich and influential.
But there's another side to that and I see it now. Some people have to
be coddled, and though it goes against my grain to do it, I don't know
why a man who can be diplomatic and winning, li