ose 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."

CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH HE GETS EVEN WITH HIMSELF

R. P. Burns sat at his desk in the inner office, laboriously inscribing
a letter with his left hand. It did not get on well. The handwriting
in the four lines he had succeeded in fixing upon paper bore not the
slightest resemblance to his usual style; instead, it looked like the
chirography of a five-year-old attempting for the first time to copy
from some older person's script.

He held up the sheet and gazed at it in disgust. Then he glanced
resentfully at his sling-supported right arm, especially at the fingers
which protruded from the bandages in unaccustomed limp whiteness. Then
he shook his left fist at it. "You'll do some work the minute you
come out of those splints," he said. "You'll work your passage back to
fitness quicker than an arm ever did before, you pale-faced shirk!"

Then he applied himself to his task, painfully forming a series of
pothooks until one more sentence was completed. He read it over, then
suddenly crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it into the waste
basket.

"Lie there!" he whimsically commanded it. "You're not fit to go to a
lady."

He got up and marched into the outer office where his office nurse sat
at a typewriter, making lout bills.

"Miss Mathewson," he requested gruffly, "please take a dictation. No,
not on the bill letterheads--on the regular office sheets. I'll speak
slowly. In fact, I'll probably speak very slowly."

"I'm sorry I don't know shorthand," said Miss Mathewson, preparing her
paper.

"I'm not. Instead, I'd rather you'd be as slow as you can, to give me
time to think. I'm not used to transmitting mediums--the battery may be
weak--in fact, I'm pretty sure it is. All ready? My dear Mrs. Lessing":

His cheek reddened suddenly as he saw the nurse's waiting hands poised
over the keys when she had written this address. He cleared his t