"I made Miss Mathewson promise to telephone, the moment she should know.
It's lucky the wedding guests are all in the family, isn't it? Ellen,
dear"--pretty Anne ran up the stairs to the landing--"I really don't see
how, after he caught sight of you in that fascinating garb, with your
hair down, he could ever tear himself away! You're positively the
loveliest thing I ever saw in all my life, and I'm almost out of my
senses with joy that you're to be my sister, even though I never saw you
in the world till yesterday! I always said when Red did care for anybody
for keeps, she'd be a jewel!"

Red Pepper came back at precisely twenty minutes of three. His patient
had given him a bad hour of anxiety immediately after leaving the table,
and he could not desert her until she had rallied. But he felt
easy about her now, and he had arranged to leave her in Buller's
hands--Buller, who did not do major surgery himself, but was a most
competent man when it came to the care of surgical patients after
operation. Burns brought Amy Mathewson back with him, though she had
begged to be allowed to stay with the case.

"And not be at my wedding?" cried Red Pepper, in exuberant spirits.
"Why, I couldn't be properly married without you to see me through!"

Upon which she had smiled and obeyed him, and taken a tighter grip upon
herself as he put her into the Green Imp for the last ride together.
That was what it was to her, though she might yet go with him a thousand
times to help him in his work. To him it was a quick and joyful journey
back to his marriage.

"All right, Mother and Dad!" he exulted, coming in upon them in their
festal array. He shook hands with his father and his brother-in-law; he
kissed his mother. Then he ran for his own room where Bobby Burns, just
being finished off by Anne, herself superbly dressed, shrieked with
rapture at the sight of him.

"Red! At last! I've laid everything ready; you've only to jump into your
bath; I turned on the water when Dick saw the Imp down the road. Don't
you dare have a vestige of a surgical odour about you when you come
out!"

In precisely seventeen minutes and three-quarters the bridegroom was
ready to the last coppery affair on his head.

"Have I a 'surgical odour,' Anne?" he asked as he came up to her.

She buried her face on his shoulder, both arms about him, regardless of
her finery. "You're the dearest, sweetest old trump of a brother that
ever lived, and you smell like su