's the owner of the fiercest
good disposition ever heard of. He's the pepperest proposition of an
angel this earth has ever seen. He's a red-headed, sharp-tongued brute
of a saint--"

"Why, Arthur Chester!"

"He's a pot of mustard that's clear balm--if you don't mind getting
stung when it's applied."

"Well, of all the--"

"I'm going over to get something for this abominable headache--and,
incidentally, to find out what's the row. He's probably lost a
patient--it always goes to his brain like that. When he abuses his
beloved engine that way it's because some other machinery has stopped
somewhere."

"If he's lost a patient you'd better let him alone, dear," advised his
wife, Winifred.

"No--he needs to get his mind off it, on me. I can fix up a few symptoms
for him."

"He'll see through you," called Mrs. Chester softly, after him.

"No doubt of that. But it may divert him, just the same."

Chester made his way across the lawn and in at the side door which led
to the dimly lighted village offices of Redfield Pepper Burns, physician
and surgeon. Not that the gilt-lettered sign on the glass of the office
door read that way. "R. P. Burns, M.D." was the brief inscription above
the table of "office hours," and the owner of the name invariably so
curtailed it. But among his friends the full name had inevitably been
turned into the nickname, for the big, red-haired, quick-tempered,
warm-hearted fellow was "Red Pepper Burns" as irresistibly to them as he
had been, a decade earlier, to his classmates in college.

As Chester went in at the door a figure arose slowly from its
position--flung full length, face downward, on a couch in the shadowy
inner office and came into view.

"Toothache? Dentist down the street," said a blurred voice
unsympathetically.

Chester laughed. "Oh, come, Red," said he. "Give me some of that
headache dope. I'm all out."

"Glad to hear it. You don't get any more from me."

"Why not? I've got a sure-enough headache--I didn't come over to quiz
you. The blamed thing whizzes like a buzz saw."

"Can't help it. Go soak it."

Chester advanced. "I'll get the powders myself, then. I know the
bottle."

A substantial barrier interposed. "No, you don't. You've taken up six
ounces of that stuff do seven days. You quit to-night."

"Look here, Red, what's the use of taking it out on me like that, if you
are mad at something? If your head--"

"I wish it did ache--like ten thousand furies. It mig