"Is Doctor Burns in?"

"He's not in. He will be here from two till five this afternoon. Could
you come then?" Miss Mathewson regarded the young stranger at the door
with more than ordinary interest. The face which was lifted to her was
one of quite unusual beauty, with astonishing eyes under resolute dark
brows, though the hair which showed from under the small and
close-fitting hat of black was of a wonderful and contradictory colour.
It was almost the shade, it occurred to Amy Mathewson, of that which
thatched the head of Red Pepper Burns himself, but it was more
picturesque hair than his, finer of texture, with a hint of curl. The
mass of it which showed at the back as the stranger turned her head away
for a moment, evidently hesitating over her next course of action, had
in it tints of bronze which were more beautiful than Burns's coppery
hues.

"Would you care to wait?" inquired Miss Mathewson, entirely against her
own principles.

It was not quite one o'clock, and Burns always lunched in the city,
after his morning at the hospital, and reached home barely in time for
those afternoon village office hours which began at two. His assistant
did not as a rule encourage the arrival of patients in the office as
early as this, knowing that they were apt to become impatient and
aggrieved by their long wait. But something about the slightly drooping
figure of the girl before her, in her black clothes, with a small
handbag on her arm, and a look of appeal on her face, suggested to the
experienced nurse that here was a patient who must not be turned away.