chance." He slipped the book into his pocket. "As for the drive, it's
much jollier not to be covering the ground alone. I wish, though--" and
he stopped, feeling that he was probably going to say the wrong thing.

She seemed to know what it would have been. "You're sorry to be taking
me to the hospital?" she suggested. "You needn't be. I didn't want to
go, just at first, but then--I felt I could trust the Doctor. He was so
kind, and his hair was so like mine, he seemed like a sort of big older
brother."

"Red Pepper Burns seems like that to a lot of people, including myself.
I don't look like much of a candidate for illness, but I've had an
accident or two, and he's pulled me through in great shape. You're right
in trusting him and you can keep right on, to the last ditch--" He
stopped short again, with an inward thrust at himself for being so
blundering in his suggestions to this girl, who, for all he knew, might
be on her way to that "last ditch" from which not even Burns could save
her.

But the girl herself seemed to have paused at his first phrase. "What
did you call the Doctor?" she asked, turning her eyes upon him again.

"What did I--oh! 'Red Pepper.' Yes--I've no business to call him that,
of course, and I don't to his face, though his friends who are a bit
older than I usually do, and people speak of him that way. It's his
hair, of course--and--well, he has rather a quick temper. People with
that coloured hair--But you're wrong in saying yours is like his," he
added quickly.

For the first time he saw a smile touch her lips. "So he has a quick