Burns advanced again.  “May I have the honour?” he asked, stooping over the tiny figure with outstretched arms.

“You’ll find me pretty heavy, Doctor,” said she, but she put up her arms and clasped his neck as he lifted her, quite as if it were a matter of course with her to have stalwart men offer their services on all occasions.  Burns strode up the steep and narrow staircase with her as if she had been a child, Charlotte preceding him with a pair of candles.  In her own room he laid the little old lady on her bed, then stooped once more.

“May I have a reward for that?” he asked, and without waiting for permission kissed the delicate cheek, as soft and smooth as velvet beneath his lips.

“You are a very good young man,” said the old lady.  “I think I shall have to adopt you as a grandson.”

Burns laid his hand on his heart and made her a deeply respectful bow, at which she laughed and waved him away.

“Adorable,” said he to Charlotte, on his way down, “is not a word which men use over every small object, as you women do, therefore it should have the more force when they do make use of it.  No other word fits little Madam Chase so well.  Consider me yours to command in her service, at any hour of day or night.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte called softly after him.  “I assure you she will command you herself, and delight in doing it.  She never fails to recognize homage when she receives it, or to demand it when she does not.  But she will give you quite as much as she takes from you.”

“I’m confident of it,” and Burns descended to his wife.  “You have a rival,” he told her solemnly.

CHAPTER X

A RUNAWAY ROAD

Camera hung by a strap over her shoulder, small tripod tucked under her arm, Charlotte Chase Ruston, photographer, turned aside from the country road along which she was walking, to follow a winding lane leading into a deep wood.  The luring entrance to this lane had been beyond her power to resist, although the sun had climbed nearly to the zenith, warning her that it was time to turn her steps toward home.  In her search for picturesque bits of landscape to turn to account in her work, her enthusiasm was likely at any time to lead her far afield.

Just as the lane promised to debouch into an open meadow and release its victim from any special sense of curiosity, it suddenly swerved to one side, forced its way under a pair of bars, and ran curving away into deep shadows, fringed with ferns, and overhung with the dense foliage of oak and walnut.  A distant glimpse of brilliant scarlet flowers, standing like sentinels in uniform against the dark green of the undergrowth, beckoned like a hand.  With a laugh Charlotte set her foot upon the bottom rail.  “I’m coming,” she called blithely to the scarlet flowers.  “You needn’t shout so loud at me.”