“My word!  Gardner Coolidge!  Well, well—­if this isn’t the greatest thing on earth.  My dear fellow!”

The stranger, no longer a stranger, with his hand being wrung like that, with his eyes being looked into by a pair of glowing hazel eyes beneath a heavy thatch of well-remembered coppery hair, returned this demonstration of affection with equal fervour.

“I’ve been sitting in your stuffy waiting room, Red, till the entire population of this town should tell you its aches, just for the pleasure of seeing you with the professional manner off.”

Burns threw back his head and laughed, with a gesture as of flinging something aside.  “It’s off then, Cooly—­if I have one.  I didn’t know I had.  How are you?  Man, but it’s good to see you!  Come along out of this into a place that’s not stuffy.  Where’s your bag?  You didn’t leave it anywhere?”

“I can’t stay, Red—­really I can’t.  Not this time.  I must go to-night.  And I came to consult you professionally—­so let’s get that over first.”

“Of course.  Just let me speak a word to the authorities.  You’ll at least be here for dinner?  Step into the next room, Cooly.  On your way let me present you to my assistant, Miss Mathewson, whom I couldn’t do without.  Mr. Coolidge, Miss Mathewson.”

Gardner Coolidge bowed to the office nurse, whom he had already classified as a very attractively superior person and well worth a good salary; then went on into the consulting room, where an open window had freshened the small place beyond any possibility of its being called stuffy.  As he closed the window with a shiver and looked about him, glancing into the white-tiled surgery beyond; he recognized the fact that, though he might be in the workshop of a village practitioner, it was a workshop which did not lack the tools of the workman thoroughly abreast of the times.

Burns came back, his face bright with pleasure in the unexpected appearance of his friend.  He stood looking across the small room at Coolidge, as if he could get a better view of the whole man at a little distance.  The two men were a decided contrast to each other.  Redfield Pepper Burns, known to all his intimates, and to many more who would not have ventured to call him by that title, as “Red Pepper Burns,” on account of the combination of red head, quick temper, and wit which were his most distinguishing characteristics of body and mind, was a stalwart fellow whose weight was effectually kept down by his activity.  His white linen office jacket was filled by powerful shoulders, and the perfectly kept hands of the surgeon gave evidence, as such hands do, of their delicacy of touch, in the very way in which Burns closed the door behind him.

Gardner Coolidge was of a different type altogether.  As tall as Burns, he looked taller because of his slender figure and the distinctive outlines of his careful dress.  His face was dark and rather thin, showing sensitive lines about the eyes and mouth, and a tendency to melancholy in the eyes themselves, even when lighted by a smile, as now.  He was manifestly the man of worldly experience, with fastidious tastes, and presumably one who did not accept the rest of mankind as comrades until proved and chosen.