Amy spoke with more spirit than the others had expected. "If I were not conscientious I couldn't work for Dr. Burns." "He doesn't look conscientious, to me," declared Miss Ruston. "He looks adventurous, audacious, unexpected." "Perhaps he is. But he doesn't expect his assistant nurse to be adventurous, audacious, or unexpected!" "Good for you!" Miss Ruston was laughing, and looking with newly roused interest at this young woman, whom she had perhaps taken to be of a more commonplace type than her words now indicated. "As for my friend, Mrs. Burns--he is her husband, and she must have known what he was like, since I, in one short hour, have already discovered two or three of his characteristics! Well, here's hoping he's on my side, when he comes back. If he's not--" But when he came back he was on her side, reluctantly convinced by a painstaking examination of the possibilities in the old cottage, and by a man-to-man talk with its owner as to his good faith in promising to carry out the lessee's requirements. "Though what in the name of time possesses a stunning girl like that to come here and shut herself up in Aunt Selina's old rookery, I can't make out," the landlord, Burns's neighbour, had confessed. "Possibly she won't shut herself up," Burns had suggested, though he himself had been unable to discover the mysterious attraction of the little old house. The garden promised better, he thought. He could understand her being caught by the forsaken though powerful charm of that. Doubtless it would furnish backgrounds for her outdoor photography, which would put to blush any painted screens such as the village photographers were accustomed to use. He returned to give Miss Ruston his sanction of her project, and to receive her half-mocking, wholly grateful acknowledgment. "And I hope, Dr. Burns," said she, as he took leave of her, his watch in his left hand as he shook hands with his right, "that you will let me make that photograph of you, at the very beginning of my stay here." "With a clump of hollyhocks behind me, or a 'queer old door'?" he inquired. "With nothing behind you except darkness and mystery," said she. "I thought those were the things one looked toward, not out of?" "Your patients looking toward 'the black unknown,' and seeing your face, must find their future lighted with hope!" He turned and looked at his wife, a sparkle in his eye. "She's from the big town," said he. "Here in the country we don't know how to give fine, fascinating blarney like that, eh? Good-bye, Miss Ruston, and good luck. Bring the little grandmother carefully wrapped in jeweller's cotton--nothing is too good for her!"