Red Pepper came back at precisely twenty minutes of three. His patient had given him a bad hour of anxiety immediately after leaving the table, and he could not desert her until she had rallied. But he felt easy about her now, and he had arranged to leave her in Buller's hands--Buller, who did not do major surgery himself, but was a most competent man when it came to the care of surgical patients after operation. Burns brought Amy Mathewson back with him, though she had begged to be allowed to stay with the case. “And not be at my wedding?” cried Red Pepper, in exuberant spirits. “Why, I couldn't be properly married without you to see me through!” Upon which she had smiled and obeyed him, and taken a tighter grip upon herself as he put her into the Green Imp for the last ride together. That was what it was to her, though she might yet go with him a thousand times to help him in his work. To him it was a quick and joyful journey back to his marriage. “All right, Mother and Dad!” he exulted, coming in upon them in their festal array. He shook hands with his father and his brother-in-law; he kissed his mother. Then he ran for his own room where Bobby Burns, just being finished off by Anne, herself superbly dressed, shrieked with rapture at the sight of him. “Red! At last! I've laid everything ready; you've only to jump into your bath; I turned on the water when Dick saw the Imp down the road. Don't you dare have a vestige of a surgical odour about you when you come out!” In precisely seventeen minutes and three-quarters the bridegroom was ready to the last coppery affair on his head. “Have I a 'surgical odour,' Anne?” he asked as he came up to her. She buried her face on his shoulder, both arms about him, regardless of her finery. “You're the dearest, sweetest old trump of a brother that ever lived, and you smell like sunshine and fresh air!” she cried. Whereat he shook with laughter and patted her back as she clung to him. “Promise me, Red,” she begged, lifting her head, “that you won't let anything--anything--keep you from going off with Ellen in the Imp. She's been so lovely about this horrid delay, but I'm always suspicious of you. Promise!” “I promise you this,” agreed her brother: “Wherever the Imp and I go, after the minister has said the words, for this two weeks Ellen shall go with me.” “Chester,” said Dick Warburton as he stood in that gentleman's company, looking over a stupendous assortment of wedding gifts, which, in spite of the fact that nobody outside the family had been asked to see Redfield Pepper Burns married, overflowed two large rooms into the upper hall and almost over the railing, “will you tell me who in the name of time sent that rat-trap? This is the most extraordinary display of gold, silver, and tinware that I ever saw, and I'm at the end of my astonishment. But that rat-trap, is it a joke?”