Chapter VIII

The doctor came that night, and took out of my back a piece of flattened lead. It had gone under the flesh, quite half round my body, next to the ribs, without doing worse than to rake the bone here and there and weaken me with a loss of blood. I woke awhile before he came. The baroness and the fat butler were sitting beside me. She was a big, stout woman of some forty years, with dark hair and gray eyes, and teeth of remarkable whiteness and symmetry. That evening, I remember, she was in full dress.

"My poor boy!" said she, in English and in a sympathetic tone, as she bent over me.

Indeed, my own mother could not have been kinder than that good woman. She was one that had a heart and a hand for the sick-room. I told her how I had been hurt and of my ride. She heard me through with a glow in her eyes.

"What a story!" said she. "What a daredevil! I do not see how it has been possible for you to live."

She spoke to me always in English of quaint wording and quainter accent. She seemed not to know that I could speak French.

An impressive French tutor--a fine old fellow, obsequious and bald-headed--sat by me all night to give me medicine. In the morning I felt as if I had a new heart in me, and was planning to mount my horse. I thought I ought to go on about my business, but I fear I thought more of the young ladies and the possibility of my seeing them again. The baroness came in after I had a bite to eat. I told her I felt able to ride,

"You are not able, my child. You cannot ride the horse now," said she, feeling my brow; "maybe not for a ver' long time. I have a large house, plenty servant, plenty food. Parbleu! be content. We shall take good care of you. If there is one message to go to your chief, you know I shall send it."

I wrote a brief report of my adventure with the British, locating the scene as carefully as might be, and she sent it by mounted messenger to "the Burg."

"The young ladies they wish to see you," said the baroness. "They are kind-hearted; they would like to do what they can. But I tell them no; they will make you to be very tired."

"On the contrary, it will rest me. Let them come," I said.

"But I warn you," said she, lifting her finger as she left the room, "do not fall in love. They are full of mischief. They do not study. They do not care. You know they make much fun all day."

The young ladies came in presently. They wore gray gowns admirably fitted to their fine figures. They brought big bouquets and set them, with a handsome courtesy, on the table beside me. They took chairs and sat solemn-faced, without a word, as if it were a Quaker meeting they had come to. I never saw better models of sympathetic propriety. I was about to speak. One of them shook her head, a finger on her lips.