“Yes, yes, one of your crotchets, dear doctor, nothing else.  You are full of such vagaries—­always were—­but there is not another such dear old willful physician in Christendom for all that.”

“Little flatterer!  But here is a piece of cassava bread, I brought you, as you thought you would like to taste it.  My old West Indian patient keeps me well supplied.  I fancy to nibble it as I drive about in my cabriolet, or whatever they call this French affair of mine.”

“For a wonder, you have the word right;” and I laughed in his honest face.

“I am going to France, next spring, when the Stanburys go over, just to see what strides medicine is making across the waters, and to rest myself a little, improve my Gallic pronunciation, and get the fashions, and I will take you as my interpreter, if you promise to be very good and obedient in the interval.”

“Oh, thank you; I would like it of all things.  But what takes the Stanburys abroad?  I have heard nothing of this plan of theirs before.”

“Pleasure and business combined, I believe.  They will remain abroad some years, for the education of George Gaston.  What an idol Mrs. Stanbury is making of that boy, to be sure, and Laura is just as foolish about him as her mother!  By-the-by, she is to be married, they say, to that young Prussian nobleman, who was there so much last winter.  I forget his unpronounceable name.  They will reside in Berlin, I understand, should the marriage be ‘unfait accompli,’ as the French have it.  Is not that right, Miriam?”

“Oh, admirably pronounced!  You are becoming quite a Gaul in your old age.”

“I hope I shall never become gall and wormwood, in any event, like some old folks.  Now, is not that being literal, Miriam?”

“And witty, as well!  You must have been associating with Dr. C——­n, lately.”

“So you can’t give me credit for a little originality, because my facetious vein is new to you.  Now, do your old friend justice, and believe even in his puns; if not pungent, he is self-sustaining and independent; but, remember, I count on you absolutely, next week.  One trunk apiece and no bandboxes or baskets.  A green-silk travelling-bonnet and pongee habit.  This is my uniform, for my female guard.  Carry Grey knows my whims, and will observe them.  By-the-by, you will like my niece.”

We made a delightful tour, which occupied the whole month of August, and I came back refreshed, soul and body; as for Carry Grey, she revived, like a plant that had been newly tended and watered after long neglect.  For the poor girl had been making a slave of herself for two years in her widowed brother’s household, consisting of many little children, and needed repose from her multifarious duties.

He was going to marry again soon, she told me, and then she hoped to feel at liberty to fulfill her own engagement of five years’ standing.  Carry Grey was quite this many years over twenty-one, and was going to emigrate with her husband to Missouri, and to settle in the thriving young town of St. Louis, fast growing up then into a city.  He was to have a church there, and they might be so happy, she thought, if God only smiled upon them!  But all depended upon that.