It took me just one hour by the clock, sitting there on the pile of steamer wraps with the small Pierre in the hollow of my arm, to explain and translate the sense of that letter to old Nannette, and I feel sure she would have been sitting upon that spot yet immovable rather than let me depart from her if I had not put all of my time and force upon the picturing to her of a Pierre who could come down with her later to me in a condition to run through the gardens of Twin Oaks, which was the home of his American ancestors.  With that vision constantly before her she let the porter and me insert her into a taxicab and extract her at the door of the small private hospital of the good Dr. Burns who was to perform the miracle for the back and hip of small and radiant Pierre.

“But what is it that I do to permit the jeune fille of my beloved mistress to depart into this city of wicked savages not attended by me?  I cannot.  Do not demand it!” were the words with which I left her arguing with that very sympathetic and sensible doctor of America.  He had not noticed a confusion of sex was between Pierre and me and he had sent out the check of my wicked Uncle and procured the American money for me.  Also he had given me a few directions that he appeared to think of a great sufficiency and had ordered a taxi to be in readiness for me.

“Nonsense, Nurse,” he said to Nannette bruskly but not with unkindness when I had translated to him Nannette’s weeping protests.  “A great strapping girl like that can get down to the Harpeth Valley all right by herself.  Nobody’s going to eat her up, and from the size of the biceps I detect under that chiffon I think she could give a good account of herself if anybody tried.  How like you are to what Henry was at your age, child, God bless you!  I’d go to the station with you but I’ve a patient all prepared for an operation.  Shall I send a nurse with you?”

“No, please, good Doctor, and good-bye,” I said, with a great haste as I hurriedly embraced both Nannette and the small Pierre and departed down the broad steps into the taxi with the open door.

“Pennsylvania Station!  Your train may not leave for hours, but you can get your baggage together.  Good-bye,” said that good Doctor as he shut the door and returned to his pursuit of making human beings either whole or dead.

“And now, Roberta Carruthers, no longer Marquise of Grez and Bye, you are in your America, and let’s see you do some hustling,” as remarked that Mr. Saint Louis to Mr. Peter Scudder at cards.

And while that very swift taxi conveyed me to the large station that is as beautiful as a cathedral I did some what I name “tall thinking.”  What would be the result of my womanly arrival in that State of Harpeth of my wicked Uncle?  Would he be forced to murder me as his letter had said?  And if in his anger over the mistake he had made from my letter, written in that very bold and difficult