“What is the matter, doctor?” inquired Tardif.

I told him in a few sharp words what I wanted to soothe my patient.  In an instant he left his cooking and thrust his arms into his blue jacket again.

“You can finish it yourself, Dr. Martin,” he said, hurriedly; “I’ll run over to old Mother Renouf; she’ll have some herbs or something to send mam’zelle to sleep.”

“Bring her back with you,” I shouted after him as he sped across the yard.  Mother Renouf was no stranger to me.  While I was a boy she had charmed my warts away, and healed the bruises which were the inevitable consequences of cliff-climbing.  I scarcely liked her coming in to fill up my deficiencies, and I knew our application to her for help would be inexpressibly gratifying.  But I had no other resource than to call her in as a fellow-practitioner, and I knew she would make a first-rate nurse, for which Suzanne Tardif was unfitted by her deafness.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

A RIVAL PRACTITIONER.

Mother Renouf arrived from the other end of the island in an incredibly short time, borne along by Tardif as if he were a whirlwind and she a leaf caught in its current.  She was a short, squat old woman, with a skin tanned like leather, and kindly little blue eyes, twinkling with delight and pride.  Yes, there they are, photographed somewhere in my brain, the wrinkled, yellow, withered faces of the two old women, their watery eyes and toothless mouths, with figures as shapeless as the bowlders on the beach, watching beside the bed where lay the white but tenderly beautiful face of the young girl, with her curls of glossy hair tossed about the pillow, and her long, tremulous eyelashes making a shadow on her rounded cheek.

Mother Renouf gave me a hearty tap on the shoulder, and chuckled as merrily as the shortness of her breath after her rapid course would permit.  The few English phrases she knew fell far short of expressing her triumph and exultation; but I was resolved to confer with her affably.  My patient’s case was too serious for me to stand upon my dignity.

“Mother,” I said, “have you any simples to send this poor girl to sleep?  Tardif told me you had taken her sprained ankle under your charge.  I find I have nothing with me to induce sleep, and you can help us if any one can.”

“Leave her to me, my dear little doctor,” she answered, a laugh gurgling in her thick throat; “leave her to me.  You have done your part with the bones.  I have no touch at all for broken limbs, though my father, good man, could handle them with any doctor in all the islands.  But I’ll send her to sleep for you, never fear.”

“You will stay with us all night?” I said, coaxingly.  “Suzanne is deaf, and ears are of use in a sick-room, you know.  I intended to go to Gavey’s, but I shall throw myself down here on the fern bed, and you can call me at any moment, if there is need.”