“Madame de Ferrier sent me to inquire how the young gentleman is.”

Skenedonk lessened the rims around his eyes.  My father grunted.

“Did Madame de Ferrier say ‘the young gentleman?’” Skenedonk inquired.

“I was told to inquire.  I am her servant Ernestine,” said the woman, her face creased with the anxiety of responding to questions.

“Tell Madame de Ferrier that the young gentleman is much better, and will go home to the lodges to-day.”

“She said I was to wait upon him, and give him his breakfast under the doctor’s direction.”

“Say with thanks to Madame de Ferrier that I wait upon him.”

Ernestine again courtesied, and made way for Doctor Chantry.  He came in quite good natured, and greeted all of us, his inferiors, with a humility I then thought touching, but learned afterwards to distrust.  My head already felt the healing blood, and I was ravenous for food.  He bound it with fresh bandages, and opened a box full of glittering knives, taking out a small sheath.  From this he made a point of steel spring like lightning.

“We will bring the wholesome lancet again into play, my lad,” said Doctor Chantry.  I waited in uncertainty with my feet on the floor and my hands on the side of the couch, while he carefully removed coat and waistcoat and turned up his sleeves.

“Ernestine, bring the basin,” he commanded.

My father may have thought the doctor was about to inflict a vicarious puncture on himself.  Skenedonk, with respect for civilized surgery, waited.  I did not wait.  The operator bared me to the elbow and showed a piece of plaster already sticking on my arm.  The conviction of being outraged in my person came upon me mightily, and snatching the wholesome lancet I turned its spring upon the doctor.  He yelled.  I leaped through the door like a deer, and ran barefooted, the loose robe curdling above my knees.  I had the fleetest foot among the Indian racers, and was going to throw the garment away for the pure joy of feeling the air slide past my naked body, when I saw the girl and poppet baby who had looked at me during my first consciousness.  They were sitting on a blanket under the trees of De Chaumont’s park, which deepened into wilderness.

The baby put up a lip, and the girl surrounded it with her arm, dividing her sympathy with me.  I must have been a charming object.  Though ravenous for food and broken-headed, I forgot my state, and turned off the road of escape to stare at her like a tame deer.

She lowered her eyes wisely, and I got near enough without taking fright to see a book spread open on the blanket, showing two illuminated pages.  Something parted in me.  I saw my mother, as I had seen her in some past life:—­not Marianne the Mohawk, wife of Thomas Williams, but a fair oval-faced mother with arched brows.  I saw even her pointed waist and puffed skirts, and the lace around her open neck.  She held the book in her hands and read to me from it.