My master looked at the missal, and said it was a fine specimen of illumination.  His manner toward me was so changed that I found it hard to refer to the lancet.  This, however, very naturally followed his examination of my head.  He said I had healthy blood, and the wound was closing by the first intention.  The pink cone at the tip of his nose worked in a whimsical grin as he heard my apology.

“It is not often you will make the medicine man take his own remedy, my lad.”

We thus began our relation with the best feeling.  It has since appeared that I was a blessing to Doctor Chantry.  My education gave him something to do.  For although he called himself physician to Count de Chaumont, he had no real occupation in the house, and dabbled with poetry, dozing among books.  De Chaumont was one of those large men who gather in the weak.  His older servants had come to America with his father, and were as attached as kindred.  A natural parasite like Doctor Chantry took to De Chaumont as means of support; and it was pleasing to both of them.

My master asked me when I wanted to begin my studies, and I said, “Now.”  We sat down at the table, and I learned the English alphabet, some phrases of English talk, some spelling, and traced my first characters in a copy-book.  With consuming desire to know, I did not want to leave off at dusk.  In that high room day lingered.  The doctor was fretful for his supper before we rose from our task.

Servants were hurrying up and down stairs.  The whole house had an air of festivity.  Doctor Chantry asked me to wait in a lower corridor while he made some change in his dress.

I sat down on a broad window sill, and when I had waited a few minutes, Mademoiselle de Chaumont darted around a corner, bare armed and bare necked.  She collapsed to the floor at sight of me, and then began to dance away in the opposite direction with stiff leaps, as a lamb does in spring-time.

I saw she was in pain or trouble, needing a servant, and made haste to reach her; when she hid her face on both arms against the wall.

“Go off!” she hissed. “—­S-s-s!  Go off!  I haven’t anything on!—­Don’t go off!  Open my door for me quick!—­before anybody else comes into the hall!”

“Which door is it?” I asked.  She showed me.  It had a spring catch, and she had stepped into the hall to see if the catch was set.

“The catch was set!” gasped Mademoiselle de Chaumont.  “Break the door—­get it open—­anyway—­Quick!”

By good fortune I had strength enough in my shoulder to set the door wide off its spring, and she flew to the middle of the room slamming it in my face.

Fitness and unfitness required nicer discrimination than the crude boy from the woods possessed.  When I saw her in the ball-room she had very little more on than when I saw her in the hall, and that little clung tight around her figure.  Yet she looked quite unconcerned.