But when I carried the whip to the doctor’s house that night, M. Picot received it with scant grace!

Whispers—­gall-midges among evil tongues—­were raising a buzz that boded ill for the doctor.  France had paid spies among the English, some said.  Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as pippins, reported that one day when she had gone for simples she had seen strange, dead things in the jars of M. Picot’s dispensary.  At this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie winked behind the little Puritan maid’s head; for my father, like the princes, had known that love of the new sciences which became a passion among gentlemen.  Had I not noticed the mole on the French doctor’s cheek?  Rebecca asked.  I had:  what of it?

“The crops have been blighted,” says Rebecca; though what connection that had with M. Picot’s mole, I could not see.

“Deliverance Dobbins oft hath racking pains,” says Rebecca, with that air of injury which became her demure dimples so well.

“Drat that Deliverance Dobbins for a low-bred mongrel mischief-maker!” cries old Tibbie from the pantry door.

“Tibbie,” I order, “hold your tongue and drop an angel in the blasphemy box.”

“’Twas good coin wasted,” the old nurse vowed; but I must needs put some curb on her royalist tongue, which was ever running a-riot in that Puritan household.

It was an accident, in the end, that threw me across M. Picot’s path.  I had gone to have him bind up a splintered wrist, and he invited me to stay for a round of piquet.  I, having only one hand, must beg Mistress Hortense to sort the cards for me.

She sat so near that I could not see her.  You may guess I lost every game.

“Tut! tut!  Hillary dear, ’tis a poor helper Ramsay gained when he asked your hand.  Pish! pish!” he added, seeing our faces crimson; “come away,” and he carried me off to the dispensary, as though his preserved reptiles would be more interesting than Hortense.

With an indifference a trifle too marked, he brought me round to the fur trade and wanted to know whether I would be willing to risk trading without a license, on shares with a partner.

“Quick wealth that way, Ramsay, an you have courage to go to the north.  An it were not for Hortense, I’d hire that young rapscallion of a Gillam to take me north.”

I caught his drift, and had to tell him that I meant to try my fortune in the English court.

But he paid small heed to what I said, gazing absently at the creatures in the jars.

“’Twould be devilish dangerous for a girl,” he muttered, pulling fiercely at his mustache.

“Do you mean the court, sir?” I asked.

“Aye,” returned the doctor with a dry laugh that meant the opposite of his words.  “An you incline to the court, learn the tricks o’ the foils, or rogues will slit both purse and throat.”