The tutor, still irate from his alarm, exclaimed, "You take la bonne, madame. I am occupy with mes élèves: then I am not in his care."
Mrs. Pinckney, who was not an irritable woman, took no notice of this implied reproach: "What is to be done with him to-night, Doctor Harris? Can you sleep here?" As he shook his head, "You'll come the first thing in the morning? Oh, doctor, can I go to bed and sleep comfortably? Do you assure me that there is not the slightest danger of a recurrence of those dreadful spasms?"
When the distressed mother spoke of sleeping comfortably a smile, which all his admiration for the fair widow could not restrain, flickered over Doctor Harris's face: "I was about to give this young lady"--and he turned to Miss Featherstone--"directions for the night, as we didn't expect you home: she has been very kind and efficient, and was going to take care of the child; but now--"
He was interrupted by Mrs. Pinckney crossing the room, seizing Miss Featherstone's hand and kissing her with effusion: "My dear Miss Featherstone--your name is Featherstone, is it not?--I have no words to thank you sufficiently."
"Oh, the chère mees!" burst forth the little Frenchman. "I was so full of frighten I not know what to do, which way to turn myself; and she, so calm, so _smooth_," he said, hesitating for a word, and apparently discomfited when he found it--"she take the helm, she issue the orders: every one obey, and the child is saved." After this peroration he glanced around as if for applause.
"I was about to say," resumed Doctor Harris, "that, now that the nurse has returned, Miss Featherstone, who has been travelling all day, had better have some dinner and be sent to bed."
"Oh, certainly," replied Mrs. Pinckney; "and now that I'm so much relieved I'd like some dinner myself.--Mr, Brown, do you know what prospects there are of our having any dinner?"
The tutor shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands with a deprecatory gesture: "I know not, my dear madame. Les enfants et moi, we have our dinner at two o'clock: we did not comprehend that madame would return to-night," as a happy apologetic afterthought.
Mrs. Pinckney glanced at a little watch which she took from her belt: "Twelve o'clock, but the servants probably have not gone to bed."--She rang the bell. "Mary," to a maid who entered, "tell the cook to make some tea and send in cold chicken or beef--whatever is left from dinner."