He came toward her gladly, a smile curving his grave lips. “Take this cup and give a drink to M. Dupont,” she said. “I do not wish to be the bearer. I will not cheat him out of the water, but I will cheat him out of my service of it. Do not look so judicial, my friend. He is mine enemy, yet am I not sufficiently complaisant in sending him the water by such a good messenger as yourself? Carry it to him, good Pierre. How is Mathilde? And will all the village flock to behold me this morning? There, take in the cup, and tell Mère Michelle that I have gone to speak to Papa Louis, and that I will return in a moment.”
Pierre took the cup without protest and entered the house. “Wait there till I come back,” Alaine called after him, and then she disappeared into the garden.
The melancholy face of the young Huguenot bent over the pillow of François. “I bring you water,” he said.
François opened his eyes. “So I am not to be favored by grace from my lady’s hand. I will win it yet, and would win it the sooner were it not for yonder lubberly piece of flesh which sleeps so soundly in his bed. By my faith, he did not stir when the demoiselle herself entered. I am a rack of pain and parching with fever, yet she bestows not a glance of compassion upon me, while she tiptoes past yonder Sir Mount-of-Flesh as he were a sleeping infant. I owe you small thanks for your part in this pain I bear, but I am under obligation to you, monsieur, for the good turn you have unwittingly done me in causing me to be in a condition to be brought here perforce, and I thank you for the cooling draught of water.”
“Monsieur, you talk too much,” came from Michelle. “I cannot answer for your recovery if, with a fever upon you, you chatter like a magpie.”
“I will subside when I am ready,” said François, “good Michelle, who, I remember well, has scolded me before in those old days in France, when Étienne Villeneau and I robbed her currant-bushes.”
“Tchut, monsieur! you vagarize. You are wandering. I pray you compose yourself. Look yonder at M. Verplanck; he has the docility of a lamb. I say, ‘Sleep;’ he sleeps. I say, ‘Eat;’ he eats. I say, ‘Drink this,’ and he swallows my mess however nauseous. He will recover, that lamb.”
“And I will not?”
“You will be longer at it, monsieur.”
“Then I converse. I address myself to you, if you are here; to Monsieur Lamb, be he asleep or awake; to the wall; the fire.”