At that moment Sperver cried—
"Mates, here I am!"
"Ha! Gideon, back already?"
Marie Lagoutte shook off her numerous pegs with a jerk of her head. The big butler drank off his glass. Everybody turned our way.
"Is monseigneur better?"
The butler answered with a doubtful ejaculation.
"Is he just the same?"
"Much about," answered Marie Lagoutte, who never took her eyes off me.
Sperver noticed this.
"Let me introduce to you my foster-son, Doctor Fritz, from the Black Forest," he answered proudly. "Now we shall see a change, Master Tobie. Now that Fritz has come the abominable fits will be put an end to. If I had but been listened to earlier—but better late than never."