"They say that his ears are pointed! That he has legs and feet like a goat!"
"How shockingly unbecoming," and she gazed reproachfully at the culprits.
The doctor glared viciously at each of us in turn; blew his nose resonantly; shook himself like a big Newfoundland, and then, much to Miss Longstreet's chagrin and our astonishment, burst into hearty laughter.
"What!" cried he. "So you two are just discovering my friend, Jean François?... Poet, pedler, philosopher, mender of umbrellas, and player on the pipes," said he, drolly imitating our friend of the night before.
"You knew him all of the time?" I exclaimed.
"Let me see," said the doctor reminiscently; "when did I first discover the happy pedler?... O, yes, the second year after the Abbé Picot came to live in Oldmeadow. I remember now. It has been some five or six years ago.... That's what you youngsters get by going away every summer instead of remaining at home with your betters."
"Is he a real poet?" ventured Nance, with her accustomed irrelevance.
"Certainly," came the reply. "Hasn't he said so? Besides, he knows his Shakespeare like a scholar.... Cultivate him."
"Cultivate!" cried the now fully alarmed Aunt Barbara. "Felix, you are positively indecorous.... Cultivate a tramp?"
"Barbara, my dear, I assure you, he is quite a gentleman. He likes my pills, he loves the river like a brother, and he knows his Shakespeare. That is quite enough.... What do you want, my dear unwearied sister—a frilled shirt-front? I've seen many a one bowing over you in the old days all togged out in finery who hadn't half so great a heart and half so genuine a manner.