“Jules, you are a bad—a naughty!” cried Margot angrily. “You and your wife never tell me of what takes place while I sleep; you send me out with my patient, and never tell me he is dangerous; and then you rob me of my bread by getting him sent away. It is ruin, and I must go back to the town and starve.”
“Never,” cried a pleasant little voice behind her; and she turned sharply round to see Edie and Guest, the former smiling through her tears. “Have no fear about that, my poor Margot. Come up to the house and help, as my poor cousin is very weak and ill.”
“My faith, dear miss, I will,” cried the sturdy Breton woman.
In fact, Margot’s hands were pretty full during the next month, for she had two patients to tend—at the little château and in the cottage just below.
“Ah! bah, madame,” she said, looking up from her knitting. “What do I do? Nothing. The beloved miss grows better and more beautiful day by day, and is it I? Is it the good physician come from Saint Malo? Name of a little cider apple! no. Look at the dear old monsieur there.”
She pointed with a knitting needle to where Brettison sat, propped up in a chair in the shadow of the rock with a table before him, and Miss Jerrold, who looked very old and grey and stately, turned her head, nodded, and went on with the embroidery about which her busy fingers played.
“He says to me, ‘You must go up on the cliffs this morning, Margot, and bring me every flower you can find.’ I go, madame, and—”
“One moment, Margot; you always forget I am mademoiselle, not madame.”
“The greater the pity, mad’moiselle. You so young looking still you should be the beautiful mother of many children, or a widow like me. What of the monsieur? I take him every morning all the flowers, and there, see, he is as happy with them as a little child. Of my other sick one—look at her—”
She pointed with the other needle just set free to where Myra and Stratton were also seated in the shade gazing dreamily out to where the anchored sailing boats rose and fell upon the calm blue water.