Charley bowed. “It’s a good thing not to halloo till you’re out of the woods,” he said. “Our friend there has a bad time before him—hein?”
“I take you. It is so.” The man of knives and tinctures pulled his side-whiskers with smug satisfaction as he looked into a small mirror on the wall. “Do you chance to know if madame has any cordials or spirits?” he added, straightening his waistcoat and adjusting his cravat.
“It is likely,” answered Charley, and moved away to the window looking upon the street.
The doctor turned in surprise. He was used to being waited on, and he had expected the tailor to follow the tradition.
“We might—eh?” he said suggestively. “It is usually the custom to provide refreshment, but the poor woman, madame, has been greatly occupied with her husband, and—”
“And the twins,” Charley put in drily—“and a house full of work, and only one old crone in the kitchen to help. Still, I have no doubt she has thought of the cordials too. Women are the slaves of custom—ah, here they are, as I said, and—”
He stopped short, for in the doorway, with a tray, stood Rosalie Evanturel. The surgeon was so intent upon at once fortifying himself that he did not see the look which passed between Rosalie and the tailor.
Rosalie had been absent for two months. Her father had been taken seriously ill the day after the critical episode in the but at Vadrome Mountain, and she had gone with him to the hospital at Quebec, for an operation. The Abbe Rossignol had undertaken to see them safely to the hospital, and Jo Portugais, at his own request, was permitted to go in attendance upon M. Evanturel.
There had been a hasty leave-taking between Charley and Rosalie, but it was in the presence of others, and they had never spoken a word privately together since the day she had said to him that where he went she would go, in life or out of it.
“You have been gone two months,” Charley said now, after their touch of hands and voiceless greeting. “Two months yesterday,” she answered.