but very low, so as not to awaken Mamouche, whom he left sleeping upon a bed that Marshall at his order had prepared for the boy beside the sitting-room fire.
At a very early hour next morning Marshall appeared at his master’s bedside with the accustomed morning coffee.
“What is he doing?” asked Doctor John-Luis, as he sugared and stirred the tiny cup of black coffee.
“Who dat, sah?”
“Why, the boy, Mamouche. What is he doing?”
“He gone, sah. He done gone.”
“Gone!”
“Yas, sah. He roll his bed up in de corner; he onlock de do’; he gone. But de silver an’ ev’thing dah; he ain’t kiar’ nuttin’ off.”
“Marshall,” snapped Doctor John-Luis, ill-humoredly, “there are times when you don’t seem to have sense and penetration enough to talk about! I think I’ll take another nap,[nap,]” he grumbled, as he turned his back upon Marshall. “Wake me at seven.”
It was no ordinary thing for Doctor John-Luis to be in a bad humor, and perhaps it is not strictly true to say that he was now. He was only in a little less amiable mood than usual when he pulled on his high rubber boots and went splashing out in the wet to see what his people were doing.