“Oh, in the distance she’s just any old woman, but up close not like anybody at all. She seemed very anxious to have me try the medicine—in fact, she gave me some of it to try. Do you believe in such things?”
The mestiza shifted in her seat, but did not at once reply. At last, looking abstractedly at the horses’ glistening backs, she said, “There are wise old women—who effect cures.”
“She says odd things.” Julie hesitated. “She talked about a Covenant—and a high mountain.”
“Ah!” Rosalie breathed. Then she turned about abruptly. “And will you try the medicine?”
“Have you ever known people to take such remedies?”
Rosalie nodded with conviction. “If you understood our people, you would know that nearly all buy, and believe in them. I have known these herb preparations to help greatly. Why shouldn’t they? Most of the specifics of the Pharmacopœia grow wild here.”
“It sounds interesting,” Julie reflected. “I’ll try her cure, anyway. Then if I don’t get better, I’ll go to a doctor—and have more debts to pay!”
A few days later, she stopped Rosalie’s passing carriage and said to her: “I have been taking some of the old woman’s remedy. It really helps me. One can learn a lot from the East.”
Delphine appeared occasionally at the school, to see his Maestra; always diplomatically choosing school hours for his visits. He reported that he was getting on very well, that the Señor Barry had bought him beautiful new clothes, and that Dicky-Dicky was his sworn friend and guardian. He was teaching the dwarf English—out of the very books which his Maestra had used with him. Dicky-Dicky learned thirstily, because he believed that some day this knowledge would help him out. They talked much, Delphine said, of Nahal, and the dwarf always seemed troubled about the Maestra’s treatment there, and took great satisfaction in the thought that his sister had upheld her in her trials.
The carelessly generous remuneration of her pupil, Señor Sansillo, aroused in Julie the vision of paying off the debt with which she had come saddled into the New World, and which had been the source of so many of her misfortunes.