"Not quite all, seeking your pardon! But the other matter is for the ears of Mistress Debby here, whom, if you will permit me, madam, I will, after breakfast, attend to her sanctum—the still-room."
Deborah did not move. Her eyes dropped, and sharp-eyed Calvert himself could not have guessed the eagerness hidden under her perfect mien.
"Deborah has been too much with her drugs of late, Dr. Carroll. I think it were better if you talked with her on some healthier subject. I am not over-fond of her ill-considered ways. They are morbid, much of the time."
"Ah, madam, I am sorry for that! I look forward to the consultations with little Mistress Deborah as the happiest reminiscences of my professional days—before I abandoned physic for merchandise. Your young cousin has remarkable talent about it."
Madam Trevor shrugged her shoulders. "If you put it in that way, Dr. Carroll, how can I refuse you your pleasure in coming to our plantation? If 'tis a question of talking with Deborah or not coming at all, why—Deborah is all at your service."
"By my troth, Madam Antoinette, if that is a pleasantry, it is not one that I like overmuch. How could you so take my words?"
"Come now, doctor, hurry on! Conduct the damsel to your physicking-room, and I'll wait here. You forget that our road leads on to the Kings'."
"To be sure. Well, Debby, let us be off. I must see your manipulation of the new retort."
Thereupon the doctor and his protégée, leaving the others still at table, went together out of the glass door, down the path, across the yard, with its great poplar-trees and the groups of pickaninnies playing, as usual, about the high well-sweep, to a small building a trifle northeast of the cabins and half hidden in great lilac bushes that clustered before its very door. This was Deborah's sanctum, the still-room; and into it she and her companion retired.
The single room contained three large windows, through one of which nodded a thick bunch of purple lilacs, heavy with perfume, and still damp with dew. Along the windowless wall of the room ran a stout pine table, on which, among various utensils, stood two chemist's retorts, one the old iron alembic, the other Deborah's greatest treasure, a glass retort for which Dr. Carroll had sent to Europe. In one corner stood the charcoal box, a tall, iron brazier containing some smouldering coals, and a keg for water.