As soon as he had finished his recital she sent him to bed, and shortly afterwards she came and stood over him with a medicine bottle in her hand.
He asked no questions; and after quickly taking what she gave him, he kissed her hand, and closing his eyes, fell into a troubled sleep.
In the morning he seemed more cheerful, but he still acted like a boy in a dream; and the sergeant muttered, “That lad doesn’t hear more than half of what is said to him. He’s in a dead worry about this business of going away. Now I must have a few last words with the priest. Come out into the garden, mussoo, it’s a fine morning;” and he took his guest out-of-doors.
“Now, look here, sir,” he said firmly, and he seized a button on the priest’s cassock, “this is your last day in Boston; and I want to tell you before you take that boy to France, that you’re to consider yourself as free as air to send him back at any time it suits you and him, for I guess his grand-uncle isn’t going to interfere much with him.”
The curé hardly understood a word of what the sergeant said, and the worthy man did not expect that he would. The sergeant had formulated a system about conversing with the curé. The first time he uttered sentences he rattled them off in any way just to accustom the foreigner to the sound of the words. The next time he repeated them slowly, the third time more slowly, and with a liberal illustration of gestures in order to make his meaning entirely plain.
Therefore, when the curé had heard a trio of these sentences, accompanied by a far-away fling of his host’s hand to denote France, a nearer one for Boston, and a comprehensive sweep through the air to indicate freedom of action, he understood perfectly, and nodded his acquiescence and approval of the plan.
“But I think he weel not return,” he said.
“You don’t know anything about it,” said the sergeant. “He is a queer lad; and like most young fellows, and some old ones, he does what you don’t think he will do, and what you think he will do, he won’t.”
“Pardon,” said the curé.
“I can’t make you see that,” said the sergeant decidedly, “because there isn’t any scope for gestures, so we’ll let it pass. Now, I want to tell you that I have a nest-egg, and my wife has expectations, or rather a surety from a rich aunt, so the boy wouldn’t suffer if he came back. We could educate him like a gentleman.”