Then in came the little doctor, running up to me and insisting on embracing me (because I was in his own house), pulling down my head and kissing me on each cheek, at which I blushed greatly, though I had not blushed when madame kissed me. And then came my captain and Captain Lewis, and everyone talked at once, asking all manner of questions on all manner of subjects, and I had scarcely a chance to say another word to Pelagie.
And then came dinner. As usual, madame put me beside her, and Pelagie sat at the other end of the table. But there was no scorning this time, and I had better chance to look at her than if she sat beside me, and perhaps that was best, for my eyes could say to her much more than my lips would dare in such a company.
Narcisse waited on the table, and was all smiles of welcome; and half-way through dinner, on some pretext or other, in came Clotilde, and greeted me, half crying through her smiles at memory of our trials together. And last of all came Yorke, grinning from ear to ear, and "declarin' to gracious I'd growed a foot sence," whereupon I was of a mind to thrash him on the spot, and told him so, which made him grin the more, if that were possible.
It was a grand dinner, and I told Madame Saugrain I had never tasted in Paris anything half so good as her wild turkey and croquecignolles and gooseberry wine, which I meant with all my heart, and which greatly pleased her housewifely soul.
Back in the living-room, when dinner was over, I missed something, and looked around the room to discover what it was. It was the long French mirror in which I had once watched Pelagie—the pride of madame's heart.
"Why, madame," I said, "what have you done with your mirror?"
She shrugged her shoulders and looked ruefully at her husband.
"Antoine," she said, "needed some quicksilver for his experiments. Voilà! my mirror!"
I glanced at Dr. Saugrain; he blushed and looked guilty, and so, for some reason, I thought, did Captain Lewis.
"I will explain," said my captain. "You must know, my lad, that these two," indicating the doctor and Captain Lewis with a wave of his hand, "have been confederates all winter in black art. They have lived in the laboratory, and the instruments they have evolved for our trip up the Missouri and over the mountains are fearful and wonderful to behold. We are each of us provided with a box of little phosphorus sticks by which we are to do away entirely with all use of tinder. But much more wonderful than those, out of madame's mirror Dr. Saugrain has fashioned little glass tubes holding quicksilver, and with a measure laid off on the side by which we may be able to tell just how hot or how cold it may be. And more wonderful still, he has fashioned other little tubes by which we are to tell when it is going to storm and when it will be fair weather. And I cannot begin to tell you all the wonderful appliances this magician has fashioned for our comfort and safety this winter, aided and abetted by his willing slave, Captain Lewis."