The wonderful autumn colors of October and November came and passed, a new wonder to the young man; his mother, to all seeming contented, spending her evenings with him over English lessons, or French books out of Logan's excellent library, or busy with never-finished embroidery. On Sundays they went to Gloria Dei, the modest little church of the Swedes. There to-day, amid the roar of trade and shipyards, in the churchyard the birds sing over the grave of their historian, Wilson, and worn epitaphs relate the love and griefs of a people whose blood is claimed with pride by the historic families of Pennsylvania.
During these months, Aunt Gainor was long absent in Boston on a visit, a little to the relief of the vicomtesse. Schmidt, too, was away in New York, to the regret of René, who had come more and more to feel wholesomely his influence and increasing attachment. The money help had set him at ease, and he could now laugh when, on counting the coin in the drawer, he found it undiminished. He had remonstrated in vain. The German smiled. "A year more, and I shall be out of debt." Had René not heard of the widow's cruse? "I must be honest. 'T is my time. The grateful bee in my bonnet does but improve the shining hour of opportunity. What was there to do but laugh?" And René at last laughed.
December came with snow and gray skies, and the great business De Courval had grown to feel his own felt the gathering storm caused by the decree of freedom to white and black in the French islands. The great shipmasters, Clark, Willing, Girard, the free-thinking merchant, and Wynne, were all looking as bleak as the weather, and prudently ceased to make their usual sea-ventures before the ice formed, while at the coffee-houses the war between England and France, more and more near, threatened new perils to the commerce of the sea.
On January 27, 1793, being Saturday, while De Courval, Wolcott, and Gilbert Stuart, the artist, sat chatting with Hamilton in the dining-room and drinking the widow's chocolate, the painter was begging leave to make a picture of Margaret, and asking them to come and see the portrait of Mrs. Jackson, one of the three charming sisters of Mr. Bingham.
"No, there must be no portrait. It is against the way of Friends," said the mother. "I should hear of it from Friend Waln and others, too."
What more there was, René did not learn. The painter was urgent. Stuart did paint her long afterward, in glorious splendor of brocade, beautiful with powder and nature's rouge. But now came Nanny, the black maid, and waited while Margaret shyly won a little talk with Hamilton, who loved the girl. "I have been thinking," she said, "of Friend Jefferson. Why, sir, do they have any titles at all, even Citizen? I think a number would be still more simple." She was furnishing an elder with another of the unlooked-for bits of humor which attest the florescence of a mind gathering sense of the comic as the years run on and the fairy godmother, Nature, has her way.
"Good heaven, child! if Mr. Jefferson had his will with your numeration, I should be zero, and he the angel of arithmetic alone knows what."
"What is it, Nanny!" said the mother.
"Massa Wynne want to see Massa Courval—right away in the front room."