She sat so near that I could not see her. You may guess I lost every game.
"Tut! tut! Hillary dear, 'tis a poor helper Ramsay gained when he asked your hand. Pish! pish!" he added, seeing our faces crimson; "come away," and he carried me off to the dispensary, as though his preserved reptiles would be more interesting than Hortense.
With an indifference a trifle too marked, he brought me round to the fur trade and wanted to know whether I would be willing to risk trading without a license, on shares with a partner.
"Quick wealth that way, Ramsay, an you have courage to go to the north. An it were not for Hortense, I'd hire that young rapscallion of a Gillam to take me north."
I caught his drift, and had to tell him that I meant to try my fortune in the English court.
But he paid small heed to what I said, gazing absently at the creatures in the jars.
"'Twould be devilish dangerous for a girl," he muttered, pulling fiercely at his mustache.
"Aye," returned the doctor with a dry laugh that meant the opposite of his words. "An you incline to the court, learn the tricks o' the foils, or rogues will slit both purse and throat."
And all the while he was smiling as though my going to the court were an odd notion.
"If I could but find a master," I lamented.
"Come to me of an evening," says M. Picot. "I'll teach you, and you can tell me of the fur trade."
You may be sure I went as often as ever I could. M. Picot took me upstairs to a sort of hunting room. It had a great many ponderous oak pieces carved after the Flemish pattern and a few little bandy-legged chairs and gilded tables with courtly scenes painted on top, which he said Mistress Hortense had brought back as of the latest French fashion. The blackamoor drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world, worldling practices were a sad offence to New England. Shoving the furnishings aside, M. Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson. Carte and tierce, low carte and flanconnade, he taught me with many a ringing clash of steel till beads were dripping from our brows like rain-drops.
"Bravo!" shouted M. Picot in a pause. "Are you son o' the Stanhope that fought on the king's side?"