During Stephen’s illness that followed, it was Mother Jeanne’s devoted nursing that brought him back to health and her hard, brown, skilful hands that tended him with untiring faithfulness. Illness was no new thing to Stephen Sheffield, but this long healing of an ugly wound was hard for him to bear when so much was passing in the world outside and the problems of the Colonies growing graver every day. “I will tell you nothing,” Doctor Thorndyke would say gruffly when Stephen, as soon as the Doctor appeared in the doorway, would begin to beg for news. “You fret yourself into a fever whenever I relate of some new tom-foolery wrought by King George the Third and his bat-blind ministers. Therefore I will say no more, since my first duty to my country is to make Master Stephen Sheffield well again.” But as soon as Doctor Thorndyke was gone, Clotilde would steal to Stephen’s bedside and recount all the news of the day that she had gathered from Miles Atherton, for she knew, better than did the gruff Doctor, that it is wiser to tell a sick person the truth than to let him fret for the want of it. She was his constant and cheering companion through this time, since she was nearly as good a nurse as Mother Jeanne and quite as devoted a one. It was upon her strong young shoulder that he leaned that first morning when he walked downstairs and out into the fresh air. He sat for a long time on the bench in the Queen’s Garden, feeling the sun warm upon him and watching the slow shadow of the sundial creep toward the hour. “Do you see that?” he said to Clotilde, pointing to the steadily lengthening shadow that stretched its dark finger across the dial. “You can as easily stop the movement of that shadow as you can hold back the disaster that threatens these Colonies. Yet many people think that they can accomplish both the one and the other by the simple device of shutting their eyes!” As he grew stronger and once more took up his burden of public affairs, it was Clotilde who sat by his side, wrote the letters that his wounded arm still made impossible, ran his errands and delivered his orders. She had been an apt pupil at the village school and, now that she was growing toward womanhood, was quite capable of becoming a clever and ready secretary. She and Stephen grew very close to each other during his illness and their labours together afterward, and finally became far more like father and daughter than like wealthy patron and humble French orphan girl.