While making this observation, Davie was despatching the “ragoo” with a satisfaction which showed how completely he had overcome his insular prejudices. Nor were Perrot’s culinary attentions altogether lost upon Miss Jessie; for although she might not repay them entirely according to the wishes of the gallant Maître d’Hôtel, she could not help acknowledging that he was a pleasant good–humoured fellow, and that his abilities as a cook were of the highest order. Accordingly, when he offered her a foaming glass of cider, she drank it to his health, with a glance of her merry eye sufficient to have turned the head of a man less vain and amorous than Monsieur Perrot. The dinner passed pleasantly enough; and as David Muir drove his daughter back to Marietta, his heart being warmed and expanded by the generous cider (which, for the good of his health, he had crowned with a glass of old rum), he said, “Jessie, I’m thinking, that Maister Parrot is a douce and clever man; a lassie might do waur than tak’ up wi’ the like o’ him! I’se warrant his nest will no be ill feathered!” “Perhaps not,” replied Jessie; and turning her head away, she sighed, and thought of Henry Gregson. CHAPTER XIII. IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND THAT THE COUCH OF AN INVALID HAS PERILS NOT LESS FORMIDABLE THAN THOSE WHICH ARE TO BE ENCOUNTERED AT SEA. We left Ethelston stretched on a sick couch in Guadaloupe, in the house of Captain L’Estrange, and tended by his daughter Nina, and by her brother, the young lieutenant. The latter grew daily more attached to the patient, who had been his captor, and was now his prisoner; but he was obliged, as soon as Ethelston was pronounced out of danger, to sail for Europe, as he was anxious to obtain that professional distinction which his parole prevented his gaining in service against the United States. And in France there seemed a promising harvest of combat and of glory, sufficient to satisfy the martial enthusiasm even of the most adventurous of her sons. When he sailed, he again and again pressed upon his sister to bestow every attention upon Ethelston; and as the Captain was much busied with his command, and as Madame L’Estrange was entirely devoted to her boudoir,—where, with two chattering parrots to amuse her, and a little black girl to fan her while listlessly poring over the pages of Florian in a fauteuil,—the whole charge devolved upon the willing and kind–hearted Nina. She was the third and youngest daughter of Monsieur and Madame L’Estrange; but (her two elder sisters being married) she was the only one resident with her parents.