Boston on a visit, a
little to the relief of the vicomtesse. Schmidt, too, was away in New
York, to the regret of Rene, 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 Rene 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 Rene 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, Rene 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 arithmeti