ws how to keep off bad luck, that Madame
yonder. And the younger one seems not to like it. Girls think themselves
so smart these days."

Ah, there was the knock again, right there on the street-door, as loud
as if it had been given with a joint of sugar-cane!

The daughter's hand, which had just resumed the needle, stood still in
mid-course with the white thread half-drawn. Aurore tiptoed slowly over
the carpeted floor. There came a shuffling sound, and the corner of a
folded white paper commenced appearing and disappearing under the door.
She mounted a chair and peeped through that odd little _jalousie_ which
formerly was in almost all New Orleans street-doors; but the missive had
meantime found its way across the sill, and she saw only the
unpicturesque back of a departing errand-boy. But that was well. She had
a pride, to maintain which--and a poverty, to conceal which--she felt to
be necessary to her self-respect; and this made her of necessity a
trifle unsocial in her own castle. Do you suppose she was going to put
on the face of having been born or married to this degraded condition
of things?

Who knows?--the knock might have been from 'Sieur Frowenfel'--ha, ha! He
might be just silly enough to call so early; or it might have been from
that _polisson_ of a Grandissime,--which one didn't matter, they were
all detestable,--coming to collect the rent. That was her original fear;
or, worse still, it might have been, had it been softer, the knock of
some possible lady visitor. She had no intention of admitting any
feminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up indigence. Besides, it
was Monday. There is no sense in trifling with bad luck. The reception
of Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save in
rare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing the
front walk or the banquette with Venetian red.

Before the daughter could dart up and disengage herself from her work
her mother had pounced upon the paper. She was standing and reading, her
rich black lashes curtaining their downcast eyes, her infant waist and
round, close-fitted, childish arms harmonizing prettily with her mock
frown of infantile perplexity, and her long, limp robe heightening the
grace of her posture, when the younger started from her seat with the
air of determining not to be left at a disadvantage.

But what is that on the dark eyelash? With a sudden additional energy
the daughter dashes the sewing and