,
arranging a flounce.

"M-m-m."

"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it _is_
dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go out of his
sight and she never came back!"

"Hold still!" said Clotilde.

"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key, "haven't I got
to put it instantly into my pocket if I want the money to come there?
Well, then!"

The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina to put on
her shoes.

"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina to be
seized for the rent?"

"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"

"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you have none?
Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I cannot pay the
rent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything happens to me it is M.
Grandissime who is responsible."

Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the mirror.
The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels half around and
looks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and loose ribbons gave her a
more girlish look than ever.

"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and smites her
daughter's cheek softly with her palm.

"And you are not afraid to go alone?"

"No; but remember! look at that dog!"

The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the street
door, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon her lips,
pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes back,
and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the buttons and take
away the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of it, gathers the
hound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out together--Aurore
sallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her sewing and await the
coming of a guitar scholar.

"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from imagining
that Aurore had set about a little private business which she proposed
to herself to accomplish before she even started in the direction of M.
Grandissime's counting-rooms.

CHAPTER XIV

BEFORE SUNSET

In old times, most of the sidewalks of New Orleans not in the heart of
town were only a rough, rank turf, lined on the side next the ditch with
the gunwales of broken-up flatboats--ugly, narrow, slippery objects. As
Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to anglicize her name--as Aurora
gained a corner where two of these gunwales met, she stopped and