the narrow street and dangling a
lamp from its end. The human life which dotted the view displayed a
variety of tints and costumes such as a painter would be glad to take
just as he found them: the gayly feathered Indian, the slashed and
tinselled Mexican, the leather-breeched raftsmen, the blue-or
yellow-turbaned _negresse_, the sugar-planter in white flannel and
moccasins, the average townsman in the last suit of clothes of the
lately deceased century, and now and then a fashionable man in that
costume whose union of tight-buttoned martial severity, swathed throat,
and effeminate superabundance of fine linen seemed to offer a sort of
state's evidence against the pompous tyrannies and frivolities of
the times.

The _marchande des calas_ was out. She came toward Joseph's shop,
singing in a high-pitched nasal tone this new song:

"De'tit zozos--ye te assis--
De'tit zozos--si la barrier.
De'tit zozos, qui zabotte;
Qui ca ye di' mo pas conne.

"Manzeur-poulet vini simin,
Croupe si ye et croque ye;
Personn' pli' 'tend' ye zabotte--
De'tit zozos si la barrier."

"You lak dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down from her
turbaned head a flat Indian basket of warm rice cakes.

"What does it mean?"

She laughed again--more than the questioner could see occasion for.

"Dat mean--two lill birds; dey was sittin' on de fence an' gabblin'
togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime', an' you can't
mek out w'at dey sayin', even ef dey know demself? H-ya! Chicken-hawk
come 'long dat road an' jes' set down an' munch 'em, an' nobody can't no
mo' hea' deir lill gabblin' on de fence, you know."

Here she laughed again.

Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in
benevolence.

"Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been
a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes' _calas_ I's got
for you."

As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then, lower
and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop behind
him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed. She followed the
new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of the cakes,
whispered, "Dat's my mawstah," lifted her basket to her head and went
away. Her master was Frowenfeld's landlord.

Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave
"Good-morning, sir."

"--m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low