bow.

Frowenfeld waited in silence.

The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak,
smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by
word through the unfamiliar language:

"Ah lag to teg you apar'."

"See me alone?"

The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.

"Alone," said he.

"Shall we go into my room?"

"_S'il vous plait, m'sieu'_."

Frowenfeld's breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring
kitchen, stood on the table. It was a frugal one, but more comfortable
than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of just pride in Creole
cookery. Joseph deposited his _calas_ with these things and made haste
to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined.

"Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'."

"I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted
and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely
as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.

Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the landlord
turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before seen the
common likeness.

"Dez stog," said the sombre man.

"What, sir? Oh!--dead stock? But how can the materials of an education
be dead stock?"

The landlord shrugged. He would not argue the point. One American trait
which the Creole is never entirely ready to encounter is this gratuitous
Yankee way of going straight to the root of things.

"Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean," continued the apothecary;
"but are men right in measuring such things only by their present
market value?"

The landlord had no reply. It was little to him, his manner intimated;
his contemplation dwelt on deeper flaws in human right and wrong;
yet--but it was needless to discuss it. However, he did speak.

"Ah was elevade in Pariz."

"Educated in Paris," exclaimed Joseph, admiringly. "Then you certainly
cannot find your education dead stock."

The grave, not amused, smile which was the landlord's only rejoinder,
though perfectly courteous, intimated that his tenant was sailing over
depths of the question that he was little aware of. But the smile in a
moment gave way for the look of one who was engrossed with
another subject.

"M'sieu'," he began; but just then Joseph made an apologetic gesture and
went forward to wait upon an inquirer after "Godfrey's Cordial;" for
that comforter was known to be obtainable at "Frowenfeld's." The
busi