re's soft
blue serge blouse around his pale thin face and eased the cushion
behind his crooked small back.

"Is--is that all which remains of the fifteen hundred dollars we found
to be in that bank, Nannette?" I asked of her with a great
uncertainty. My mother's fortune, descended from her father, the
Marquis de Grez and Bye, and the income of my father from his
government post, had made life easy to live in that old house by the
Quay, where so many from the Faubourg St. Germaine came to hear her
sing after her fortune and children took her from the Opera--and to go
for the summers in the gray old Chateau de Grez--but of the investment
of francs or dollars and cents I had no knowledge, in spite of my
claims to be an American girl of much progress. My mother had laughed
and very greatly adored my assumption of an extreme American manner,
copied as nearly as possible after that of my father, and had failed
to teach to me even that thrift which is a part of the dot of every
French girl from the Faubourg St. Germaine to the Boulevard St.
Michel. But even in my ignorance the information of Nannette as to the
smallness of our fortune gave to me an alarm.

"What will you, Mademoiselle? It was necessary that I purchase the
raiment needful to the young Marquis de Grez according to his state,
and for the Marquise his sister also. It was not to be contemplated
that we should travel except in apartments of the very best in the
ship. Is not gold enough in America even for sending in great sums for
relief of suffering? Have I not seen it given in the streets of Paris?
Is it not there for us? Do you make me reproaches?" And Nannette began
to weep into the fine lawn of her nurse's handkerchief.

"No, no, Nannette; I know it was of a necessity to us to have the
clothes, and of course we had to travel in the first class. Do not
have distress. If we need more money in America I will obtain it." I
made that answer with a gesture of soothing upon her old shoulders
which I could never remember as not bent in an attitude of hovering
over Pierre or me.

"_Eh bien_!" she answered with a perfect satisfaction at my
assumption of all the responsibilities of our three existences.

And as I leaned against the deck rail and looked out into a future as
limitless as that water ahead of us into which the great ship was
plowing, I made a remark to myself that had in it all the wisdom of
those who are ignorant.

"The best of life is not to know wh