that I
have it not at present--I must ask of your goodness to wait."

The old maid's shining black eyes grew soft as she looked at him.

"Why!" said she, "I don't think you owe me much of anything, Mr.
Leclerc. I never knew things last as they have since you came. I really
think you brought a blessing. I wish you would please to think you don't
owe me anything."

The Frenchman's great brown eyes shone with suspicious dew.

"I cannot to forget that I owe to you far more than any silver of man
repays; but I should not think to forget that I also owe to you silver,
or I should not be worthy of a man's name. No, Mees! I have two hands
and legs. I will not let a woman most solitary spend for me her good
self."

"Well," said Miss Lucinda, "if you will be uneasy till you pay me, I
would rather have another kind of pay than money. I should like to know
how to dance. I never did learn, when I was a girl, and I think it would
be good exercise."

Miss Lucinda supported this pious fiction through with a simplicity that
quite deceived the Frenchman. He did not think it so incongruous as it
was. He had seen women of sixty, rouged, and jewelled, and furbelowed,
foot it deftly in the halls of the Faubourg St. Germain in his earliest
youth; and this cheery, healthy woman, with lingering blooms on either
cheek, and uncapped head of curly black hair but slightly strewn with
silver, seemed quite as fit a subject for the accomplishment. Besides,
he was poor,--and this offered so easy a way of paying the debt he had
so dreaded! Well said Solomon,--"The destruction of the poor is their
poverty!" For whose moral sense, delicate sensitivenesses, generous
longings, will not sometimes give way to the stringent need of food and
clothing, the gall of indebtedness, and the sinking consciousness of an
empty purse and threatening possibilities?

Monsieur Leclerc's face brightened.

"Ah! with what grand pleasure shall I teach you the dance!"

But it fell dark again as he proceeded,--

"Though not one, nor two, nor three, nor four quarters shall be of value
sufficient to achieve my payment."

"Then, if that troubles you, why, I should like to take some French
lessons in the evening, when you don't have classes. I learned French
when I was quite a girl, but not to speak it very easily; and if I could
get some practice and the right way to speak, I should be glad."

"And I shall give you the real _Parisien_ tone, Mees Lucinda!" said he,
pr