e thicket,
among the citrons."

Denis found them, however--found Moyse gathering the white and purple
blossoms for Genifrede, while she was selecting the fruit of most
fragrant rind from the same tree, to carry into the house.

"You must come in--you must come to dinner," cried Denis. "Aimee has
had a drawing lesson, while you have been doing nothing all this while.
They said you were sketching; but I told them how idle you were."

"I will go back with Denis," said Genifrede. "You threw away my
sketch-book, Moyse. You may find it, and follow us."

Their path lay together as far as the garden-house. When there, Moyse
seized Denis unawares, shot him through the window into the house, and
left him to get out as he might, and bring the book. The boy was so
long in returning, that his sister became uneasy, lest some snake or
other creature should have detained him in combat. She was going to
leave the table in search of him, because Moyse would not, when he
appeared, singing, and with the book upon his head.

"Who calls Genifrede idle?" cried he, flourishing the book. "Look
here!" And he exhibited a capital sketch of herself and Moyse, as he
had found them, gathering fruits and flowers.

"Can it be his own?" whispered Genifrede to her lover.

Denis nodded and laughed, while Azua gravely criticised and approved,
without suspicion that the sketch was by no pupil of his own.

In the cool evening, Genifrede was really no longer idle. While Denis
and Juste were at play, they both at once stumbled and fell over
something in the long grass, which proved to be a marble statue of a
Naiad, lying at length. Moyse seized it, and raised it where it was
relieved by a dark green back-ground. The artist declared it an
opportunity for a lesson which was not to be lost: and the girls began
to draw, as well as they could for the attempts of the boys to restore
the broken urn to the arm from which it had fallen. When Denis and
Juste found that they could not succeed, and were only chidden for being
in the way, they left the drawing party seated under their clump of
cocoa-nut trees, and went to hear what Madame was relating to Bellair
and Deesha, in the hearing of Monsieur Moliere, Laxabon, and Vincent.
Her narration was one which Denis had often heard, but was never tired
of listening to. She was telling of the royal descent of her husband--
how he was grandson of Gaou Guinou, the king of the African tribe of
Arrudos: how