what patience
doth God wait for man to learn his lessons! The Holy Cross still
glitters on the bosom of its crystal sea, as it shone before the Carib
danced on its snowy sands, and as it will still shine when some new
Columbus, as yet unborn, brings to it the Christianity of a purer day
than ours.

Chester shook the pages together on his knee.

"Oh-h-h!" cried Mlle. Corinne to Yvonne, to Aline, to Mlle. Castanado,
"the en'! and--where is all that abbout that beautiful cat what was
the proprity of Dora? Everything abbout that cat of Dora--_scratch
out_! Ah, Mr. Chezter! Yvonne and me, we find that the moze am-using
part--that episode of the cat--that large, wonderful, mazculine cat of
Dora! Ah, madame" [to the chair], "hardly Marie Madeleine is more
wonderful than that--when Jack pritend to lift his li'l' miztress
through the surf of the sea, how he _flew_ at the throat of Jack, that
aztonishing mazculine cat! Ah, M'sieu' Beloiseau!--and to scradge
that!"

But Beloiseau was judicially calm. "Yes, I rim-ember that portion.
Scientific-ally I foun' that very interezting; but, like Mr. Chezter, I
thing tha'z better _art_ that the tom-cat be elimin-ate."

"Well," said the chair, "w'at we want to settle--shall we accep' that
riv-ision of Mr. Chezter, to combine it in the book--'Clock in the
Sky,' 'Angel of the Lord,' 'Holy Crozz'--seem' to me that combination
goin' to sell like hot cake'."

"Yes! Agcept!" came promptly from two or three.

"Any oppose'? There is not any oppose'--Seraphine--Marcel--you'll be
so good to pazz those rif-reshment?"

XXXIV

"Tis gone--to the pewblisher?"

M. De l'Isle, about to enter his double gate, had paused. In his home,
overhead, a clock was striking five of the tenth day after that second
reading in the Castanados' parlor. The energetic inquiry was his.

A single step away, in the door of the iron-worker's shop, Beloiseau,
too quick for Chester, at whose elbow he stood, replied: "Tis gone
better! Tis gone to the editor--of the greatez' magazine of the worl'!"

"Bravo! Sinze how long?"

"A week," Chester said.

"Hah! and his _rip_-ly?"

"Hasn't come yet."

"Ah, look out, now! Look out he don' steal that! You di'n' write him:
'Wire answer'? You muz' do that! I'll pay it myseff!"

"I thought I'd wait one more day. He may have other manuscripts to
consider."

"Mr. Chezter, that manuscrip' is not in a prize contess; 'tis only with
itseff! You di'n