d the
chateau what dillib-rate'--you know, eh? M'sieu' De l'Isle, I move you
we go h-on."

They went, the De l'Isle car and then Scipion's, back to St. Charles
Avenue, and turned again up-town. On the rearmost seat----

"Why so silent?" Aline inquired of Chester.

"Because so content," he said, "except when I think of the book."

"The half-book?"

"Exactly. We've only half enough stories yet.

"Though with the _vieux carre_ full of them?"

"Oh! mostly so raw, so bald, so thin!"

"Ah, I knew you would see that. As though human life and character
were--what would say?"

"I'd say crustacean; their anatomy all on the surface. Such stories
are not life, life in the round; they're only paper silhouettes--of the
real life's poorest facts and moments. I state the thought poorly but
you get it, don't you?"

The girl sparkled, not so much for the thought as for their fellowship
in it. "Once I heard mamma say to my aunts: 'So many of these _vieux
carre_ stories are but pretty pebbles--a quadroon and a duel, a
quadroon and a duel--always the same two peas in the baby's rattle.'"

"There are better stories for a little deeper search," Chester said.

"Ah, she said that too! 'And not,' she said, 'because the _vieux
carre_ is unlike, but so like the rest of the world.'"

Thus they spoke, happily--even a bit recklessly--conscious that they
were themselves a beautiful story without the flash of a sword or the
cloud of a misdeed in range of their sight, and not because the _vieux
carre_ was unlike, but so like the rest of the world.

"Where are we going?" Aline inquired, and tried to look forward around
Mme. Castanado.

"You and I," Chester said, "are going back to your father's story. You
said, the other day, his life was quiet, richer within than without."

"Yes. Ah, yes; so that while of the inside I cannot tell half, of the
outside there is almost nothing to tell."

"All the same, tell it. Were not he and these Royal Street men boys
together?"

"Yes, though with M. De l'Isle the oldest, and though papa was away
from them many years, over there in France. Yes, they were all his
friends, as their fathers had been of _grandpere_. And they'll all
tell you the same thing; that he was their hero, while at the same time
that his story is destitute of the theatrical. Just he himself, he and
mamma--they are the whole story."

"A sea without a wave?"

"Ah, no; yet without a storm. And, Mr. Chester, I thi