seeming itself to become machine work, while at the same time
Americanized, papa was like a river town"--another gesture--"left by
the river!"

"Yet he never went into bankruptcy? You can point with pride to that,
mademoiselle."

"Ah, Mr. Chester, pride! Once I pointed, and papa--'My daughter, there
are many ways to go bankrupt worse than in money, and to have gone
bankrupt in none of them--' there he stopped; he was too noble for
pride. No, the businezz, juz' year after year it starved to death. In
the early days _grandpere_ had two big stores, back to back;
whole-sale, Chartres Street; retail, Royal, where now all that is left
of it is the shop of Mme. Alexandre. Both her husband and she were
with papa in the retail store, until it diminish' that he couldn' keep
them, and--in the time of President Roosevelt--some New York men they
bought him out. Because a new head of the custom-house, old Creole
friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of M. Beloiseau and
those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know?
where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn't pay the
tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h'm?"

"Yes. And he kept that place--how long?"

"Always, till he passed, he and mamma; mamma first, he two years avter.
Ad the last he said to me--we chanced to be talking in Englizh--'I've
lived the quiet life. If I must go I can go quietly.'

"'And still,' I said, 'if your life had been as stormy as _grandpere's_
you'd have been always for the right, and ad the last content, I think.'

"'Yes,' he said, 'I believe I never ran away from a storm, while ad the
same time I never ran avter one.' And then he said something I wrote
down the same night in the fear I might sometime partly forget it."

"Have you it with you, now, here?" She showed a bit of paper, holding
it low for him to read as she retained it:

On the side of the right all the storms of life--all the storms of the
world--are for the perfection of the quiet life--the active-quiet
life--to build it stronger, wider, finer, higher, than is possible for
the stormy life to be. Whether for each man or for the nations, the
stormy life is but the means; the active-quiet life, without decay of
character in man or nation but with growth forever--that is the end.

The pair exchanged a look. "Thank you," murmured Chester, and
presently added: "So you were left with your two aunts. Then what?"