. Chester's face, and suddenly
handed her the missive. "Read it out."

Mrs. Chester did so. As history, it said, the paper's interest was too
merely encyclopaedic for magazine use, while as romance it was too much
a story of peoples, not persons; romantic yet not romance. As to book
form the same drawbacks held, besides the fact that there was not
enough of it, not one-fifth enough, for even a small book.

When the reader would have handed the letter back it was agreed instead
that she should give it to her son. "What does he purpose to do?" she
inquired. "This is the judgment of but one publisher, and there
are----"

"In the North," Mme. De l'Isle broke in, "they got mo' than a dozen
pewblisher'!"

"Whiles one," the sisters pleaded, "tha'z all we require!"

"I know that," said Aline to the four. "'Twas of that we were speaking
at the gate. But"--to Mrs. Chester--"that judgment of the one
publisher is become our judgment also. So this evening he will bring
you the manuscript, and in two or three days, when we come to see you,
my two aunt' and me--I, you can give it me."

"May I read it? I've been to Ovide's and read 'The Clock in the Sky.'"

"Yes? Well, if later we have the good, chance to find, in our _vieux
carre_, we and our _coterie_, and Ovide, some more stories, true
romances, we'll maybe try again; but till then--ah, no."

Mrs. Chester touched the girl caressingly. "My dear, you will! Every
house looks as if it could tell at least one, including that large
house and garden just over the way."

"Ah," chanted Mlle. Yvonne, "how many time' Corinne and me, we want' to
live there and furnizh, ourseff, that romanz'!"

The five rose. Mrs. Chester "would be delighted to have the three
Chapdelaines call. I'm leaving the hotel, you know; I've taken a room
next Geoffry's. But that's nearer you, is it not?"

"A li'l', yes," the sisters replied, but Aline's smiling silence said:
"No, a little farther off."

The aunts thanked Mme. De l'Isle for bringing Mrs. Chester and kissed
her cheeks. They walked beside her to the gate, led by Cupid with the
key, and by Marie Madeleine crooking the end of her tail like a
floor-walker's finger. Mrs. Chester and Aline came last. The sisters
ventured out to the sidewalk to finish an apology for a significant
fault in Marie Madeleine's figure, and Mrs. Chester and Aline found
themselves alone.

"Au revoir," they said, clasping hands. Cupid, under a sudden
in