spiration, half-closed the gate, the pair stood an eloquent moment
gazing eye to eye, and then----

What happened the mother told her son that evening as they sat alone on
a moonlit veranda.

"Mother!"

"Yes," she said, "and on the lips."

XLIX

Beginning at dawn, an all-day rain rested the travel-wearied lady. But
the night cleared and in the forenoon that followed she shopped--for
things, she wrote her husband, not to be found elsewhere in the
forty-eight States.

The afternoon she gave to two or three callers, notably to Mrs.
Thorndyke-Smith, who was very pleasing every way, but in nothing more
than in her praises of the Royal Street coterie. Next morning, in a
hired car, she had Castanado and Mme. Dubroca, Beloiseau and Mme.
Alexandre, not merely show but, as the ironworker said, pinching
forefinger and thumb together in the air, "elucidate" to her, for
hours, the _vieux carre_. The day's latter half brought Mlles. Corinne
and Yvonne; but Aline--no.

"She was coming till the laz' moment," the pair said, "and then she's
so bewzy she 'ave to sen' us word, by 'Ector, 'tis impossib' to
come--till maybe later. Go h-on, juz' we two."

They sat and talked, and rose and talked, and--sweetly
importuned--resumed seats and talked, of infant days and the old New
Orleans they loved so well, unembarrassed by a maze of innocent
anachronisms, and growingly sure that Aline would come.

When at sunset they took leave Mrs. Chester, to their delight, followed
to the sidewalk, drifted on by a corner or two, and even turned up
Rampart Street, though without saying that it was by Rampart Street her
son daily came--walked--from his office. It had two paved ways for
general traffic, with a broad space between, where once, the sisters
explained, had been the rampart's moat but now ran the electric cars!
"You know what that is, rampart? Tha'z in the 'Star-Spangle' Banner'
ab-oud that. And this high wall where we're passing, tha'z the
Carmelite convent, and--ah! ad the last! Aline! Aline!" Also there
was Cupid.

The four encountered gayly. "Ah, not this time," Aline said. "I came
only to meet my aunts; they had locked the gate! But I _will_ call,
very soon."

They walked up to the next corner, the sisters confusingly instructing
Mrs. Chester how to take a returning street-car. Leaving them, she had
just got safely across from sidewalk to car-track when Cupid came
pattering after, to bid her hail only the c