ust do as I tell you."

"Oh, o' co'se! yass'm!"

"So promise, now, that in any pinch you'll try first to save your son."

"Yass'm." A pang of duplicity showed in her uplifted glance, yet she
murmured again: "Yass'm, I promise you dat." Nevertheless, I had my
doubts.

A hum of voices told us my two anglers were approaching, and with
Rebecca's quieting hand on the pusillanimous Robelia we drew into
hiding and saw them cross the corner of a clearing and vanish again
downstream. Then, hearing the coach, we went to meet it.

Both messengers were on the box. Euonymus passed me my bundle of
stuff. The coach turned round. Bidding Euonymus stay on the box I had
Rebecca and Robelia take the front seat inside. Following in I
remarked: "Good boy, that of yours, Luke."

Luke bowed so reverently that I saw Euonymus's belief in me was not his
alone. "We thaynk de Lawd," Luke replied, "fo' boy an' gal alike; de
good Lawd sawnt 'em bofe."

"Yet extra thanks for the son wouldn't hurt."

Robelia buried a sob of laughter in the nearest cushion, and as we
rolled away gaped at me with a face on which a dozen flies danced and
played tag. And so we went----.

Chester ceased reading and stood up. For Mlle. Chapdelaine was rising.
All the men rose.

"And so, also," she said, "I too must go."

"Oh, but the story is juz' big-inning," Mme. Alexandra protested, and
Mme. De l'Isle said:

"I'm sure 'twill turn out magnificent, yes!"

Mademoiselle declared the tale fascinating. She "would be enchanted to
stay," but her aunts _must_ be considered, etc.; and when Chester
confessed the reading would require another session anyhow Mmes. De
l'Isle and Alexandre arose, and M. Castanado asked aloud if there was
any of the company who could not return a week from that evening.

No one was so unlucky. "But!" cried Mme. Alexandre, "why not to my
parlor?"

"Because!" said Mme. Castanado, to Chester's vivid enlightenment,
"every week-day, all day, you have mademoiselle with you."

"With me, ah, no! me forever down in my shop, and mademoiselle
incessantly upstair'!"

Mme. Castanado prevailed. That same room, one week later.

Scipion and Dubroca escorted Mme. De l'Isle across to her beautiful
gates, and Chester, not in dream but in fact, with M. De l'Isle and
Mme. Alexandre following well in the rear, walked with mademoiselle to
the high fence and green batten wicket of her olive-scented garden in
the rue Bourbon. So walking,