aude's one or two
inventions; but he was having great success; he wrote once or
twice--but got no reply--and hoped to be back within a month.

When Marguerite, after her mother's receipt of each of these letters,
thought she saw a cloud on her brow, Zosephine explained, with a
revival of that old look of sweet self-command which the daughter so
loved to see, that they contained matters of business not at all to be
called troubles. But the little mother did not show the letters. She
could not; Marguerite did not even know their writer had changed his
business. As to Claude, his name was never mentioned. Each supposed
the other was ignorant that he was in the city, and because he was
never mentioned each one knew the other was thinking of him.

Ah, Claude! what are you thinking of? Has not your new partner in
business told you they are here? No, not a word of it. "That'll keep
till I get back," Mr. Tarbox had said to himself; and such shrewdness
was probably not so ungenerous, after all. "If you want a thing done
well, do it yourself," he said one evening to a man who could not make
out what he was driving at; and later Mr. Tarbox added to himself,
"The man that flies the kite must hold the thread." And so he kept his
counsel.

But that does not explain. For we remember that Claude already knew
that Marguerite was in the city, at least had her own mother's word
for it. Here, weeks had passed. New Orleans is not so large; its
active centre is very small. Even by accident, on the street, Canal
Street especially, he should have seen her time and again.

And he did not; at any rate not to know it. She really kept very busy
indoors; and in other doors so did he. More than that, there was his
father. When the two first came to the city St. Pierre endured the
town for a week. But it was martyrdom, doing it. Claude saw this. Mr.
Tarbox was with him the latter part of the week. He saw it. He gave
his suggestive mind to it for one night. The next day St. Pierre and
he wandered off in street-cars and on foot, and by the time the sun
went down again a new provision had been made. At about ninety
minutes' jaunt from the city's centre, up the river, and on its
farther shore, near where the old "Company Canal" runs from a lock in
the river bank, back through the swamps and into the Baratarian lakes,
St. Pierre had bought with his lifetime savings a neat house and
fair-sized orangery. No fields? None:

"You see, bom-bye [by-and-by]