easy!"

"Yet at the same time my gifted granddaughter," remarked the old lady,
in her native tongue and intent on her embroidery, "is uneasy, eh?"

Flora ignored the comment. She laid a second palm, on the upraised
booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and
subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share
these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"--she
returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper
proceeds of the schoolmistress's gold still hid--"you shall never handle
a dime." She sparkled airily.

"No?" said Madame, still moving the needle and still in French.
"Nevertheless, morning and evening together, our winnings are--how
much?"

"Ours?" melodiously asked the smiling girl, "they are not ours, they are
mine. And they are--at the least"--she dropped to her senior's footstool
and spoke caressingly low--"a clean thousand! Is not that sweet enough
music to the ear of a venerable"--she whispered--"cormorant?" She
sparkled anew.

"I am sorry," came the mild reply, "you are in such torture you have to
call me names. But it is, of course, entirely concerning--the
house--ahem!"

Flora rose, walked to a window, and, as she gazed out across the old
plaza, said measuredly in a hard voice: "Never mind! Never mind her--or
him either. I will take care of the two of them!"

A low laugh tinkled from the ancestress: "Ha, ha! you thought the fool
would be scandalized, and instead he is only the more enamored."

The girl flinched but kept her face to the window: "_He_ is not the
fool."

"No? We can hardly tell, when we are--in love."

Flora wheeled and flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room,
returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily
vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just
enough fluttered to play defiance while shifting her attack--

"Home, sweet home! For our ravished one you will, I suppose, permit his
beloved country to pay--in its new paper money at 'most any
discount--and call it square, eh?" Half the bitterness of her tone was
in its sweetness.

In a sudden white heat the granddaughter clutched one aged knee with
both hands: "Wait! If I don't get seven times all it was ever worth, the
Yankees shall!" Then with an odd gladness in her eyes she added, "And
_she_ shall pay her share!"

"You mean--his?" asked the absorbed embroiderer. But on her last word
sh