r doing _something_.
"What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl,
and you come out with horns and"--

"_Charivari_?" asked the Creoles.

"Yes, that's it. Why don't you shivaree him?" Felicitous suggestion.

Little White, with his wife beside him, was sitting on their doorsteps
on the sidewalk, as Creole custom had taught them, looking toward the
sunset. They had moved into the lately-opened street. The view was not
attractive on the score of beauty. The houses were small and scattered,
and across the flat commons, spite of the lofty tangle of weeds and
bushes, and spite of the thickets of acacia, they needs must see the
dismal old Poquelin mansion, tilted awry and shutting out the declining
sun. The moon, white and slender, was hanging the tip of its horn over
one of the chimneys.

"And you say," said the Secretary, "the old black man has been going by
here alone? Patty, suppose old Poquelin should be concocting some
mischief; he don't lack provocation; the way that clod hit him the other
day was enough to have killed him. Why, Patty, he dropped as quick as
_that_! No wonder you haven't seen him. I wonder if they haven't heard
something about him up at the drug-store. Suppose I go and see."

"Do," said his wife.

She sat alone for half an hour, watching that sudden going out of the
day peculiar to the latitude.

"That moon is ghost enough for one house," she said, as her husband
returned. "It has gone right down the chimney."

"Patty," said little White, "the drug-clerk says the boys are going to
shivaree old Poquelin to-night. I'm going to try to stop it."

"Why, White," said his wife, "you'd better not. You'll get hurt."

"No, I'll not."

"Yes, you will."

"I'm going to sit out here until they come along. They're compelled to
pass right by here."

"Why, White, it may be midnight before they start; you're not going to
sit out here till then."

"Yes, I am."

"Well, you're very foolish," said Mrs. White in an undertone, looking
anxious, and tapping one of the steps with her foot.

They sat a very long time talking over little family matters.

"What's that?" at last said Mrs. White.

"That's the nine-o'clock gun," said White, and they relapsed into a
long-sustained, drowsy silence.

"Patty, you'd better go in and go to bed," said he at last.

"I'm not sleepy."

"Well, you're very foolish," quietly remarked little White, and again
silence fell upon them.

"Patty, supp