, brick walk leading down to the tall, brick-pillared
gate, his square of bright, red pavement on the turf-covered sidewalk,
and his railed platform spanning the draining-ditch, with a pair of
green benches, one on each edge, facing each other crosswise of the
gutter. There, any sunset hour, you were sure to find the householder
sitting beside his cool-robed matron, two or three slave nurses in white
turbans standing at hand, and an excited throng of fair children, nearly
all of a size.

Sometimes, at a beckon or call, the parents on one side of the way would
join those on the other, and the children and nurses of both families
would be given the liberty of the opposite platform and an ice-cream
fund! Generally the parents chose the Thompson platform, its outlook
being more toward the sunset.

Such happened to be the arrangement this afternoon. The two husbands sat
on one bench and their wives on the other, both pairs very quiet,
waiting respectfully for the day to die, and exchanging only occasional
comments on matters of light moment as they passed through the memory.
During one term of silence Madame Varrillat, a pale, thin-faced, but
cheerful-looking lady, touched Madame Thompson, a person of two and a
half times her weight, on her extensive and snowy bare elbow, directing
her attention obliquely up and across the road.

About a hundred yards distant, in the direction of the river, was a
long, pleasantly shaded green strip of turf, destined in time for a
sidewalk. It had a deep ditch on the nearer side, and a fence of rough
cypress palisades on the farther, and these were overhung, on the one
hand, by a row of bitter-orange-trees inside the enclosure, and, on the
other, by a line of slanting china-trees along the outer edge of the
ditch. Down this cool avenue two figures were approaching side by side.
They had first attracted Madame Varrillat's notice by the bright play of
sunbeams which, as they walked, fell upon them in soft, golden flashes
through the chinks between the palisades.

Madame Thompson elevated a pair of glasses which were no detraction from
her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of a reconnoitring
general.

"_Pere Jerome et cette milatraise_."

All eyes were bent toward them.

"She walks like a man," said Madame Varrillat, in the language with
which the conversation had opened.

"No," said the physician, "like a woman in a state of high nervous
excitement."

Jean Thompson ke