choupitoulas, goes quite down to the
bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade. He is a large,
broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar,
with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with the
eye of a hunter--or, it may be, of a sailor.

"Valentine will not marry," says one of two ladies who lean over the
rail of the veranda above. "I wonder why."

The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shoulders
and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to which
would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.

Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had retired. Raoul
was there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way up
the steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.

"No such thing!" exclaimed his companion.

(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)

"I give you my sacred word of honor!" cried Raoul.

"That Honore is having all his business carried on in English?" asked
the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)

"I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on a stack
of Bibles that high!"

"Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!"

This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic
flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.

"Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.

"Honore!" called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three persons passed the
call around the corner of the veranda.

Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By the time he
arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.

"Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written
in English," said Sylvestre.

"Well?"

"It is not true, is it?"

"Yes."

The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory "Ah!"
except Honore's mother. She turned upon him a look of silent but intense
and indignant disappointment.

"Honore!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, "Honore!"

But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of
girls.

"Honore!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of
writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a
boot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee?'"

There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.

"Ask Valentine," said Honore.

Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man's only retort was to survey
the company above him with an unmoved countenance, an