"I'll tell you. But"---the Creole accent faded out--"we must not
disappoint the De l'Isles, nor those others, we must----"

"I see; we must notice where we're going and give and take our share of
the joy."

"We mustn't be as if reading the morning paper, h'm? I think 'tis for
you they've come this way instead of going on those smooth shell-roads
between the city and the lake."

The two cars had come up through old "Carrollton," where the
Mississippi, sweeping down from Nine-Mile Point, had been gnawing
inland for something like a century, in spite of all man's engineering
could pile against it, and now were out on the levee road and half
round the bend above.

To press her policy, "See!" exclaimed Aline, as a light swell of the
ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the
levee's crown and almost on a level with the eye. They were in a
region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations. Whatever charms belong
to the rural life of the Louisiana Delta were at their amplest on every
side. Groves of live-oak, pecan, magnolia, and orange about large
motherly dwellings of the Creole colonial type moved Aline to turn the
conversation upon country life in Chester's State, and constrain him to
tell of his own past and kindred. So time and the river's great
windings slipped by with the De l'Isles undisappointed, and early in
the afternoon the company lunched in the two cars, under a homestead
grove. Its master and mistress, old friends of all but Chester, came
running, followed by maids with gifts of milk and honey. They climbed
in among the company; shared, lightly, their bread and wine; heard with
momentary interest the latest news of the great war; spoke English and
French in alternating clauses; inquired after the coterie's four young
heroes at the French front, but only by stealth and out of Aline's
hearing; and cried to Cupid, "'Ello, 'Ector! _comment ca va-t-il_?
And 'ow she is, yonder at 'ome, that Marie Madeleine?"

Cupid smiled to his ears, but it was the absentee's two mistresses who
answered for her, volubly, tenderly: "We was going to bring her, but
juz' at the lazt she discide' she di'n' want to come. You know, tha'z
beautiful, sometime', her capriciouznezz!"

Indoors, outdoors, the visitors spent an hour seeing the place and
hearing its history all the way back to early colonial days. Then, in
the two cars once more, with seats much changed about, yet with Aline
and Cheste