r still paired, though at the rear of the forward car, they
glided cityward. At Carrollton they turned toward the New Canal, and
at West End took the lake shore eastward--but what matter their way?
Joy was with ten of them, and bliss with two--three, counting
Cupid--and it was only by dutiful effort that the blissful ones kept
themselves aware of the world about them while Aline's story ran gently
on. It had run for some time when a query from Chester evoked the
reply:

"No, 'twas easier to bear, I think, because I had _not_ more time and
less work."

"What was your work, mademoiselle? what is it now? Incidentally you
keep books, but mainly you do--what?"

"Mainly--I'll tell you. Papa, you know, he was, like _grandpere_, a
true connoisseur of all those things that belong to the arts of
beautiful living. Like _grandpere_ he had that perception by three
ways--occupation, education, talent. And he had it so abboundingly
because he had also _the art_--of that beautiful life, h'm?"

"The art beyond the arts," suggested the listener; "their underlying
philosophy."

The narrator glowed. Then, grave again, she said: "Mr. Chezter, I'll
tell you something. To you 'twill seem very small, but to me 'tis
large. It muz' have been because of both together, those arts and that
art, that, although papa he was always of a strong enthusiasm and
strong indignation, yet never in my life did I hear him--egcept in
play--speak an exaggeration. 'Sieur Beloiseau he will tell you
that--while ad the same time papa he never rebuke' that in anybody
else--egcept, of course--his daughter."

"But I ask about you, your work."

"Ah! and I'm telling you. Mamma she had the same connoisseur talent as
papa, and even amongs' that people where she was raise', and under the
shadow, as you would say, of that convent so famouz for all those
weavings, laces, tapestries, embro'deries, she was thought to be
wonderful with the needle."

Chester interrupted elatedly: "I see what you're coming to. You,
yourself, were born needle in hand--the embroidery-needle."

"Well, ad the least I can't rimember when I learned it. 'Twas always
as if I couldn' live without it. But it was not the needle alone, nor
embro'deries alone, nor alone the critical eye. Papa he had, pardly
from _grand-pere_, pardly brought from France, a separate librarie
abbout all those arts, and I think before I was five years I knew every
picture in those books, and before ten ev