he
French Market, the cemetery, and the Chapel of St. Roche. As to all this
unconventional American city above Canal Street, it was there and
spreading (like the measles and other evils); everybody said so; even
her paper, _L'Abeille_, referred to it in French--resentfully. She
believed in it historically; but for herself, she "_never travelled_,"
_excepting_, as she quaintly put it, in her "_acquaintances_"--the
French streets with which she was familiar.

The house she had selected was a typical old-fashioned French cottage,
venerable in scaling plaster and fern-tufted tile roof, but cool and
roomy within as uninviting without. A small inland garden surprised the
eye as one entered the battened gate at its side, and a dormer-window in
the roof looked out upon the rigging of ships at anchor but a
stone's-throw away.

Here, to the chamber above, Evelyn led her father. Furnishing this large
upper room with familiar objects, and pointing out the novelties of the
view from its window, she tried to interpret his new life happily for
him, and he smiled, and seemed content.

It was surprising to see how soon mammy fell into line with the changed
order of things. The French Market, with its "cuyus fureign folks an'
mixed talk," was a panorama of daily unfolding wonders to her. "But
huccome dee calls it French?" she exclaimed, one day. "I been listenin'
good, an' I hear 'em jabber, jabber, jabber all dey fanciful lingoes,
but I 'ain't heern nair one say _polly fronsay_, an' yit I know dats de
riverend book French." The Indian squaws in the market, sitting flat on
the ground, surrounded by their wares, she held in special contempt. "I
holds myse'f _clair_ 'bove a Injun," she boasted. "Dee ain't look
jinnywine ter me. Dee ain't nuther white folks nur niggers, nair one.
Sett'n' deeselves up fur go-betweens, an' sellin' sech grass-greens as
we lef' berhindt us growin' in de wilderness!"

But one unfailing source of pleasure to mammy was the little chicken,
"Blink," who, she declared, "named 'isse'f Blink de day he blinked at me
so cunnin' out'n de shell. Blink 'ain't said nothin' wid 'is mouf," she
continued, eying him proudly, "'caze he know eye-speech set on a chicken
a heap better'n human words, mo' inspecial on a yo'ng half-hatched
chicken like Blink was dat day, cramped wid de egg-shell behime an' de
morgans starin' 'im in de face befo', an' not knowin' how he gwine come
out'n his trouble. He des kep' silence, an' wink all