o--Mervilionville!"

Claude's heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. "Vermilionville?
No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville."

"Yaas! I will like him. 'Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah.
When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I
tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to
make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way
from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may bee you go
Mervilionville; dat make me glad,' he say: 'dat way,' he say, 'what I
rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervilionville? St.
Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me.
Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like
Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him
fus' class!"

Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load
himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several
sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making
the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that
had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the
haunting fantasy.

CHAPTER X.

A STRONG TEAM.

I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville.
But--what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth
and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much
worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with
grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely
in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge
and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation,
fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay.
Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and
enlarging, lives there.

Hither came the two St. Pierres. "No," Claude said; "they would not
go to the Beausoleil house." Privately he would make himself believe
he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply
to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the public square there was
another "hotel;" and it was no great matter to them if it was mostly
pine-boards, pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, not to
be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, besides, a piano, of
a quality you may guess, and a landlady's daughter who seven times a
day played and sang "I want to be somebody's darlin