ections previously made, which must be shipped
before he left? All this he finally accomplished, and was so pleased by
his success that not even a letter from his Kalsing "solicitor," saying
that his suit against the "Eagle" had been brought to trial and he had
been awarded fifty cents damages, could greatly cloud the content he
felt.

Mrs. Sykes, meanwhile, was looking at everything through her own bit of
yellow glass or London fog, and seeing only what her prepossessions
would let her see through a medium that distorted and magnified every
object. As the spittoons at the Capitol had seemed to her far bigger and
more striking than the dome, so now the gutters of New Orleans made an
immense impression upon her and affected her most painfully, although
the Mississippi failed to impress her at all. The climate she found
odious, the people spoke neither pure French nor good English, and many
a fault besides she found, chiefly with what she politely termed "the
Creowls," whom she was never tired of ridiculing as lazy, ignorant,
effeminate, and morbidly conceited. She was not an ideal companion when
they made an expedition into the lovely pastoral Teche country, the
Acadia of exiled Acadians and Eden of Louisiana, but her lack of
enthusiasm did not damp the ardor of Sir Robert. Miss Noel thought it a
beautiful country, but added that it looked "sadly damp, and as if it
might be malarious," and insisted on "dear Ethel's" taking ten grains
of quinine daily during their stay and wearing a potato in her
pocket,--precautionary measures adopted by herself, and known to have
nipped jungle-fever in the bud repeatedly in India, so she said. It
seemed to Sir Robert's heated fancy that even Ethel praised this ideal
spot but tepidly, and when she had started out of a revery three times
with an "I beg pardon" while he was reading "Evangeline" to her under
the shade of one of those noble oaks "from whose branches garlands of
Spanish moss floated," fit monuments of the sorrowful maiden of
ever-green memory, he put down the book impatiently, saying, "It is only
the old that are young nowadays; I am boring you,"--a speech that made
her blush guiltily, since she did not care to explain where her thoughts
had wandered. He was not bored. The bayous were a fascinating novelty to
him, the trees and fields and glades were eloquent to him, the simple
French peasants who belong to the seventeenth century and by some
miracle lead its idyllic life in