teeth. "The woman is
a fiend!"

She was wholly absorbed in her study of this unworldly and untaught
nature. She was full of sympathy for its trials and tenderness, and for
its pain.

Even the girl's peculiarities of speech were full of interest to her.
She made serious and intelligent efforts to understand them, as if she
studied a new language.

"It is not common _argot_," she said. "It has its subtleties. One
continually finds somewhere an original idea--sometimes even a _bon
mot_, which startles one by its pointedness. As you say, however, it
belongs only to the Americans and their remarkable country. A French
mind can only arrive at its climaxes through a grave and occasionally
tedious research, which would weary most persons, but which, however,
does not weary me."

The confidence of Mademoiselle Esmeralda was easily won. She became
attached to us both, and particularly to Clelie. When her mother was
absent or occupied, she stole up-stairs to our apartment and spent with
us the moments of leisure chance afforded her. She liked our rooms, she
told my wife, because they were small, and our society, because we were
"clever," which we discovered afterward meant "amiable." But she was
always pale and out of spirits. She would sit before our fire silent and
abstracted.

"You must not mind if I don't talk," she would say. "I can't; and it
seems to help me to get to sit and think about things--Mother won't let
me do it down-stairs."

We became also familiar with the father. One day I met him upon the
staircase, and to my amazement he stopped as if he wished to address me.
I raised my hat and bade him good-morning. On his part he drew forth a
large handkerchief and began to rub the palms of his hands with awkward
timidity.

"How-dy?" he said.

I confess that at the moment I was covered with confusion. I who was
a teacher of English, and flattered myself that I wrote and spoke it
fluently did not understand. Immediately, however, it flashed across
my mind that the word was a species of salutation. (Which I finally
discovered to be the case.) I bowed again and thanked him, hazarding the
reply that my health was excellent, and an inquiry as to the state of
Madame's. He rubbed his hands still more nervously, and answered me in
the slow and deliberate mariner I had observed at the Louvre.

"Thank ye," he said, "she's doin' tol'able well, is mother--as well as
common. And she's a-en-joyin' herself, too. I wish we wa