“I ’blige’ to see ’im!” she replied, jerking herself half around away, one foot planted forward with an air of excited pre-occupation; “I godd some’ to tell ’im wad I ’blige’ to tell ’im!”

“Madame Delphine”—­

“Oh!  Pere Jerome, fo’ de love of de good God, show me dad way to de ’ouse of Jean Tomkin!”

Her distressed smile implored pardon for her rudeness.

“What are you going to tell him?” asked the priest.

“Oh, Pere Jerome,”—­in the Creole patois again,—­“I am going to put an end to all this trouble—­only I pray you do not ask me about it now; every minute is precious!”

He could not withstand her look of entreaty.

“Come,” he said, and they went.

* * * * *

Jean Thompson and Doctor Varrillat lived opposite each other on the Bayou road, a little way beyond the town limits as then prescribed.  Each had his large, white-columned, four-sided house among the magnolias, —­his huge live-oak overshadowing either corner of the darkly shaded garden, his broad, brick walk leading down to the tall, brick-pillared gate, his square of bright, red pavement on the turf-covered sidewalk, and his railed platform spanning the draining-ditch, with a pair of green benches, one on each edge, facing each other crosswise of the gutter.  There, any sunset hour, you were sure to find the householder sitting beside his cool-robed matron, two or three slave nurses in white turbans standing at hand, and an excited throng of fair children, nearly all of a size.

Sometimes, at a beckon or call, the parents on one side of the way would join those on the other, and the children and nurses of both families would be given the liberty of the opposite platform and an ice-cream fund!  Generally the parents chose the Thompson platform, its outlook being more toward the sunset.

Such happened to be the arrangement this afternoon.  The two husbands sat on one bench and their wives on the other, both pairs very quiet, waiting respectfully for the day to die, and exchanging only occasional comments on matters of light moment as they passed through the memory.  During one term of silence Madame Varrillat, a pale, thin-faced, but cheerful-looking lady, touched Madame Thompson, a person of two and a half times her weight, on her extensive and snowy bare elbow, directing her attention obliquely up and across the road.

About a hundred yards distant, in the direction of the river, was a long, pleasantly shaded green strip of turf, destined in time for a sidewalk.  It had a deep ditch on the nearer side, and a fence of rough cypress palisades on the farther, and these were overhung, on the one hand, by a row of bitter-orange-trees inside the enclosure, and, on the other, by a line of slanting china-trees along the outer edge of the ditch.  Down this cool avenue two figures were approaching side by side.  They had first attracted Madame Varrillat’s notice by the bright play of sunbeams which, as they walked, fell upon them in soft, golden flashes through the chinks between the palisades.