Of course, that sally silenced us at the time.  But I remembered the episode, and at this juncture, pushed for something noncommittal to say, I inquired with polite surprise: 

“You have your married daughter living with you, Mr. Jacobus?”

He moved his big hand from right to left quietly.  No!  That was another of his girls, he stated, ponderously and under his breath as usual.  She . . .  He seemed in a pause to be ransacking his mind for some kind of descriptive phrase.  But my hopes were disappointed.  He merely produced his stereotyped definition.

“She’s a very different sort of person.”

“Indeed. . . .  And by the by, Jacobus, I called on your brother the other day.  It’s no great compliment if I say that I found him a very different sort of person from you.”

He had an air of profound reflection, then remarked quaintly: 

“He’s a man of regular habits.”

He might have been alluding to the habit of late siesta; but I mumbled something about “beastly habits anyhow”—­and left the store abruptly.

CHAPTER IV

My little passage with Jacobus the merchant became known generally.  One or two of my acquaintances made distant allusions to it.  Perhaps the mulatto boy had talked.  I must confess that people appeared rather scandalised, but not with Jacobus’s brutality.  A man I knew remonstrated with me for my hastiness.

I gave him the whole story of my visit, not forgetting the tell-tale resemblance of the wretched mulatto boy to his tormentor.  He was not surprised.  No doubt, no doubt.  What of that?  In a jovial tone he assured me that there must be many of that sort.  The elder Jacobus had been a bachelor all his life.  A highly respectable bachelor.  But there had never been open scandal in that connection.  His life had been quite regular.  It could cause no offence to any one.

I said that I had been offended considerably.  My interlocutor opened very wide eyes.  Why?  Because a mulatto lad got a few knocks?  That was not a great affair, surely.  I had no idea how insolent and untruthful these half-castes were.  In fact he seemed to think Mr. Jacobus rather kind than otherwise to employ that youth at all; a sort of amiable weakness which could be forgiven.

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French families, descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay.  The men, as a rule, occupy inferior posts in Government offices or in business houses.  The girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual; they prattle innocently both in French and English.  The emptiness of their existence passes belief.