“Manette, will Monsieur Le Compt play for us again to-night?”

And Monsieur Le Compt or anybody who could handle a bow would play for her.  Celeste was the life of the place:  she sang like a lark, she was like thistledown in the dance, she talked well, and was so handsome that a stranger from New Orleans stopped in the street to gaze after her.  At the auberge he said he was going au Pay,[2] but after he saw Celeste Barbeau he stayed in Caho’.  I have heard my mother tell—­who often saw it combed out—­that Celeste’s long black hair hung below her knees, though it was so curly that half its length was taken up by the natural creping of the locks.

The old French women, especially about Pain Court and Caho’, loved to go into their children’s bedrooms and sit on the side of the bed, telling stories half the night.  It was part of the general good time.  And thus they often found out what the girls were thinking about; for women of experience need only a hint.  It is true old Madame Barbeau had never been even au Kaw;[3] but one may live and grow wise without crossing the rigoles north and south, or the bluffs and river east and west.

“Gra’mere, Manette is sleepy,” Celeste would say, when my mother was with her.

“Well, I will go to my bed,” the grandmother would promise.  But still she sat and joined in the chatter.  Sometimes the girls would doze, and wake in the middle of a long tale.  But Madame Barbeau heard more than she told, for she said to her husband:—­

“It may come to pass that the widow Chartrant’s Gabriel will be making proposals to Alexis for little Celeste.”

“Poor lad,” said the grandfather, “he has nothing to back his proposals with.  It will do him no good.”

And so it proved.  Gabriel Chartrant was the leader of the young men as Celeste was of the girls.  But he only inherited the cedar house his mother lived in.  Those cedar houses were built in Caho’ without an ounce of iron; each cedar shingle was held to its place with cedar pegs, and the boards of the floors fastened down in the same manner.  They had their galleries, too, all tightly pegged to place.  Gabriel was obliged to work, but he was so big he did not mind that.  He was made very straight, with a high-lifted head and a full chest.  He could throw any man in a wrestling match.  And he was always first with a kindness, and would nurse the sick, and he was not afraid of contagious diseases or of anything.  Gabriel could match Celeste as a dancer, but it was not likely Alexis Barbeau would find him a match in any other particular.  And it grew more unlikely, every day that the man from New Orleans spent in Caho’.

The stranger said his name was Claudis Beauvois, and he was interested in great mercantile houses both in Philadelphia and New Orleans, and had come up the river to see the country.  He was about fifty, a handsome, easy man, with plenty of fine clothes and money, and before he had been at the tavern a fortnight the hospitable people were inviting him everywhere, and he danced with the youngest of them all.  There was about him what the city alone gives a man, and the mothers, when they saw his jewels, considered that there was only one drawback to marrying their daughters to Claudis Beauvois:  his bride must travel far from Caho’.