so clean that they shone; his black cap covered his hair—­as well combed as his mother’s; but he was barefooted.  Gordon, Mario, and Celeste’s eldest son, aged thirteen, were busy about the deck; and papa, his cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, stood looking out on the levee.  I sat down on one of the rough benches that had been placed here and there, and presently my sister came and sat beside me.

“Madame Carpentier seems to be a laggard,” she said.  She was burning to see the arrival of her whom we had formed the habit of calling “the little French peasant.”

[Presently Suzanne begins shooting bonbons at little Patrick, watching the effect out of the corners of her eyes, and by and by gives that smile, all her own,—­to which, says Francoise, all flesh invariably surrendered,—­and so became dumbly acquainted; while Carlo was beginning to swear “fit to raise the dead,” writes the memoirist, at the tardiness of the Norman pair.  But just then—­]

A carriage drove up to within a few feet of our chaland and Joseph Carpentier alighted, paid the driver, and lifted from it one so delicate, pretty, and small that you might take her at first glance for a child of ten years.  Suzanne and I had risen quickly and came and leaned over the balustrade.  To my mortification my sister had passed one arm around the waist of the little Irishman and held one of his hands in hers.  Suzanne uttered a cry of astonishment.  “Look, look, Francoise!” But I was looking, with eyes wide with astonishment.

The gardener’s wife had alighted, and with her little gloved hand shook out and re-arranged her toilet.  That toilet, very simple to the eyes of Madame Carpentier, was what petrified us with astonishment.  I am going to describe it to you, my daughter.

We could not see her face, for her hood of blue silk, trimmed with a light white fur, was covered with a veil of white lace that entirely concealed her features.  Her traveling-dress, like ours, was of cirsacas, but ours was cotton, while hers was silk, in broad rays of gray and blue; and as the weather was a little cool that morning, she had exchanged the unfailing casaquin for a sort of camail to match the dress, and trimmed, like the capotte, with a line of white fur.  Her petticoat was very short, lightly puffed on the sides, and ornamented only with two very long pockets trimmed like the camail.  Below the folds of the robe were two Cinderella feet in blue silk stockings and black velvet slippers.  It was not only the material of this toilet that astonished us, but the way in which it was made.

“Maybe she is a modiste.  Who knows?” whispered Suzanne.

Another thing:  Madame Carpentier wore a veil and gloves, two things of which we had heard but which we had never seen.  Madame Ferrand had mentioned them, but said that they sold for their weight in gold in Paris, and she had not dared import them, for fear she could not sell them in Louisiana.  And here was the wife of a laboring gardener, who avowed himself possessor of but two thousand francs, dressed like a duchess and with veil and gloves!