“Come any afternoon at four o’clock and telephone me before you come so that I can get rid of anybody who happens to be around.  And be sure to bring any work you have for me to help you with.  That’s the only way I can excuse an ancient matron like myself for keeping you even for a few minutes away from the pinafores.”  And she looked into my eyes with a sigh for her antiquity.  In the language of that Mr. Willie Saint Louis I knew it was “up to me,” and I “handed the dame one.”

“In my country, beautiful Madam, the fruit is much more regarded than the bud,” is what I presented to her.

“You are delicious,” she laughed as she again diminished my breathing space.  “I cannot see why the dear General has been so violent in his prejudice against all things from France.  You must try to win him over, especially as he is letting his prejudice to France, if you can call downright hatred that, stand in the way of lending his aid in doing a great service to your poor, struggling, brave army, while at the same time reaping a profit to his own State.  Has he told you anything of this mule deal he is forcing Governor Faulkner to hold up on some others who want to do a service to France?” As she questioned me, the beautiful Madam’s eyes became much narrower and I could observe that she watched me with intentness for any sign of intelligence.  I gave her none.

“Will you not tell me, my Madam of the blue flower eyes, about all of the matter?  It will be of great benefit to me to understand it all from you, for my Uncle the General Robert is a man of few words and I am not a man of much business intelligence.”  And as I spoke I regarded her with a great and beseeching humility.

And there, in the Mansion of the Gouverneur of the State of Harpeth himself, that lovely woman did unfold to me the most wonderful plan for the most enormous robbery of both her own government and mine—­or should I say of both of my governments?—­that it could be in the power of mortal mind to conceive.  It was a beautiful, reasonable, generous, patriotic, sympathetic drama of the gigantic war mule and it had only one tiny, hidden obscure line in one of its verses, but in that line lay all of dishonor that could come to a man and a State who should allow a smaller nation fighting for its life and its honor to be defrauded of one of the supplies which were of a deadly necessity for its success.  I think I even saw the dastardly scheme more plainly than did my Uncle, the General Robert, for I had listened with more than one ear while my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, explained to wee Pierre some of the details of supplying the army of the Republique.  I think he had talked of things that the little one could not understand just to make an ease of the pressure of all of his business upon his troubled mind and breaking heart.  And as Madam Whitworth talked I could hear my Pierre’s brave voice as he always gave assurances to his sad idol.