“But, mademoiselle, our ’Clock in the Sky’—­our ’Angel of the Lord’—­shan’t we join them?”

“Ah, they are already one, but you have yet to hear that first manuscript, and that is so very separate—­as you will see.”

“Isn’t it also a story of dark skins?”

“Ah, but barely at all of souls under them; those souls we find it so hard to remember.”

“Chere fille”—­M.  De l’Isle had come up, with Mme. Alexandre—­“the three will go gran’ly together!  Not I al-lone perceive that, but Scipion also—­Castanado—­Dubroca.  Mr. Chester, my dear sir, the pewblication of that book going to be heard roun’ the worl’!  Tha’z going produse an epoch, that book; yet same time—­a bes’-seller!”

Mademoiselle beamed.  “Does Mr. Chester think ’twill be that?  A best-seller?”

Chester couldn’t prophesy that of any book.  “They say not even a publisher can tell.”

“Hah!” monsieur cried, “those cunning pewblisher’! they pref-er not to tell.”

“Some poetry,” Chester continued, urged by mademoiselle’s eyes, “doesn’t pay the poets over a few thousand a year—­per volume; while some novels pay their authors—­well—­fortunes.”

“That they go,” madame broke in, “and buy some palaces in Italie!  And tha’z but the biginning; you have not count’ the dramatization—­hundreds the week! and those movie’—­the same! and those tranzlation’!”

“Well, I think we will be satisfied, Mr. Chester, with the tenth of that, eh?”

Chester’s reply was drowned in monsieur’s:  “No, my child!  But nine-tenth’ maybe, yes!  No-no-no! if those pewblisher’ find out you are satisfi’ by one-tenth, one-tenth is all you’ll ever see!”

“Ah,” said mademoiselle to madame, “even the one-tenth I mustn’t tell to my aunts.  They wouldn’t sleep to-night.  And myself—­’publication, dramatization, movies, translation’—­I believe I’ll lie awake till daylight, making that into a song—­a hymn!”

A wonderful sight she was, pausing in the open gate, with the little high-fenced garden at her back, a street-lamp lighting her face.  Chester harked back to that first manuscript.  It “ought not to wait another week,” he declared.

“No,” monsieur said, “and since we all have read that egcept only you.”

Chester looked to mademoiselle:  “Then I suppose I might read it with the Castanados alone.”

“No,” madame put in, “you see, you can’t riturn at Castanado’s immediately to-morrow or next day.  That next day, tha’z Sunday, but you don’t know if madame goin’ to have the stren’th for that fati-gue.  Yet same time you can’t wait forever!  And bisside’, yo’ Aunt Corinne, Aunt Yvonne—­Mr. Chezter he’s never have that lugsury to meet them, and that will be a very choice o’casion for Mr. Chezter to do that, if——­”

“If he’ll take the pains,” the niece broke in, “to call Sunday afternoon.  Then I’ll have the manuscript back from Mr. Castanado and we’ll read it to my Aunt Corinne and my Aunt Yvonne, all four together in the garden.”