until it diminish’ that he couldn’ keep them, and—­in the time of President Roosevelt—­some New York men they bought him out.  Because a new head of the custom-house, old Creole friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of M. Beloiseau and those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know? where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn’t pay the tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h’m?”

“Yes.  And he kept that place—­how long?”

“Always, till he passed, he and mamma; mamma first, he two years avter.  Ad the last he said to me—­we chanced to be talking in Englizh—­’I’ve lived the quiet life.  If I must go I can go quietly.’

“‘And still,’ I said, ’if your life had been as stormy as grandpere’s you’d have been always for the right, and ad the last content, I think.’

“‘Yes,’ he said, ’I believe I never ran away from a storm, while ad the same time I never ran avter one.’  And then he said something I wrote down the same night in the fear I might sometime partly forget it.”

“Have you it with you, now, here?” She showed a bit of paper, holding it low for him to read as she retained it: 

On the side of the right all the storms of life—­all the storms of the world—­are for the perfection of the quiet life—­the active-quiet life—­to build it stronger, wider, finer, higher, than is possible for the stormy life to be.  Whether for each man or for the nations, the stormy life is but the means; the active-quiet life, without decay of character in man or nation but with growth forever—­that is the end.

The pair exchanged a look.  “Thank you,” murmured Chester, and presently added:  “So you were left with your two aunts.  Then what?”

“I’ll tell you.  But”—–­the Creole accent faded out—­“we must not disappoint the De l’Isles, nor those others, we must——­”

“I see; we must notice where we’re going and give and take our share of the joy.”

“We mustn’t be as if reading the morning paper, h’m?  I think ’tis for you they’ve come this way instead of going on those smooth shell-roads between the city and the lake.”

The two cars had come up through old “Carrollton,” where the Mississippi, sweeping down from Nine-Mile Point, had been gnawing inland for something like a century, in spite of all man’s engineering could pile against it, and now were out on the levee road and half round the bend above.

To press her policy, “See!” exclaimed Aline, as a light swell of the ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the levee’s crown and almost on a level with the eye.  They were in a region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations.  Whatever charms belong to the rural life of the Louisiana Delta were at their amplest on every side.  Groves of live-oak, pecan, magnolia, and orange about large motherly dwellings of the Creole colonial type moved