Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice behind him.  It was only young Pierre Menard at his father’s gate.  The veins on the child’s temples were distended by their embarrassed throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.

“I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone,” stammered Pierre, looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should appear before he had his say.

“What is it, colonel junior?” said Rice, returning to the gate.

“I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family.”

“I hope you haven’t any disagreement in your family that the law will have to settle?”

“Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel much.  And we never should quarrel at all if we had a mother to teach us better,” said young Pierre adroitly.

Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him struggle unhelped to his object.

“Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?”

“Certainly,” replied the prompt lawyer.

“But why should you want to get married?  You have no children.”

“I might have some, if I were married,” argued Rice.

“But unless you get some you don’t need any mother for them.  On the contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family.”

“I see.  You came to take my advice about a stepmother.  I have a stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you.  But suppose you and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?”

The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on Rice’s face.

“You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it, monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her.  The girls—­all of us, in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her.”

“You are quite right.  I don’t know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia than Miss Peggy Morrison.”

“But she isn’t the one, Monsieur Zhone.  Oh, she wouldn’t do at all.”

“She wouldn’t?  I have made a mistake.  It’s Mademoiselle Vigo.”

“Oh, no, she wouldn’t do, either.  There is only one that would do.”  The boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation.  “It is Mademoiselle Angelique Saucier, monsieur.”

Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.

“That’s why I came to you about it, monsieur.  In the first place, Odile picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the room where she is.”

“Young man, this cannot be,” said Rice Jones.

“Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur?  If you haven’t, please don’t.  Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison that you think is such a fine young woman.”

Rice laughed.

“You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle Saucier, my lad.”