“Pray, Messieurs, come in and be seated.”
He spoke in the Creole French of the gutters.
“Come in. M. Frowenfeld is dressing, and
desires that you will have a little patience.
Come in. Take chairs. You will not come
in? No? Nor you, Monsieur? No?
I will set some chairs outside, eh? No?”
They moved by twos and threes away, and Raoul, retiring,
gave his employer such momentary aid as was required.
When Joseph, in changed dress, once more appeared,
only a child or two lingered to see him, and he had
nothing to do but sit down and, as far as he felt at
liberty to do so, answer his assistant’s questions.
During the recital, Raoul was obliged to exercise
the severest self-restraint to avoid laughing,—a
feeling which was modified by the desire to assure
his employer that he understood this sort of thing
perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought
no less of a man, providing he was a gentleman,
because of an unlucky retributive knock on the head.
But he feared laughter would overclimb speech; and,
indeed, with all expression of sympathy stifled, he
did not succeed so completely in hiding the conflicting
emotion but that Joseph did once turn his pale, grave
face surprisedly, hearing a snuffling sound, suddenly
stifled in a drawer of corks. Said Raoul, with
an unsteady utterance, as he slammed the drawer:
“H-h-dat makes me dat I can’t ’elp
to laugh w’en I t’ink of dat fool yesse’dy
w’at want to buy my pigshoe for honly one ’undred
dolla’—ha, ha ha, ha!”
He laughed almost indecorously.
“Raoul,” said Frowenfeld, rising and closing
his eyes, “I am going back for my hat.
It would make matters worse for that person to send
it to me, and it would be something like a vindication
for me to go back to the house and get it.”
Mr. Innerarity was about to make strenuous objection,
when there came in one whom he recognized as an attache
of his cousin Honore’s counting-room, and handed
the apothecary a note. It contained Honore’s
request that if Frowenfeld was in his shop he would
have the goodness to wait there until the writer could
call and see him.
“I will wait,” was the reply.
“FO’ WAD YOU CRYNE?”
Clotilde, a step or two from home, dismissed her attendant,
and as Aurora, with anxious haste, opened to her familiar
knock, appeared before her pale and trembling.
“Ah, ma fille—”
The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without
restraint upon her mother’s neck. She let
herself be guided to a chair, and there, while Aurora
nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to
reverie before she was called upon to speak.
Then Aurora first quietly took possession of her hands,
and after another tender pause asked in English, which
was equivalent to whispering:
“Were you was, cherie?”
“’Sieur Frowenfel’—”
