“There are a great many Americans that think
as you do,” said Frowenfeld, quietly.
“But,” said the little doctor, “what
did that fellow mean by your Creole partner?
Mandarin is in charge of your store, but he is not
your partner, is he? Have you one?”
“A silent one,” said the apothecary
“So silent as to be none of my business?”
“No.”
“Well, who is it, then?”
“It is Mademoiselle Nancanou.”
“Your partner in business?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,—”
The insinuation conveyed in the doctor’s manner
was very trying, but Joseph merely reddened.
“Purely business, I suppose,” presently
said the doctor, with a ghastly ironical smile.
“Does the arrangem’—”
his utterance failed him—“does it
end there?”
“It ends there.”
“And you don’t see that it ought either
not to have begun, or else ought not to have ended
there?”
Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:
“And who takes care of Aurora’s money?”
“Herself.”
“Exclusively?”
They both smiled more good-naturedly.
“Exclusively.”
“She’s a coon;” and the little doctor
rose up and crawled away, ostensibly to see another
friend, but really to drag himself into his bedchamber
and lock himself in. The next day—the
yellow fever was bad again—he resumed the
practice of his profession.
“’Twill be a sort of decent suicide without
the element of pusillanimity,” he thought to
himself.
LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
When Honore Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had
returned to the city in a very feeble state of health,
he rose at once from the desk where he was sitting
and went to see him; but it was on that morning when
the doctor was sitting and talking with Joseph, and
Honore found his chamber door locked. Doctor
Keene called twice, within the following two days,
upon Honore at his counting-room; but on both occasions
Honore’s chair was empty. So it was several
days before they met. But one hot morning in
the latter part of August,—the August days
were hotter before the cypress forest was cut down
between the city and the lake than they are now,—as
Doctor Keene stood in the middle of his room breathing
distressedly after a sad fit of coughing, and looking
toward one of his windows whose closed sash he longed
to see opened, Honore knocked at the door.
“Well, come in!” said the fretful invalid.
“Why, Honore,—well, it serves you
right for stopping to knock. Sit down.”
Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other;
and, after a pause, Doctor Keene said:
“Honore, you are pretty badly stove.”
M. Grandissime smiled.
“Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more
complimentary to you; you might look more sick.”
