The invalid lay quite still for several minutes, looking
steadily at his friend, and finally let a faint smile
play about his mouth,—a wan reminder of
his habitual roguery.
“Good boy,” he whispered.
Frowenfeld rose and straightened the bedclothes, took
a few steps about the room, and finally returned.
The Doctor’s restless eye had followed him at
every movement.
“You’ll go?”
“Yes,” replied the apothecary, hat in
hand; “where is it?”
“Corner Bienville and Bourbon,—upper
river corner,—yellow one-story house, doorsteps
on street. You know the house?”
“I think I do.”
“Good-night. Here!—I wish you
would send that black girl in here—as you
go out—make me better fire—Joe!”
the call was a ghostly whisper.
Frowenfeld paused in the door.
“You don’t mind my—bad manners,
Joe?”
The apothecary gave one of his infrequent smiles.
“No, Doctor.”
He started toward Number 19 rue Bienville, but a light,
cold sprinkle set in, and he turned back toward his
shop. No sooner had the rain got him there than
it stopped, as rain sometimes will do.
WARS WITHIN THE BREAST
The next morning came in frigid and gray. The
unseasonable numerals which the meteorologist recorded
in his tables might have provoked a superstitious
lover of better weather to suppose that Monsieur Danny,
the head imp of discord, had been among the aerial
currents. The passionate southern sky, looking
down and seeing some six thousand to seventy-five
hundred of her favorite children disconcerted and
shivering, tried in vain, for two hours, to smile upon
them with a little frozen sunshine, and finally burst
into tears.
In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say,
the sky was closely imitating the simultaneous behavior
of Aurora Nancanou. Never was pretty lady in
cheerier mood than that in which she had come home
from Honore’s counting-room. Hard would
it be to find the material with which to build again
the castles-in-air that she founded upon two or three
little discoveries there made. Should she tell
them to Clotilde? Ah! and for what? No,
Clotilde was a dear daughter—ha! few women
were capable of having such a daughter as Clotilde;
but there were things about which she was entirely
too scrupulous. So, when she came in from that
errand profoundly satisfied that she would in future
hear no more about the rent than she might choose
to hear, she had been too shrewd to expose herself
to her daughter’s catechising. She would
save her little revelations for disclosure when they
might be used to advantage. As she threw her
bonnet upon the bed, she exclaimed, in a tone of gentle
and wearied reproach:
“Why did you not remind me that M. Honore Grandissime,
that precious somebody-great, has the honor to rejoice
in a quadroon half-brother of the same illustrious
name? Why did you not remind me, eh?”
