and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman’s nether limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter, grapples the subject of boots.  A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy, below.  Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite down to the bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade.  He is a large, broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar, with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with the eye of a hunter—­or, it may be, of a sailor.

“Valentine will not marry,” says one of two ladies who lean over the rail of the veranda above.  “I wonder why.”

The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shoulders and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to which would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.

Such were the choice spirits of the family.  Agricola had retired.  Raoul was there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way up the steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.

“No such thing!” exclaimed his companion.

(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)

“I give you my sacred word of honor!” cried Raoul.

“That Honore is having all his business carried on in English?” asked the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)

“I swear—­” replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge—­“on a stack of Bibles that high!”

“Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!”

This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.

“Ask him! ask him!” cried Raoul.

“Honore!” called Sylvestre, rising up.  Two or three persons passed the call around the corner of the veranda.

Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm.  By the time he arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.

“Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written in English,” said Sylvestre.

“Well?”

“It is not true, is it?”

“Yes.”

The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory “Ah!” except Honore’s mother.  She turned upon him a look of silent but intense and indignant disappointment.

“Honore!” cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, “Honore!”

But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of girls.

“Honore!” cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a boot-heel, “how do you spell ‘la-dee?’”