“What does it mean?”

She laughed again—­more than the questioner could see occasion for.

“Dat mean—­two lill birds; dey was sittin’ on de fence an’ gabblin’ togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime’, an’ you can’t mek out w’at dey sayin’, even ef dey know demself?  H-ya!  Chicken-hawk come ‘long dat road an’ jes’ set down an’ munch ’em, an’ nobody can’t no mo’ hea’ deir lill gabblin’ on de fence, you know.”

Here she laughed again.

Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in benevolence.

“Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been a-worr’in’ you.  I’s gwine to pick out de werry bes’ calas I’s got for you.”

As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then, lower and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop behind him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed.  She followed the new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of the cakes, whispered, “Dat’s my mawstah,” lifted her basket to her head and went away.  Her master was Frowenfeld’s landlord.

Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave “Good-morning, sir.”

“—­m’sieu’,” responded the landlord, with a low bow.

Frowenfeld waited in silence.

The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak, smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by word through the unfamiliar language: 

“Ah lag to teg you apar’.”

“See me alone?”

The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.

“Alone,” said he.

“Shall we go into my room?”

“S’il vous plait, m’sieu’.”

Frowenfeld’s breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring kitchen, stood on the table.  It was a frugal one, but more comfortable than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of just pride in Creole cookery.  Joseph deposited his calas with these things and made haste to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined.

“Idd you’ bregfuz, m’sieu’.”

“I can do that afterward,” said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.

Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the landlord turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before seen the common likeness.

“Dez stog,” said the sombre man.

“What, sir?  Oh!—­dead stock?  But how can the materials of an education be dead stock?”

The landlord shrugged.  He would not argue the point.  One American trait which the Creole is never entirely ready to encounter is this gratuitous Yankee way of going straight to the root of things.

“Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean,” continued the apothecary; “but are men right in measuring such things only by their present market value?”