“I doubt it.  Go on, please, time’s a-flying.”

“Well, you see how tragic was that life!  Papa saw it and said:  ’It shall not be tragic alone.  I will build on it a comedy higher, finer, than tragedy.  That’s what life is for; mine, yours, the world’s,’ he said to me.  Mr. Chester, you can imagine how a daughter would love a father like that, and also how mamma loved him—­for years—­before they could marry.”

“Your mother was a Creole, I suppose?”

“No, mamma was French.  After grand’mere had followed grandpere—­above—­papa, looking up some of the once employees of T. Chapdelaine & Son, to raise the old concern back to life, arranged with them that while they should reinstitute it here he would go live in France, close to the producers of the finest goods possible.  You see?  And he did that many years with a kind of success; but smaller and smaller, because little by little the taste for those refinements was passing, while those department stores and all that kind of thing—­you understand—­h’m?”

The train stopped in Rampart Street, and when one aunt, with madame, and one with monsieur, had followed the junior pair out of the snarlings and hootings of Canal Street’s automobiles and to the quiet sidewalks of the old quarter——­

“Well?” said Chester, slowing down, and——­

“Well,” said Aline, “about mamma:  ah, ’tis wonderful how they were suited to each other, those two.  Almost from the first of his living there, in France, they were acquainted and much together.  She was of a fine ancestry, but without fortune; everything lost in the German war, eighteen seventy.  They were close neighbor to a convent very famous for its wonderful work of the needle and of the bobbin.  ’Twas there she received her education.  And she and papa could have married any time if he could promise to stay always there, in France.  But the business couldn’t assure that; and so, for years and years, you see?”

“Yes, I see.”

“But then, all at once, almost in a day, mamma, she found herself an orphan, with no inheritance but poor relations and they with already too many orphans in their care.  For, as my aunts say, joking, that seems to run in our family, to become orphans.

“They are very fond of joking, my aunts.  And so, because to those French relations America seemed a cure for all troubles, they allowed papa to marry mamma and bring her here to live, where I was born, and where they lived many, many years so happily, because so bravely——­”

“And in such refinement—­of spirit?”

“Ah, yes, yes.  And where we are yet inhabiting, as you perceive, my aunts and me, and—­as you see yonder this moment waiting us in the gate—­Hector and Marie Madeleine!”

Alone with the De l’Isles in Royal Street Chester asked, “And the business—­Chapdelaine & Son?”

“Ah, sinz’ long time liquidate’!  All tha’z rim-aining is Mme. Alexandre.  Mr. Chezter, y’ ought to put that!  That ought to go in the book,” said monsieur.