She had come, she said--and scarcely on the lips of the loveliest Creole did I ever hear a more bewitching broken-English--she had come according to a half-promise made to Mrs. Fontenette to show her--"I tidn't etsectly promised, I chust said I vill some time come----" "And Mrs. Fontenette didn't object," I playfully interrupted-- "No," said the unruffled speaker, "I chust said I vill come; yes; to show her a new vay to remoof, remoof? is sat English? So? A new vay to remoof old stains." "A new way--" responded Fontenette, with an air of gravest interest in all matters of laundry. "Yes," she repeated, as simply as a babe, "a new vay; and I sought I come now so to go home viss mine hussbandt." There, at last, she smiled, and to make the caressing pride of her closing tone still prettier, lifted her figured muslin out sidewise between thumb and forefinger of each hand with even more archaic grace than playfulness. As the three of us crossed over and took seats on my veranda, we were joined by the neighbor whose garden-trees I have mentioned; the man of whom I have told you, how he failed to strike a bargain with old Manouvrier, the taxidermist. He was a Missourian, in the produce business, a thoroughly good fellow, but--well--oh--! He came perspiring, flourishing a palm-leaf fan and a large handkerchief, to say I might keep all the shade his tall house and trees dropped on my side of the fence. And presently what does the simple fellow do but begin to chaff the three of us on the absence of our three partners! VI I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others, harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star of the breathless twilight. Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room--not of to-day, but of the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks--had been at her finger-ends all her life. She took our good neighbor's giddy pleasantries as deep truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit. Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home.