"You are a perfect dear, and I will help you all I can. Just come and tell me all of your difficulties and I'll try and smooth them away for you. I suppose you will find it easy to translate their French documents for them about this very boring mule deal. I have had to do it and I am glad to turn the burden of it all over to you. You may have some trouble with the English technicalities and perhaps you had best bring them in to me and I'll run over them to see that you get them straight. Only don't let the General know that I am helping you, for I verily believe the old dear thinks I am a nihilist ready to blow the Governor or any of his other old mules into a thousand bits." "I thank you, beautiful Madam Whitworth, for your offer of assistance, and I will avail myself of it at the first opportunity. Is it at your house that we can be alone?" I questioned with a daring smile that would serve both for a purpose of coquetry and also to ascertain if I would encounter in a call upon her that very disagreeable appearing gentleman, Mr. Jefferson Whitworth, who is the husband to his very beautiful wife. "Come any afternoon at four o'clock and telephone me before you come so that I can get rid of anybody who happens to be around. And be sure to bring any work you have for me to help you with. That's the only way I can excuse an ancient matron like myself for keeping you even for a few minutes away from the pinafores." And she looked into my eyes with a sigh for her antiquity. In the language of that Mr. Willie Saint Louis I knew it was "up to me," and I "handed the dame one." "In my country, beautiful Madam, the fruit is much more regarded than the bud," is what I presented to her. "You are delicious," she laughed as she again diminished my breathing space. "I cannot see why the dear General has been so violent in his prejudice against all things from France. You must try to win him over, especially as he is letting his prejudice to France, if you can call downright hatred that, stand in the way of lending his aid in doing a great service to your poor, struggling, brave army, while at the same time reaping a profit to his own State. Has he told you anything of this mule deal he is forcing Governor Faulkner to hold up on some others who want to do a service to France?" As she questioned me, the beautiful Madam's eyes became much narrower and I could observe that she watched me with intentness for any sign of intelligence. I gave her none. "Will you not tell me, my Madam of the blue flower eyes, about all of the matter? It will be of great benefit to me to understand it all from you, for my Uncle the General Robert is a man of few words and I am not a man of much business intelligence." And as I spoke I regarded her with a great and beseeching humility.