"All the same, tell it. Were not he and these Royal Street men boys together?" "Yes, though with M. De l'Isle the oldest, and though papa was away from them many years, over there in France. Yes, they were all his friends, as their fathers had been of _grandpere_. And they'll all tell you the same thing; that he was their hero, while at the same time that his story is destitute of the theatrical. Just he himself, he and mamma--they are the whole story." "A sea without a wave?" "Ah, no; yet without a storm. And, Mr. Chester, I think a sea without a storm can be just as deep as with, h'm?" XXXVII "Well, they married, your father and mother, over there where her people are fighting the Germans right now, and came and lived in Bourbon Street with your aunts, eh?" "Yes, or rather my aunts with them, they were of so much more strong natures than my aunts--more strong and large while just as sweet, and that's saying much, you know." "I see it is." "Mr. Chester, what you see, I think, is that my aunts are perhaps the two most--well--unworldly women you ever knew." "True. In that quality they're childlike." "Yes, and because they are so childlike in--above all--the freedom of their speech, what I want to say of them, just this one time, is the more to their honor: that in my _whole_ life I've never heard them speak one word against anybody." "Not even Cupid?" "Ah-h-h! that's a cruel joke, and false! That true Cupid, he's an assassin; while that child, he's faultless?" The speaker really said "fauklezz," and it was a joy to Chester to hear her at last fall unwittingly into a Creole accent. "Well, anyhow," he led on, "the four lived together; and if I guess right your mother became, to all this joy-ride company, as much their heroine as your father was their hero." "'Tis true!" "But your father's coming back from France--it couldn't save the business?" "Alas, no! Even together, he and mamma--and you know what a strong businezz partner a French wife can be--they could not save it. Both of them were, I think, more artist than merchant, and when all that kind of businezz began to be divorce' from art and married to machinery"--the narrator made a sad gesture. "_Kultur_ against culture, was it? and your father not the sort to change masters." "True again. But tha'z not all; hardly was it half. One thing beside was the miz-conduct of an agent, the man who lately"--a silent smile. "What?--sold your aunts that manuscript?" "Yes. But he didn' count the most. Oh, the whole businezz, except papa's, became, as we say--give me the word!" "Americanized?" "No, papa he always refused to call it that. Mr. Chester, he used to say that those two marvellouz blessings, machinery, democracy, they are in one thing too much alike; they are, at first--say it, you." "Vulgarizing?"