excuse ab-undant!" was the prompt response, and Castanado put in:

"Scipion he'd rather, always, a non-buying connoisseur than a buying
Philistine."

"Come any day! any hour!" said Beloiseau.

Presently all five were talking of the surviving poetry of both
artistic and historic Royal Street. "Twenty year' ag-o," said the
ironworker, "looking down-street from my shop, there was not a building
in sight without a romantic story. My God! for example, that Hotel St.
Louis!"

Chester--"had heard one or two of its episodes only the evening before,
at that up-town dinner, from a fine old down-town Creole, a fellow
guest, with whom he was to dine the next week."

"Aha-a-a! precizely ac-rozz the street from Mme. Alexandre!" said the
hostess. "M'sieu' et Madame De l'Isle! Now I detec' that!"

"Have they no son?--or--or daughter?" he asked.

"Not any," Mme. Alexandre broke in with a significant sparkle; "juz'
the two al-lone."

"They live over my shop," Beloiseau said. "You muz' know that double
gate nex' adjoining me."

"Oh, that lovely piece of ironwork? I took that for a part of your
establishment."