clergy, helped rather than hurt their business.

Julia and Connie were early to-night, and took their regular places at a
long table that was as yet surrounded only by empty chairs. Madame, who
was feeding bread and milk to a black-eyed three-year-old at a little
table in a corner, nodded a welcome, and a young Frenchwoman, putting
her head in through a swinging door at the back, nodded, too, and said,
showing a double row of white teeth:

"Wait--een?"

"Yes, we'll wait for the others!" Connie called back. She and Julia
nibbled French bread, and played with their knives and forks while they
waited.

The dining-room had that aspect of having been made for domestic and
adapted to general use that is so typically un-American, yet so dear to
the American heart. An American manager would have torn down partitions,
papered in brown cartridge, curtained in pongee, and laid a hardwood
floor. Monsieur Montiverte left the two drawing-rooms as they were: a
shabby red carpet was under foot, stiff Nottingham curtains filtered the
bright sunlight, and an old-fashioned paper in dull arabesques of green
and brown and gold made a background for framed dark engravings,
"Franklin at the Court of France," and "The Stag at Bay," and other
pictures of their type. The tablecloths were coarse, the china and glass
heavy, and the menus were written in blue indelible pencil, in a curly
French hand. From the windows at the back one could look out upon an
iron-railed balcony, a garden beyond, and the old, brick, balconied
houses of the Chinese quarter. At the left the California Street cable
car climbed the hill, and the bell tower of old St. Mary's rose sombre