"Ah! yass," chimed the wife, "yet still I think mebbee the good God tell
luck where to bring her. I'm shoe he got fing-er in that pie."

"Ah-ha? Daz all right! If God want to burn his own fing-er----"

At length the house was finished and was beautiful within and without. It
was of two and a half stories, broad and with many rooms. Two spacious
halls crossed each other, and there were wide verandas front and back, and
a finished and latticed basement. The basement and the entire grounds,
except a few bright flower-borders, were flagged, as was also the
sidewalk, with the manufactured stone which in that nearly frostless
climate makes such a perfect and beautiful pavement, and on this fair
surface fell the large shadows of laburnum, myrtle, orange, oleander,
sweet-olive, mespelus, and banana, which the taxidermist had not spared
expense to transplant here in the leafy prime of their full growth.

Then almost as slowly the dwelling was furnished. In this the brother-in-
law's widow co-operated, and when it was completed Manouvrier suggested
her living in it a few days so that his wife might herself move in as
leisurely as she chose. And six months later, there, in the old back room
in St. Peter Street, the wife still sat sewing and now and then saying
small, wise, dispassionate things to temper the warmth of her partner's
more artistic emotions. Every fair day, about the hour of sunset, they
went to see the new house. It was plain they loved it; loved it only less
than their old life; but only the brother-in-law's widow lived in it.



VII