equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good-
looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent
Creole way that belongs to the latitude, and how I knew I cannot tell you,
but I did know--I didn't merely feel or think, but I knew!--_positively_--
that he had that hideous thing on his person.

Against what contingency I could only ask myself and wonder, but I
instantly decided to get him away from home and keep him away until the
picnickers had got back and scattered. So I proposed a walk, a diversion
we had often enjoyed together.

"Yes?" he said, "to pazz the time whilse they don't arrive? With the
greates' of pleasu'e!"

I dare say we were both more preoccupied than we thought we were, for
outside the gate we fairly ran into a lady--yes; a seamstress--the wife of
the entomologist. My stars! She had seemed winning enough before, but now
--what a rise in values! As we conversed it was all I could do to keep my
eyes from saying: "A man with you for a wife belongs at home whenever he
can be there!" But whether they spoke it or not, in some way, without word
or glance, by simple radiations from the whole sweet woman, she revealed
that to make that fact plain to him, to _her_, and to all of us, was what
this new emphasis of charm was for.

She had come, she said--and scarcely on the lips of the loveliest Creole
did I ever hear a more bewitching broken-English--she had come according
to a half-promise made to Mrs. Fontenette to show her--"I tidn't etsectly
promised, I chust said I vill some time come----"

"And Mrs. Fontenette didn't object," I playfully interrupted--