due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the
ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the
days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my
next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge.

And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion
of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street
in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair
home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five
children--but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be
borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living
fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"--but the entomologist will be ever
so much better.

To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine
hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little
woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such
a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record.
Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner--the mate, to
speak plainly--of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest
spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped
over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with
our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the
sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room
in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the
other front room, adjoining--a door stood half open between--and was
tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So
presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle
speculations.