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“Good mornin’, sir! good mornin’!” said Israel, in answer to the Frenchman’s greeting.”This is a real slick little garden-s
pot as ever I see, and a pooty house, and a real clever woman too. I’ll be skwitched, ef it a’n’t a fust-rate consarn, the hull on’t. Be you ever a-goin’ back to France, Mister?”

“No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay here; I have friend here: but there,— oh, non! je ne reviendrai pas! ah, jamais! jamais! “

“Pa’s dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don’t understand your lingo; but ef you ‘re a-goin’ to stay here, I don’t see why you don’t hitch hosses with Miss Lucindy.”

Monsieur Leclerc looked up astonished.

“Horses, my friend? I have no horse!”

“Thunder ‘n’ dry trees! I did n’t say you hed, did I? But that comes o’ usin’ what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I s’pose. I wish’t he’d use one kind o’ figgurin’ a leetle more; he’d pay me for that wood-sawin’. I didn’t mean nothin’ about horses. I sot out fur to say, Why don’t ye marry Miss Lucindy?”

“I?” gasped Monsieur,—”I, the foreign, the poor? I could not to presume so!”

“Well, I don’t see’s it’s sech drefful presumption. Ef you ‘re poor, she’s a woman, and real lonesome too; she ha’n’t got nuther chick nor child belongin’ to her, and you ‘re the only man she ever took any kind of a notion to. I guess’t would be jest as much for her good as yourn.”

“Hush, good Is-ray-el! it is good to stop there. She would not to marry after such years of goodness: she is a saint of the blesséd.”

“Well, I guess saints sometimes fellerships with sinners; I ‘ve heerd tell they did; and ef I was you, I ‘d make trial for’t. Nothin’ ventur’, nothin’ have.”

Whereupon Israel walked off, whistling.

Monsieur Leclerc’s soul was perturbed within him by these suggestions; he pulled up two young cauliflowers and reset their places with pigweeds; he hoed the nicely-sloped border of the bed flat to the path, and then flung the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily occupation with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant one. The idea of a transition from his squalid and pinching boarding-house to the delicate comfort of Miss Lucinda’s ménage, the prospect of so kind and good a wife to care for his hitherto dreaded future,—all this was pleasant. I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend; I must even confess that whatever element of that nature existed between the two was now all on Miss Lucinda’s side, little as she knew it. Certain it is, that, when she appeared that day at the dancing-class in a new green calico flowered with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough for a bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were married, she would take no more lessons! However, let us not blame him; he was a man, and a poor one; one must not expect too much from men, or from poverty; if they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it is so hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc justice, he had a very thorough respect and admiration for Miss Lucinda. Years ago, in his stormy youth-time, there had been a pair of soft-fringed eyes that looked into his as none would ever look again,—and they murdered her, those mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she knelt at her pure prayers,—murdered her because she knelt beside an aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci, who had taken the pretty peasant from her own estate to bring her up for her maid. Jean Leclerc had lifted that pale shape from the pavement and buried it himself; what else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face in his hands, said softly, “The violet is dead,—there is no spring for her. I will have now an amaranth,—it is good for the tomb.”