"What made you think him old? His hair isn't white. He hasn't any wrinkles. Really, I'm curious to know."
The American stopped on the curbstone, pondering, his alert mind interested by the little problem in self-analysis. "What did make me, I wonder?" He glanced in through the open door and said: "Well, just look at him as he stands there, his hands clasped over his stomach,—you can see for yourself. It's a kind of settled-down-to-stay look that I'm not used to seeing unless a man is so old that he can't move on any more."
The Frenchman looked at the druggist and then at the man beside him. "Yes, I see what you mean," he admitted. He said it with a sigh.
They entered the shop. The druggist came forward with a smile, and shook hands heartily with them both. "Eleven," noted the American mentally.
"Monsieur Réquine," said the French visitor, "can't we go through into your salon, or perhaps out into your garden for a little talk?" Mr. Réquine glowed with hospitality. "Yes, yes, delighted. I'll just ask my wife to step here to mind the shop."
"His wife!" asked the American, "to wait on customers?"
A well-dressed, tall, full-bosomed woman of forty-odd, with elaborately dressed black hair and a much powdered, intelligent face came in answer to the call and installed herself back of the counter with her knitting.
"Yes, and she knows as much about the business end as he does, you may be sure," said the Frenchman as they went through a door at the back of the shop, emerging, not, as the American expected, into a storeroom, but into an attractive parlor. They passed through the salon, into an exquisitely kept little dining-room and out into a walled garden which made the American pass his hand over his eyes and look again. While their host was installing them at the little round green iron table under a trellis overgrown by a magnificent grapevine, Mr. Hale's eyes traveled from one point to another of the small paradise before him. It could not have been more than a hundred feet wide and three hundred long, but like a fabled spot in the "Arabian Nights" it shone resplendent with incredible riches. The stone walls, ten feet high, were carpeted to the top with a mantle of glistening green leaves, among which hung peaches and pears, glorious to the view, rank on rank, such fruit as the American had never thought could exist. On each side of the graveled path down the center were flowering plants, like great bouquets each. Back of them were more fruit-trees, none more than eight feet tall, bearing each a dozen or more amazing apples, as brightly colored as the flowers. Around the trees were vegetables, carrots, salads, cabbages, every specimen as floridly full-leafed and perfect as the incredible pictures Mr. Hale had seen, and disbelieved in, on the front of seed catalogues.
From the other end of the garden, drenched in sunshine, came the humming of bees. Above their heads a climbing rose covering the end of the house sent down a clear, delicate perfume from its hundred flowers.
The American's eyes came back from their inspection of all this and rested with a new expression on his rather snuffy, rather stout and undistinguished host. "Will you please tell Monsieur Réquine from me," he said to his companion, "that I never saw such a garden in my life?"