“Merci, mes amis!” said I. “And I drink to Jean Lafitte and the old days! Perhaps, you may buy a mass for your cousin’s soul?”
“Ah non!” answered the keeper. “Hees soul she’s hout of Purgatoire long hago eef she’ll goin’ get hout. Me, I buy me some net for s’rimp.”
“An’ me, two harpent more lan’ for my farm,” quoth the tender.
“Alas! poor Jean!” said I. “But he was so virtuous a man that he needs no masses after a hundred years, perhaps. As you like. You will take the letters; and this for the telegraph?”
“Certain’! I’ll took it those,” answered the tender. “You’ll stayed for dish coffee, yass?” inquired the keeper, with Cajun hospitality.
“No, I fear it is not possible, thank you,” I replied. “We must be going soon.”
“An’ where you’ll goin’, Monsieur?”
“Around the island, up the channel, up the old oyster-boat channel of Monsieur Edouard. The letters are some of them for Monsieur Edouard himself. And you know well, mes amis, that once we lie at the wharf of Monsieur Edouard, not the government even of the state will touch us yonder?”
“My faith, non! I should say it—certain’ not! No man he’ll mawnkey wit’ Monsieur Edouard, heem! You’ll was know him, Monsieur?”
“We went to school together. We smoked the same pipe.”