"I know," replied I; "you propose to make the soul seem to come back and leave us its portrait. I believe you will." Whereupon he gave me his first, faint smile, and detained me with another touch.
"Msieu Smeet; when you was bawn?"
"I? December 9, 1844. Why do you ask?"
"O nut'n'; only I thing you make me luck; nine, h-eighteen, fawty-fo'—I play me doze number' in de lott'ree to-day."
"Why, pshaw! you don't play the lottery, do you?"
"Yass. I play her; why not? She make me reech some of doze day'. Win fifty dollah one time las' year."
The soft voice of the wife spoke up—"And spend it all to the wife of my dead brother. What use him be reech? I think he don't stoff bird' no betteh."
But the husband responded more than half to himself,
"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh."
When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might stand for.