Meantime the Chapdelaines had been but a moment alone when more visitors rang--a pair! Their feet could be seen under the gate--two male, two female--that is not a land where women have men's feet. Flattering, fluttering adventure--five callers in one afternoon! "Aline, we are becoming a public institution!" The aunts sprang here, there, and into collision; Cupid sped down the walk; Marie Madeleine stood in the door.
And who were these but the dear De l'Isles!
"No," they would not come inside. "But, Corinne, Yvonne, Aline, run, toss on hats for a trip to Spanish Fort."
One charm of that trip is that the fare is but, five cents, and the crab gumbo no dearer than in town. "Come! No-no-no, not one, but the three of you. In pure compassion on us! For, as sometimes in heaven among cherubim, we are ennuyés of each other!"
The small half-hourly electric train in Rampart Street had barely started lakeward into Canal, with the De l'Isle-Chapdelaine five aboard and the sun about to set, when Geoffry Chester entered--and stopped before monsieur, stiff with embarrassment. Nevertheless that made them a glad six, and, as each seat was for two, the two with life before them took one.
XXIII
The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on.
"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved, clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers."
"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"