"Ah! confidential!" said the little man, in his painful, husky irony. "You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our 'professor' into, eh?"
"Possibly a worse one," replied the amiable Creole.
"And I must be mum, eh?"
"I would prefer."
"Shall I need any instruments? No?"--with a shade of disappointment on his face.
He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street door.
"How are affairs about town?" he asked, as he made some slight preparation for the street.
"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private difficulty between a Creole and an Américain drew instantly half the street together to take sides strictly according to belongings and without asking a question. My-de'-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a war of human acids and alkalies."
They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who drove turned, by Honoré's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it, passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river again and entered the rue Condé. The route was circuitous. They stopped at the carriage-door of a large brick house. The wicket was opened by Clemence. They alighted without driving in.
"Hey, old witch," said the doctor, with mock severity; "not hung yet?"