“That’s why I didn’t know,” replied Monty humbly. “I never did read much history. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, old man.”
“You didn’t,” answered Leon not very graciously. “I don’t mind.” Then his face cleared, and he smiled. “I do mind, though, Crail, to be honest. You wouldn’t like it yourself if folks thought you were half negro. It’s almost as bad as being called a Cajun.”
“What’s a Cajun?” asked Monty.
“He’s a descendant of the refugees who came to Louisiana from Nova Scotia along about 1765. Acadians, they were called. Evangeline was a Cajun.”
“Was he?”
Leon laughed merrily. “I reckon you don’t know your Longfellow very well, Crail.”
“Oh, I remember. But I don’t think I ever read the whole poem. It—it’s sort of long!”
“Have you ever been in New Orleans?” asked Leon. He made it sound like “N’Orlins.” Monty shook his head, and Leon promptly started off on a glorification of that picturesque city, and Monty, listening at first only politely, but soon with real interest as Leon’s eyes glowed with fervor, and he pictured so plainly that his hearer could almost see them, the life and color and quaintness of a city so foreign to any that Monty had ever known, determined then and there to see New Orleans the very first chance he got, and, above all, to go shooting and fishing on the bayous below the city, those bayous, ablossom with floating water hyacinths and shaded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss, in which alligators and terrapin and snakes dwell amidst the swaying marsh grass, and where Filipinos fish for shrimp and Kanakas and Cajuns and Japanese and Italians and Indian half-breeds are mingled in a strange hodge-podge.
“It’s New Orleans, isn’t it,” asked Monty finally, “where they have Mardi Gras?”
But, to his surprise, Leon spoke belittlingly of Mardi Gras. “It’s all right enough,” he said, “or it used to be. But nowadays the railroads advertise it, and people flock there from all over the country and make nuisances of themselves. And they go away with the notion that all New Orleans is good for is just to hold carnivals. Which isn’t true, because we’ve got one of the livest cities in the country. Why, we export——”