Mr. Rilleau's gloom thickened, and he, too, ordered the famous Bourbon.
He sighed.
"I'd have done the same thing; I offered to, and I'm no hero. I suppose that ends us. It's a great disappointment, though. I hoped—during Carnival week that she'd—Well, I wanted her for my real queen."
Bernie undertook to clap the speaker on the shoulder and admonish him to buck up; but his eye was wavering and his aim so uncertain that he knocked off Mr. Rilleau's hat. With due apologies he ran on:
"She couldn't have been queen at all, only for him. He made it possible."
"I had as much to say about it as he did."
Bernie whispered: "He lent me the money, y'understand? It was all right, under the circumstances, everything being settled but the date, y'understand?"
Rilleau rose at last, saying: "You're all to be congratulated. He is the best fellow in New Orleans, and there's only one man I'd rather see your sister marry than him; that's me. Now I'm going to select a present before the rush commences. What would you think of an onyx clock with gold cupids straddling around over it?"
"Fine! I'm sorry, old man—I like you, y'understand?" Bernie upset his chair in rising to embrace his friend, then catching sight of August Kulm, who entered at the moment, he made his way to him and repeated his explanations.
Mr. Kulm was silent, attentive, despairing, and spoke vaguely of suicide, whereupon Dreux set himself to the task of drowning this Teutonic instinct in the flowing bowl.
"I don't know what has happened to the boys," Myra Nell complained to Norvin, on the second day after his arrival. "Lecompte was going to read me the Rubaiyat, and Raymond Cline promised me a bunch of orchids; but nobody has shown up."