"Yes, I know the skies of Italy, and they're no better. They are bluer and pinker, perhaps, in a more paintable way; but when the sun sets across the Mississippi, especially when we have their dreamy cloud effects, it goes down with variation and splendor unmatched anywhere, I do believe. But," she added with a Frenchy shrug, "you know I am only a river child, and everything belonging to the old muddy stream is dear to me.
"I beg your pardon—what did you ask?" This to a very young man who colored after he had spoken. "Did we ever recover—? Oh, no. Their bodies went with the waters they loved—and it was better so. Certainly, papa used every effort. I hope the current carried them to the sea. She would have liked to have it so, I am sure, dear, dear Mammy Hannah!
"Oh, yes. The little monument on Brake Island is only 'in memory,' as its inscription says."
This was rather thoughtful talk for a girl scarcely eighteen, but Agnes had ever been thoughtful, and by common inheritance—from her mother and her father.
As the scene shifted, and conversation passed to lighter things, and her laughter rippled again as a child's, its range was sometimes startling. It was as brilliant as a waterfall seen in the sun, and often while her fond father watched her, as now, he wondered if, perchance, her laughter might not be prophetic of a great career for which eyes less devoted than his perceived her eminently fitted.
It is beyond the province of this tale of the river to follow Agnes Le Duc through life. Some day, possibly, her story may be fully told; but perhaps a foreshadowing of her future, in one phase of it at least, may be discerned in an intimation let fall by one of the passengers who sat with his companions at a card-table in the fore cabin. At least, they had spent the day there, stopping not even for dinner, and now they were moving away. As they found seats out on the guards, he was saying:
"'Rich!' Well, I would say so! He own all doze plantation around de town of Waterproof, and de strange part is he paid twice for some of dem! Of co'se he could not do such a so-foolish t'ing except he made dat invention. W'en you begin to collec' so much on every one of anyt'ing dat fill a want, you get rich, sure!
"No matter if it jus' one picayune—w'en dey sell enough. Dey say you can make sugar so quick by dat machine he invent—it is like conjuring—a sort of hoodoo!"