"Well, Poussette, I must do the best to stand it that I know how. You and I agree about a good many things. Tell me—do you believe that—that Mr.—that he is really a reformed man, really changed in his habits? And is he going to marry Miss Clairville? You are around with him a good deal; you are likely to know."
"The day is feex," returned Poussette without enthusiasm. "The day is feex, and I am bes' man."
"What do you think about it, though? Don't you think he'll break out again?"
Ringfield's anxious bitter inflections could not escape Poussette. "Ah-ha! Mr. Ringfield, sir—you remember that I wanted Miss Clairville for myself? Bigosh—but I have got over that, fine! Sir, I tell you this, me, a common man—you can get over anything if you make up the mind. Fonny things happens—and now I snap the finger at Mlle. Pauline. Why? Because I feex up things with Mees Cordova even better."
"Mme. Poussette——" began Ringfield.
"Mme. Poussette is come no more here on me at all, I tell you. No more on St. Ignace at all."
"But you cannot marry Miss Cordova, Poussette!"
"I know very well that, Mr. Ringfield, sir. No. For that, sir, I will wait. My wife must die some day! Mees Cordova will wait too; she will ménager here for me, and I will threat her proper—oh! you shall see how I will threat that one!" Poussette seductively nodded his head. "I will threat her proper, sir, like a lady. Mme. Poussette—she may stay with Henry Clairville all the rest of her life! I would not take her back now, for she leave me to go nurse him, and not threat me right. No sir, not threat me, her husband, Amable Poussette, right at all."
"I'm in no mood for these difficult distinctions in morality!" cried
Ringfield in exasperation. "What day is this wedding—tell me that!"
Poussette gave him the day and hour—eleven o'clock in a certain Episcopal church in Montreal on the 24th of December, and then they parted.