And before the year ended Harlson had the Ninth Ward so that it couldn't bolt him under any ordinary circumstances.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THEIR FOOLISH WAYS.
It is, as I have said so often, but the simple story of two friends of mine I am trying to tell, but I wish I had more gift in that direction. I wish I could paint, just as an artist with brush and colors reproduces something, the home life in the house where much of my time was spent. I can but give a mechanical idea of what it was, but to me it was very pleasant.
A very shrewd politician Jean became, after the famous contest in which the Ninth Ward aided us to victory, and we were accustomed to consult her on the social bearings of many a struggle. In case she became too arbitrary on any occasion Grant had fallen into the way of calling the Ape, and asking him to remove her, whereupon the youth would carry off his small mother in his arms and insist that, as he put it, from a childhood expression, with a long "a," she "'have herself." There was ever this quality of the whimsical about life in this home. And I am inclined to believe that the world is better for such a flavor.
The children, were well grown now, the family was rounded out, and Grant's mustache, gray when he was forty, was now grayer still, though Jean's brown hair showed yet no glint of silver. I asked one day after dinner, when we two were idling and smoking in the library, and Jean was hovering about, if she hadn't a gray hair yet, and Grant said no, without hesitation, though the lady herself seemed less assured. Then happened a curious thing, at least to me. I asked Grant how he knew so well, if even his wife, who, being a woman and fair to look upon, would be naturally apprehensive of any change in aspect, could not tell if a gray hair had come, and he but laughed at me. "Come here, Jean," he said.
She came and stood, beside him, close to me.
"Alf," said he, "I have a vast opinion of you, but there are some things I imagine you do not comprehend. You should have blended your life with that of some such creature as this, and you would have developed a new faculty. Now I close my eyes. Ask me anything about her—I don't mean about her dress, but about her head or hands, all you can see of the real woman."
I accepted the challenge, and there was great sport, and a little-great result. I made the inquest a most searching and minute affair. I asked him to tell me if there were any mark upon the neck, near one ear, and he described the precise locality and outline of a tiny brown fleck, no larger than a pin's head. He told of any little dimple, of any sweep of the downward growth of the brown hair, of any trifling scar from childhood. And of her chin and neck he told the very markings, in a way that was something wonderful. His eyes were closed, and his face was turned away from us, but this made no difference. He described to me even the character of the wonderful network in the palms of her little hands. Then he opened his eyes and turned to me, chaffingly:
"You see how ignorant is a man of your sort. Having no world worth speaking of, he knows nothing of geography."