The planter turned with an inquiring frown.
“I’ll trade with you,” said Charlie. The colonel was tempted. “’Ow’ll you trade?” he asked.
“My house for yours.”
The old colonel turned pale with anger. He walked very quickly back, and came close up to his kinsman.
“Charlie,” he said.
“Injin Charlie,” with a tipsy nod.
But by this time self-control was returning. “Sell Belles Demoiselles to you?” he said in a high key, and then laughed, “Ho! ho! ho!” and rode away.
A CLOUD, but not a dark one, overshadowed the spirits of Belles Demoiselles Plantation. The old master, whose beaming presence had always made him a shining Saturn, spinning and sparkling within the bright circle of his daughters, fell into musing fits, started out of frowning reveries, walked often by himself, and heard business from his overseer fretfully.
No wonder. The daughters knew his closeness in trade, and attributed to it his failure to negotiate for the old Charlie buildings, so to call them. They began to depreciate Belles Demoiselles. If a north wind blew, it was too cold to ride. If a shower had fallen, it was too muddy to drive. In the morning the garden was wet. In the evening the grasshopper was a burden. Ennui was turned into capital, every headache was interpreted a premonition of ague, and when the native exuberance of a flock of ladies without a want or a care burst out in laughter in the father’s face, they spread their French eyes, rolled up their little hands, and with rigid wrists and mock vehemence vowed and vowed again that they laughed only at their misery, and should pine to death unless they could move to the sweet city. “Oh, the theater! Oh, Orleans Street! Oh, the masquerade, the Place d’Armes, the ball!” and they would call upon Heaven with French irreverence, and fall into one another’s arms, whirl down the hall singing a waltz, end with a grand collision and fall, and, their eyes streaming merriment, lay the blame on the slippery floor, which some day would be the death of the whole seven.
