God know' dass not de
fault of us."
"Yass," put in his partner, smiling to her needle, "the good God know'
that verrie well." And the pair exchanged a look of dove-like fondness.
"Yass," Manouvrier mused aloud once more, "I think I build my ole woman
one fine house."
"Ah! I don't want!"
"But yass! Foudre tonnerre! how I goin' spend her else? w'iskee? hosses?
women? what da dev'l! Naw, I build a fine 'ouse. You see! she want dat
house bad enough when she see her. Yass; fifty t'ousan' dollah faw house
and twenty-five t'ousan'"--he whisked his thumb at me and I said for him,
"Yes, twenty-five thousand at interest to keep up the establishment."
"Yass. Den if Pastropbon go first to dat boneyard--" And out went his
thumb again, while his hairy lip curled at the grim prospect of beating
Fate the second time, and as badly, in the cemetery, as the first time, in
the lottery.
He built the house--farther down town and much farther from the river.
Both husband and wife found a daily delight in watching its slow rise and
progress. In the room behind the shop he still plied his art and she her
needle as they had done all their married life, with never an inroad upon
their accustomed hours except the calls of the shop itself; but on every
golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before
the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the
pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building
together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with his unsmiling face.
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