Beginning at dawn, an all-day rain rested the travel-wearied lady. But the night cleared and in the forenoon that followed she shopped--for things, she wrote her husband, not to be found elsewhere in the forty-eight States.  
The afternoon she gave to two or three callers, notably¹ to Mrs. Thorndyke-Smith, who was very pleasing every way, but in nothing more than in her praises of the Royal Street coterie². Next morning, in a hired car, she had Castanado and Mme. Dubroca, Beloiseau and Mme. Alexandre, not merely show but, as the ironworker said, pinching forefinger³ and thumb together in the air, "elucidate⁴" to her, for hours, the vieux carré. The day's latter half brought Mlles. Corinne and Yvonne; but Aline--no.
 
"She was coming till the laz' moment," the pair said, "and then she's so bewzy she 'ave to sen' us word, by 'Ector, 'tis impossib' to come--till maybe later. Go h-on, juz' we two."
 
They sat and talked, and rose and talked, and--sweetly importuned--resumed seats and talked, of infant days and the old New Orleans they loved so well, unembarrassed by a maze⁵ of innocent anachronisms, and growingly sure that Aline would come.
 
When at sunset they took leave Mrs. Chester, to their delight, followed to the sidewalk, drifted on by a corner or two, and even turned up Rampart Street, though without saying that it was by Rampart Street her son daily came--walked--from his office. It had two paved ways for general traffic, with a broad space between, where once, the sisters explained, had been the rampart's moat but now ran the electric cars! "You know what that is, rampart? Tha'z in the 'Star-Spangle' Banner' ab-oud that. And this high wall where we're passing, tha'z the Carmelite convent, and--ah! ad the last! Aline! Aline!" Also there was Cupid.
 
The four encountered gayly. "Ah, not this time," Aline said. "I came only to meet my aunts; they had locked the gate! But I will call, very soon."
 
They walked up to the next corner, the sisters confusingly instructing Mrs. Chester how to take a returning street-car. Leaving them, she had just got safely across from sidewalk to car-track when Cupid came pattering after, to bid her hail only the car marked "Esplanade Belt."
 
As he backed off--"Take care!" was the cry, but he sprang the wrong way and a hurrying jitney cast him yards distant, where he lay unconscious and bleeding. The packed street-car emptied.
 
"No, he's alive," said one who lifted him, to the two jitney passengers, who pushed into the throng⁶. "Arm broke', yes, but he's hurt worst in the head."
 
There was an apothecary's shop in sight. They put him and the four ladies into the jitney and sent them there, and the world moved on.
 
At the shop he came to, and presently, in the jitney again, he was blissfully aware of Geoffry Chester on the swift running-board, questioning his mother and Aline by turns. He listened with all his might. Neither the child nor his mistress had seen or heard the questioner since the afternoon he was locked out of the garden.
 
Nearing that garden now, questions and answers suddenly ceased; the child had spoken. Limp and motionless, with his head on Aline's bosom⁷ and his eyes closed, "Don't let," he brokenly said, "don't let him go 'way."
 
To him the answer seemed so long coming that he began to repeat; then Aline said----
 
"No, dear, he shan't leave you."
 
The sisters had telephoned their own physician from the apothecary's shop, and soon, with Cupid on his cot, pushed close to a cool window looking into the rear garden, and the garden lighted by an unseen moon, Mrs. Chester, at the cot's side awaited the doctor's arrival. The restless sisters brought her a tray of rusks and butter and tea, though they would not, could not, taste anything themselves until they should know how gravely the small sufferer--for now he began to suffer--was hurt.
 
"Same time tha'z good to be induztriouz"--this was all said directly above the moaning child--"while tha'z bad, for the sick, to talk ad the bedside, and we can't stay with you and not talk, and we can't go in that front yard; that gate is let open so the doctor he needn' ring and that way excide the patient; and we can't go in the back garden"--they spread their hands and dropped them; the back garden was hopelessly pre-empted.
 
They went to a parlor⁸ window and sat looking and longing⁹ for the front gate to swing. They had posted on it in Corinne's minute writing: "No admittance excep on business. Open on account sickness. S. V. P. Don't wring¹⁰ the belle¹¹!!!"
 
Cupid l............