new garments which he wears to-night. Few knew how many weary hours she labored for them in the floating houses upon the Seine. But she is in love with Pisgah, and is quite oblivious of the general regard; for, strange to such grand occasions, she has both eaten and imbibed enormously, and it may be even doubted at present whether she sees anything at all.

She strokes his cloth coat with her red, swollen hands, and proposes now and then that he shall visit the wardrobe to look after his new hat; but Pisgah only passes his arm about her, and drains his absinthe, and sometimes, as if to reassure the company, shouts wildly at the wrong places: "'At's so, boys!"[Pg 47] "Hoorah for you!" "Ay! capital, gen'l'men, capital!" And his partner, conscious that something has happened, laughs to her waist, and leans forward, quite overcome, as if she beheld something mirthful over her washboard.

[Pg 47]

The place was now quite dreamy with tobacco-smoke; Freckle was riotously sick at the window, and Andy Plade, who had been borrowing small sums from everybody who would lend, struck the table with a corkscrew, and called for order.

"Drire rup!" cried Mr. Freckle, looking very attentively, but seeing nothing.

"I have the honor to state, gentlemen of the Colony, that we have with us to-night an eloquent representative of our country—one whose business energy and enterprise have been useful both to his own fortunes and to the South—one who is a friend of yours, and more than a dear friend to me. We came from the same old Palmetto State, the first and the last ditch of our revolution. I give you a toast, gentlemen, to which Mr. Hugenot will respond:

"'The Mother Country and the Colony—good luck to both!'"

"Hoorah for you!" cried Pisgah, looking the wrong way.

The glasses rattled an instant, amid iterations of "Hear! hear!" and Mr. Hugenot, rising, as it appeared from a bandbox, carefully surveyed himself in a mirror opposite, and touched his nose with a small nosegay.

"I feel, my friends, rather as your host than your guest to-night—"[Pg 48]

[Pg 48]

("It isn't yesternight"—from Freckle—"it's to-morroer night.")

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