(Such was his name.) "I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on a stack of Bibles that high!" "Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!" This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.
"Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.
"Honore!" called Sylvestre, rising up.

Two or three persons passed the call around the corner of the veranda.
Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm.

By the time he arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.
"Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written in English," said Sylvestre.
"Well ?" "It is not true, is it ?" "Yes." The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory "Ah!" except Honore's mother.

She turned upon him a look of silent but intense and indignant disappointment.
"Honore!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, "Honore!" But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of girls.
"Honore!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a boot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee ?'" There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.
"Ask Valentine," said Honore.
Everybody laughed aloud.

That taciturn man's only retort was to survey the company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to push the ashes slowly from his cigar with his little finger.