Hannibal swung into a lilting solo air, embroidering effortlessly as January lowered his throbbing arms to his thighs to rest. Like a bird answering a slightly drunk muse, Jacques took up the thread of music on his cornet. Uncle Bichet came in third on the cello, the round lenses of his spectacles flashing in the gaslight, an odd contrast to the tribal scarring on his thin old face. At intervals in his harangue against those who conspired to ruin the local real estate market with rumors of plague, Pritchard watched them dourly; watched, too, the unobtrusive door to the back stairs.

January wished the Colonel buried alive in graveyard dust.

"Lemonade only, you understand?" January heard him say to Aeneas, when after a purgatorial eternity of heat and tobacco stench and aching muscles the clock at last sounded two. "Mrs.

Pritchard will be over in the kitchen to weigh up the leftover chicken and pastries. I don't want the lot of you gorging on them or passing them out to those musicians. And I won't have them wasted. Mrs. Pritchard..."

His voice lifted in a preemptory yap. His wife-who might have been presumed to have earned a little privilege on the night of her own birthday ball-turned with a sigh from the farewell embraces of her friends.

"He's quite right," said the Widow Redfern, who had wormed her way-Mr. Greenaway doglike in tow-into the Creole group of ladies. "I find one always has to count the champagne bottles after a party, and measure the sugar. It's really quite prudent of your husband..."

"Am?ricaines," murmured Madame Jumon, flashing a humorous grimace as she kissed Mrs.