THE GOODNESS OF SAINT
ROCQUE
Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the
lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy spring that
comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept swiftly down
Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her heavy
veil as if she feared she was being followed. If you had peered under the
veil, you would have seen that Manuela\'s dark eyes were swollen and
discoloured about the lids, as though they had known a sleepless, tearful
night. There had been a picnic the day before, and as merry a crowd
of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you could see boarded
the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way wheezily out wide
Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered bayous, to Milneburg-onthe-
Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a thing to be remembered for
ever. One charters a rickety-looking, weather-beaten dancing-pavilion,
built over the water, and after storing the children--for your true Creole
never leaves the small folks at home--and the baskets and mothers
downstairs, the young folks go up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best
band you ever heard. For what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar, a
cornet, and a bass viol to trip the quadrille to at a picnic?