A very grateful sip of sweet the laugh was to the all but friendless apothecary, and the embarrassment that rushed in after it may have arisen in part from a conscious casting about in his mind for something--anything--that might prolong her stay an instant.

He opened his lips to speak; but she was quicker than he, and said, in a stealthy way that seemed oddly unnecessary: "You 'ave some basilic ?" She accompanied her words with a little peeping movement, directing his attention, through the open door, to his box of basil, on the floor in the rear room.
Frowenfeld stepped back to it, cut half the bunch and returned, with the bold intention of making her a present of it; but as he hastened back to the spot he had left, he was astonished to see the lady disappearing from his farthest front door, followed by her negress.
"Did she change her mind, or did she misunderstand me ?" he asked himself; and, in the hope that she might return for the basil, he put it in water in his back room.
The day being, as the figures have already shown, an unusually mild one, even for a Louisiana December, and the finger of the clock drawing by and by toward the last hour of sunlight, some half dozen of Frowenfeld's townsmen had gathered, inside and out, some standing, some sitting, about his front door, and all discussing the popular topics of the day.
For it might have been anticipated that, in a city where so very little English was spoken and no newspaper published except that beneficiary of eighty subscribers, the "Moniteur de la Louisiane," the apothecary's shop in the rue Royale would be the rendezvous for a select company of English-speaking gentlemen, with a smart majority of physicians.
The Cession had become an accomplished fact.

With due drum-beatings and act-reading, flag-raising, cannonading and galloping of aides-de-camp, Nouvelle Orleans had become New Orleans, and Louisiane was Louisiana.
This afternoon, the first week of American jurisdiction was only something over half gone, and the main topic of public debate was still the Cession.

Was it genuine?
and, if so, would it stand?
"Mark my words," said one, "the British flag will be floating over this town within ninety days!" and he went on whittling the back of his chair.
From this main question, the conversation branched out to the subject of land titles.

Would that great majority of Spanish titles, derived from the concessions of post-commandants and others of minor authority, hold good?
"I suppose you know what -- -- thinks about it ?" "No." "Well, he has quietly purchased the grant made by Carondelet to the Marquis of -- --, thirty thousand acres, and now says the grant is two hundred _and_ thirty thousand.