In Which We Sail for the Spanish Main

"But it's my Auntie Helen!" he protested, when I recovered it and
placed it in my pocket.

"It is your Auntie fiddlesticks, Jimmy," said I hastily, hoping my
color was not heightened. "It is your grandmother! Finish your
breakfast."

"I guess I ought to know--" he began.

"What!" I rejoined. "Wouldst pit your wisdom against one who has the
second sight; have a care, shipmate."

"It was!" he reiterated. "I know ain't anybody pretty as she is, so it
was."

"Jimmy L'Olonnois," said I, "let us reason about this. I----"

"Lemme see it, then. I can tell in a minute. Why don't you lemme see
it, then?" He was eager.

"Shipmate," I replied to him, "the hand is sometimes quicker than the
eye, and the mind slower than the heart. For that reason I can not
agree to your request."

"But what'd he be doing with Miss Emory's picture, Jimmy?" argued
Lafitte.

"That's what I'd like to know," I added. "It may be that, in your
haste, you have confused in your mind, Jimmy, some portrait with that
of the Princess Amèlie Louise, of Furstenburg." (I had indeed
sometimes commented on the likeness of Helena Emory to that
light-hearted old-world beauty.) Jimmy did not know that a photograph
of the princess herself, also, stood upon the piano top, nor did he
fully grasp the truth of that old saying that the hand is quicker than
the eye. At least, he gazed somewhat confused at the portrait which I
now produced before his eyes.

"Who was she?" he inquired.