"You wan' say Agapie stole some'in' in yo' house!" she cried out in a shrill voice, tremulous from passion.
"No; oh no! I'm sure Agapie is an honest girl and we all love her; but you know how children are. It was a small Dresden figure. She may have handled and broken the thing and perhaps is afraid to say so. She may have thoughtlessly misplaced it; oh, I don't know what! I want to ask if she saw it."
"Come in; you got to come in, Ma'me Valtour," stubbornly insisted Seraphine, leading the way into the cabin. "I sen' 'er to de house yistiddy wid some Creole aiggs," she went on in her rasping voice, "like I all time do, because you all say you can't eat dem sto' aiggs no mo.' Yere de basket w'at I sen' 'em in," reaching for an Indian basket which hung against the wall - and which was partly filled with cotton seed.
"Oh, never mind," interrupted Madame Valtour, now thoroughly distressed at witnessing the woman's agitation.
"Ah, bien non. I got to show you, Agapie en't no mo' thief 'an yo' own child'en is." She led the way into the adjoining room of the hut.
"Yere all her things w'at she 'muse herse'f wid," continued Seraphin, pointing to a soapbox which stood on the floor just beneath the open window. The box was filled with an indescribable assortment of odds and ends, mostly doll-rags. A catechism and a blue-backed speller poked dog-eared corners from out of the confusion; for the Valtour children were making heroic and patient efforts toward Agapie's training.
Seraphine cast herself upon her knees before the box and dived her thin brown hands among its contents. "I wan' show you; I goin' show you," she kept repeating excitedly. Madame Valtour was standing beside her.
