"But the demoiselle wishes to appear a boy, _un petit garcon_?" she
inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was old
and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning fork, and her
eyes were sharp as talons in their grasping glance.
"Mademoiselle does not wish such a costume," gruffly responded Mephisto.
"_Ma foi_, there is no other," said the ancient, shrugging her
shoulders. "But one is left now, mademoiselle would make a fine
troubadour."
"Flo," said Mephisto, "it's a dare-devil scheme, try it; no one will
ever know it but us, and we'll die before we tell. Besides, we must;
it's late, and you couldn't find your crowd."
And that was why you might have seen a Mephisto and a slender troubadour
of lovely form, with mandolin flung across his shoulder, followed by a
bevy of jockeys and ballet girls, laughing and singing as they swept
down Rampart Street.
When the flash and glare and brilliancy of Canal Street have palled upon
the tired eye, and it is yet too soon to go home, and to such a prosaic
thing as dinner, and one still wishes for novelty, then it is wise to go
in the lower districts. Fantasy and fancy and grotesqueness in the
costuming and behavior of the maskers run wild.
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