fyxmll Winivmlti^iim^ 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PS 2025.C4 1874 
 
 3 1924 022 220 747 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. Illustrated by 
 HOPPIN. 12mo. $2.00. 
 
 SUBURBAN SKETCHES. Illustrated by Hop- 
 pin. 1 vol. 12mo. $2.00. 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 1 vol. 12mo. $2.00. 
 
 ITALIAN JOURNEYS. 1 vol. 12mo. $2.00 
 
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 \* For sale by ail Booksellers Senty post-paid^ on receipt of 
 price by the Fublishers, 
 
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 124 Tremokt Street, Boston 
 

 He felt a Mnd passed carelessly through his arm. Page ^.' 
 
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 BT 
 
 WILLIAM. D.^OWELLS. 
 
 ILLUSTMATED BY WILLIAM L. S3EPPABD. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 Late Ticknok & Fields, and Fields, Ossood, & Company. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congrws, in the year 1873; by 
 
 JA3IES R. OSQOOD A5D COHPANT, 
 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 RIVEBSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 8TEEE0TTPED AND PEIKTED BY 
 
 U. W. HOUOBTON ASD COMPAST- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 — »— 
 
 Page 
 I. Up the Saguenat 13 
 
 II. Mbs. Eijjsos's Lutlb Mancecvke .... 46 
 
 III. On the Wat back to Quebec 73 
 
 rV. Ms. Aebutos's Inspiration 90 
 
 V. Me. Aebuton makes himself ageeeable . , . 104 
 
 TI. A Letter of Kitty's 124 
 
 Vri. Love's' TouNG Deeam .141 
 
 Till. Next Moening .^60 
 
 rx. Mr. AEBnTOs's Infatuation 180 
 
 X. Mr. Aebuton speaks 193 
 
 XI. Krmr answers 202 
 
 XII. The Picnic at Chateau-Bigot 216 
 
 XIII. Oedeal 238 
 
 XrV. Afteewaeds 269 
 
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 He felt a hand passed caeelessly theough 
 
 HIS AEM 31 
 
 And fainted in his aems .... 58 
 
 The .gaeden of the Uesuline Convent . 94 
 
 Hee peeson swayed feom side to side . 118. 
 " No, I won't, Fanny," answeeed the young 
 
 GIEL 155 
 
 "Miss Ellison, I 've blitndeeed in youe 
 
 name" 228 
 
 She stood and watched him walk away 263 
 
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 
 
A OHAE'OE AOQUAINTAN'OE. 
 
 UP THE SAGTJENAT. 
 
 S***t^* 
 
 
 
 ■^:4:^g,fe^ 
 
 On the forward promenade of 
 the Saguenay boat which had 
 been advertised to leave Quebec 
 at seven o'clock on Tuesday morn- 
 ing, Miss Kitty Ellison sat tran- 
 quilly expectant of the joys which 
 its departure should bring, and 
 tolerantly patient of its delay ; for if all the Saguenay 
 had not been in promise, she would have thought it the 
 
14 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 greatest happiness just to have that prospect of the 
 St. Lawrence and Quebec. The sun shone with a 
 warm yellow light on the Upper Town, wifeh its gir- 
 dle of gray wall, and on the red flag that drowsed 
 above the citadel, and was a friendly lustre on the 
 tinned roofs of the Lower Town ; while away off to 
 the south and east and west wandered the purple 
 hills and the farmlit plains in such dewy shadow 
 and effulgence as would have been enough to make 
 the heaviest heart. glad. Near at hand the river was 
 busy with every kind of craft, and in the distance 
 was mysterious with silvery vapors ; little breaths 
 of haze, like an ethereal colorless flame, exhaled 
 from its surface, and it all glowed with a lovely 
 inner radiance. In the middle distance a black ship 
 was heaving anchor and setting sail, and the voice 
 of the seamen came soft and sad and yet wildly 
 hopeful to the dreamy ear of the young girl, whose 
 soul at once went round the world before the ship, 
 and then made haste back again to the promenade 
 of the Saguenay boat. She sat leaning forward a 
 little with her hands fallen into her lap, letting her 
 unmastered thoughts play as they would in memo- 
 ries and hopes around the consciousness that she 
 was the happiest girl in the world, and blest beyond 
 desire or desert. To have left home as she had 
 done, equipped for a single day at Niagara, and 
 then to have come adventurously on, by grace of her 
 cousin's wardrobe, as it were, to Montreal and Que- 
 bec ; to be now going up the Saguenay, and finally. 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 15 
 
 to be destined to return home by way of Boston and 
 New York; this was more than any one human 
 being had a right to ; and, as she had written home 
 to the girls, she felt that her privileges ought to be 
 divided up among all the people of Eriecreek. She 
 was very grateful to Colonel Ellison and Fanny for 
 affording her these advantages ; but they being now 
 out of sight in pursuit of state-rooms, she was not 
 thinking of them in relation to her pleasure in the 
 morning scene, but was rather regretting the ab- 
 sence of a lady with whom they had travelled from 
 Niagara, and to whom she imagined she would that 
 moment like to say something in praise of the pros- 
 pect. This lady was a Mrs. Basil March of Bos- 
 ton ; and though it was her wedding journey and 
 her husband's presence ought to have absorbed her, 
 she and Miss Kitty had sworn a sisterhood, and 
 were pledged to see each other before long at Mrs. 
 March's home in Boston. In her absence, now, 
 Kitty thought what a very charming person she 
 was, and wondered if all Boston people were really 
 like her, so easy and friendly and hearty. In her 
 letter she had told the girls to tell her Uncle Jack 
 that he had not rated Boston people a bit too high, 
 if she were to judge from Mr. and Mrs. March, and 
 that she was sure they would help her as far as 
 they could to carry out his instructions when she got 
 to Boston. 
 " These instructions were such .as might seem pre- 
 posterous if no more particular statement in regard 
 
16 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 to her Uncle Jack were made, but will be imagin- 
 able enough, I hope, when he is a little described. 
 The EUisons were a West Virginia family who had 
 wandered up into a corner of Northwestern New 
 York, because Dr. ElHson (rmceremoniously known 
 to Kitty as Uncle Jack) was too much an abolitionist 
 to live m a slaveholding State with safety to him- 
 self or comfort to his neighbors. Here his family of 
 three boys and two girls had grown up, and hither 
 in time had come Kitty, the only child of his young- 
 est brother, who had gone first to Illinois and thence, 
 from the pretty constant adversity of a country 
 editor, to Kansas, where he joined the Free State 
 party and fell in one of the border feuds. Her 
 mother had died soon after, and Dr. Ellison's heart 
 bowed itself tenderly over the orphan. She was 
 something not only dear, but sacred to him as the 
 child of a martyr to the highest cause on earth ; and 
 the love of the whole family encompassed her. One 
 of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she 
 was yet very little, and . she had grown up among 
 them as their youngest sister ; but the doctor, from 
 a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place 
 of his brother in her childish thought, would not let 
 her call him father, and in obedience to the rule 
 which she soon began to give their love, they all 
 turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet 
 the EUisons, though they loved their little cousin, 
 did not spoil her, — neither the doctor, nor his great 
 grown-up sons whom she knew as the boys, nor his 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 17 
 
 daughters whom she called the girls, though they 
 were well-nigh women when she came to them. 
 She was her uncle's pet and most intimate friend, 
 riding with him on his professional visits till she be- 
 came as familiar a feature of his equipage as the 
 doctor's horse itself ; and he educated her in those 
 extreme ideas, tempered by humor, which forriied 
 the character of himselE and his family. They loved 
 Kitty, and played with her, and laughed at her when 
 she needed ridiculing; they made a jest of their 
 father on the one subject on which he never jested, 
 and even the anti-slavery cause had its droll points 
 turned to the light. They had seen danger and 
 trouble enough at different times in its service, but 
 no enemy ever got more amusement out of it. 
 Their house was a principal entrepdt of the under- 
 ground railroad, and they were always helping anx- 
 ious travellers over the line ; but the boys seldom 
 came back from an excursion to Canada without ad- 
 ventures to keep the family laughing for a week ; 
 and they made it a serious business to study the 
 comic points of their beneficiaries, who severally lived 
 in the family records by some grotesque mental or 
 physical trait. They had an irreverent name among 
 themselves for each of the humorless abolition lec- 
 turers who unfailingly abode with them on their 
 rounds ; and these brethren and sisters, as they 
 called them, paid with whatever was laughable in 
 them for the substantial favors they received. 
 
 Miss Kitty, having the same natural bent, began 
 
 2 
 
18 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 even as a child to share in these harmless reprisals, 
 and to look at life with the same wholesomely fan- 
 tastic vision. But she remembered one abolition 
 visitor of whom none of them made fun, but treated 
 with a serious distinction and regard, — an old 
 man with a high, narrow forehead, and thereon a 
 thick upright growth of gray hair ; who looked at 
 her from under bushy brows with eyes as of blue 
 flame, and took her on his knee one night and 
 sang to her " Blow ye the trumpet, blow ! " He 
 and her uncle had been talking of some indefinite, 
 far-off place that they called Boston, in terms that 
 commended it to her childish apprehension as very 
 little less holy than Jerusalem, and as the home 
 of all the good and great people outside of Pales- 
 tine. 
 
 In fact, Boston had always been Dr. Ellison's 
 foible. In the beginning of the great anti-slavery 
 agitation, he had exchanged letters (corresponded, 
 he used to say) with John Quincy Adams on the 
 subject of Lovejoy's murder ; and he had met 
 several Boston men at the Free Soil Convention in 
 Buffalo in 1848. " A little formal perhaps, a little 
 reserved," he would say, " but excellent men ; 
 polished, and certainly of sterling principle : " 
 which would make his boys and girls laugh, as 
 they grew older, and sometimes provoke them to 
 highly colored dramatizations of the formality of 
 these Bostonians in meeting their father. The' 
 years passed and the boys went West, and when 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 19 
 
 the war came, they took service in Iowa and 
 Wisconsin regiments. By and by the President's 
 Proclamation of freedom to the slaves reached 
 Eriecreek while Dick and Bob happened both to 
 be home on leave. After they had allowed their 
 sire his rapture, " Well, this is a great blow for 
 father," said Bob ; " what are you going to do now, 
 father ? Fugitive slavery and all its charms blot- 
 ted out forever, at one fell swoop. Pretty rough 
 on you, isn't it ? No more men and brothers, no 
 more soulless oligarchy. Dull lookovit, father." 
 
 " Oh no," insinuated one of the girls, " there's 
 Boston." 
 
 " Why, yes," cried Dick, " to be sure there is. 
 The President hasn't abolished Boston. Live for 
 Boston." 
 
 And the doctor did live for an ideal Boston, 
 thereafter, so far at least as concerned a never- 
 rehnquished, never-fulfilled purpose of some day 
 making a journey to Boston. But in the mean 
 time there were other things ; and at present, since 
 the Proclamation had given him a country worth 
 living in, he was ready to honor her by studying her 
 antiquities. In his youth, before his mind had been 
 turned so strenuously to the consideration of slav- 
 ery, he had a pretty taste for the mystery of the 
 Mound Builders, and each of his boys now returned 
 to camp with instructions to note any phenomena 
 that would throw light upon this interesting sub- 
 ject. They would have abundant leisure for re- 
 
20 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 search, since the Proclamation, Dr. Ellison insisted, 
 practically ended the war. 
 
 The Mound Builders were only a starting-point 
 for the doctor. He advanced from them to his- 
 torical times in due course, and it happened that 
 when Colonel Ellison and his wife stopped off at 
 Eriecreek on their way East, in 1870, they found 
 him deep in the history of the Old French War. 
 As yet the colonel had not intended to take the 
 Canadian route eastward, and he escaped without 
 the charges which he must otherwise have received 
 to look up the points of interest at Montreal and 
 Quebec connected with that ancient struggle. He 
 and his wife carried Kitty with them to see Niag- 
 ara (which she had never seen because it was so 
 near) ; but no sooner had Dr. Ellison got the 
 dispatch announcing that they would take Kitty 
 on with them down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, 
 and bring her home by way of Boston, than he sat 
 down and wrote her a letter of the most compre- 
 hensive character. As far as concerned Canada 
 his mind was purely historical ; but when it came 
 to Boston it was strangely re-abolitionized, and 
 amidst an ardor for the antiquities of the place, his 
 old love for its humanitarian preeminence blazed 
 up. He would have her visit Faneuil Hall because 
 of its Revolutionary memories, but not less because 
 "Wendell Phillips had there made his first anti- 
 slavery speech. She was to see the collections of 
 the Massachusetts Historical Society, and if pos- 
 
tnP THE SAGUENAY. 21 
 
 sible certain points of ancient colonial interest 
 which he named; but at any rate she was some-^ 
 how to catch sight of the ai^hor of the " Biglo-w^ 
 Papers," of Senator Sumner, of Mr. Whittier, of 
 Dr. Howe, of Colonel Higginson, and of* Sir. 
 Garrison. These peop^ were aU Bostonians to 
 the idealizing remo™nesS of Dr. Ellison, and he 
 could not well conceive of them asunder. He per- 
 haps imagined fliat Kittv was more likely to see 
 them together than separately ; and perhaps in- 
 deed they were less actual persons, to his admira- 
 tion, than so many figures of a grand historical 
 composition. Finally, " I want you to remember, 
 my dear child," he wrote, " that in Boston you are 
 not only in the birthplace of American liberty^ 
 but the yet holier scene of its resurrection. There 
 everything that is noble and grand and liberal and 
 enlightened in the national life has originated, and 
 I cannot doubt that you will find the character of 
 its people marked by every attribute of a magnani- 
 mous democracy. If I could envy you anything, 
 my dear girl, I should envy you this privilege of 
 seeing a city where man is valued simply and 
 solely for what he is in himseK, and where color, 
 wealth, family, occupation, and other vulgar and 
 meretricious distinctions are wholly lost sight of 
 in the consideration of individual excellence." 
 
 Kitty got her uncle's letter the night before 
 starting up the Saguenay, and quite too late for 
 compliance with his directions concerning Quebec ; 
 
22 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 but she resolved that as to Boston his wishes should 
 ie fulfilled to the utmost limit of possibility. She 
 ^ew that nice Mr. Mfirch must be acquainted with 
 some of those very people. Kitty had her uncle's 
 letter in her pocket, and she was just going to 
 take it out and read it again, when something else 
 attracted her notice. ^ ■ 
 
 The boat had been advertised to leave at seven 
 o'clock, and it was now half past. A party of 
 English people were paci^ somewhat impatiently 
 up and down before Kitty, for it had been made 
 known among the passengers (by that subtle pro- 
 cess through which matters of pubhc interest trans- 
 pire in such places) that breakfast would not be 
 served till the boat started, and these English peo- 
 ple had the appetites which go before the admirable 
 digestions of their nation. But they had also the 
 good temper which does not so certainly accompany 
 the insular good appetite. The man in his dashing 
 Glengarry cap and his somewhat shabby gray suit 
 took on one arm the plain, jolly woman who seemed 
 to be his wife, and on the other, the amiable, hand- 
 some young girl who looked enough like him to be 
 his sister, and strode rapidly back and forth, saying 
 that they must get up an appetite" for breakfast. 
 This made the women laugh, and so he said it 
 again, which made them laugh so much that the 
 elder lost her balance, and in regaining it twisted 
 off her high shoe heel, which she briskly tossed 
 into the river. But she sat down after that, and 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 23 
 
 the three were presently intent upon the Liverpool 
 steamer which was just arrived and was now gliding 
 up to her dock, with her population of passengers 
 thronging her quarter-deck. 
 
 " She's from England ! " 'said the husband, ex- 
 pressively. 
 
 " Only fancy ! "' answered the wife. " Give me 
 the glass, Jenny." Then, after a long survey of 
 the steamer, she added, "Fancy her being from 
 England ! " They aU^ooked and said nothing 
 for two or three minutes, when the wife's mind 
 turned to the delay of their own boat and of break- 
 fast. " This thing," she said, with that air of utter- 
 ing a novelty which the English cast about their 
 commonplaces, — " this thing doesn't start at seven, 
 you know." 
 
 " No," replied the younger woman, " she waits 
 for the Montreal boat." 
 
 " Fancy her being from England ! " said the 
 other, whose eyes and thoughts had both wandered 
 back to the Liverpool steamer. 
 
 " There's the Montreal boat now, comin' round 
 the point," cried the husband. " Don't you see the 
 steam ? " He pointed with his glass, and then 
 studied the white cloud in the distance. " No, by 
 Jove ! it's a saw-mill on the shore." 
 
 " Oh, Harry ! " sighed both the women, reproach- 
 fully. 
 
 " Why, deuce take it, you know," he retorted, 
 " I didn't turn it into a saw-mUl. It's been a saw- 
 mill all along, I fancy." 
 
24 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Half an hour later, when the Montreal boat came 
 in sight, the women would have her a saw-mill till 
 she stood in full view in mid-channel. Their own 
 vessel paddled out into the stream as she drew near, 
 and the two bumped and rubbed tpgether tiU a 
 gangway plank could be passed from one to the 
 other. A very well dressed young man stood ready 
 to get upon the Saguenay boat, Avith a porter beside 
 him bearing his substantial valise. No one else ap- 
 parently was coming aboard. 
 
 The English people looked upon him for an in- 
 stant with wrathful ey^s, as they hung over the rail 
 of the promenade. " Upon my word," said the 
 elder of the women, " have we been waitin' all this 
 time for one man? " 
 
 " Hush, Edith," answered the younger, " it's an 
 Englishman." And they all three mutely recog- 
 nized the right of an Englishman to stop, not only 
 the boat, but the whole solar system, if his ticket 
 entitled him to a passage on any particular planet, 
 while Mr. Miles Arbuton of Boston, Massachusetts, 
 passed at his ease from one vessel to the other. He 
 had often been mistaken for an Englishman, and the 
 error of those spectators, if he had known it, would 
 not have surprised him. Perhaps it might have 
 softened his judgment of them as he sat facing them 
 at breakfast; but he did not know it, and he 
 thought them three very common English people 
 with something professional, as of public singing or 
 acting, about them. The young girl wore, instead 
 
UP THE SAGUENAT. 25 
 
 of a travelling-suit, a vivid light blue dress ; and 
 over her sky-blue eyes and fresh cheeks a glory of 
 corn-colored hair lay in great braids and masses. It 
 was magnificent, but it wanted distance ; so near, it 
 was almost harsh. Mr. Arbuton's eyes fell from 
 the face to the vivid blue dress, which was not quite 
 fresh and not quite new, and a glimmer of cold dis- 
 missal came into them, as he gave himself entirely 
 to the slender merits of the steamboat breakfast. 
 
 He was himself, meantime, an object of interest 
 to a young lady who sat next to the English party, 
 and who glanced at him from time to time, out of 
 tender gray eyes, with a furtive play of feeling upon 
 a sensitive face. To her he was that divine possi- 
 bility which every young man is to every young 
 maiden ;' and, besides, he was invested with a halo 
 of romance as the gentleman with the blond mus- 
 tache, whom she had seen at Niagara the week be- 
 fore, on the Goat Island Bridge. To the pretty 
 matron at her side, he was exceedingly handsome, 
 as a young man may frankly be to a young matron, 
 but not otherwise comparable to her husband, the 
 full-personed, good-humored looking gentleman who 
 had just added sausage to the ham and eggs on his 
 plate. He was handsome, too, but his full beard 
 was reddish, whereas Mr. Arbuton's mustache was 
 flaxen ; and his dress was not worn with that scru- 
 pulosity with which the Bostonian bore his clothes ; 
 there was a touch of slovenliness in him that 
 scarcely consorted with the alert, ex-military air of 
 
26 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 some of his movements. " Good-looking young 
 John Bull," he thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, 
 and then thought no more about him, being no more 
 self -judged before the supposed Englishman than he 
 would have been before so much Frenchman or 
 Spaniard. Mr. Arbuton, on the other hand, if he 
 had met an Englishman so well dressed as himself, 
 must at once have arraigned himself, and had him- 
 self tacitly tried for his personal and national differ- 
 ence. He looked in his turn at these .people, and 
 thought he should have nothing to do with them, in 
 spite of the long-lashed gray eyes. 
 
 It was not that they had made the faintest ad- 
 vance towards acquaintance. Or that the choice of 
 knowing them or not was with Mr. Arbuton ; but 
 he had the habit of thus protecting himself from the 
 chances of life, and a conscience against encouraging 
 people whom he might have to drop for reasons of 
 society. This was sometimes a sacrifice, for he was 
 not past the age when people take a lively interest 
 in most other human beings. When breakfast was 
 over, and he had made the tour of the boat, and 
 seen all his fellow-passengers, he perceived that he 
 could have little in common with any of them, and 
 that probably the journey would require the full 
 exercise of that tolerant spirit in which he had un- 
 dertaken a branch of summer travel in his native 
 land. 
 
 The rush of air against the steamer was very raw 
 and chill, and the forward promenade was left 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 27 
 
 almost entirely to the English professional people, 
 who walked rapidly up and down, with jokes and 
 laughter of their kind, while the wind blew the girl's 
 hair in loose gold about her fresh face, and twisted 
 her blue drapery tight about her comely shape. 
 When they got out of breath they sat down beside 
 a large American lady, with a great deal of gold 
 filling in her front teeth, and presently rose again 
 and ran races to and from the bow. Mr. Arbuton 
 turned away in displeasure. At the stem he found 
 a much larger company, most of whom had fur- 
 nished themselves with novels and magazines from 
 the stock on board, and were drowsing over them. 
 One gentleman was 'reading aloud to three ladies 
 the newspaper account of a dreadful shipwreck ; 
 other ladies and gentlemen were coming and going 
 forever from their stat«-rooms, as the wont of some 
 is ; others yet sat with closed eyes, as if having 
 come to see the Saguenay they were resolved to see 
 nothing of the St. Lawrence on the way thither, 
 but would keep their vision sacred to the wonders 
 of the former river. 
 
 Yet the St. Lawrence was worthy to be seen, as 
 even Mr. Arbuton ovmed, whose way was to shght 
 American sceneiy, in distinction froni his country- 
 men who boast it the finest in the world. As you 
 leave Quebec, with its mural-crowned and castled 
 rock, and drop down the stately river, presently 
 the snowy fall of Montmorenci, far back in its 
 purple hollow, leaps perpetual avalanche into the 
 
28 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 abyss, and then you are abreast of the beautiful 
 Isle of Orleans, whose low shores, with their ex- 
 panses of farmland, and their groYes of pine and 
 
OT THE SAGUENAT. 29 
 
 oak, are still as lovely as when the wild grape 
 festooned the primitive forests and won from the 
 'easy rapture of old Cartier the name of Me of Bac- 
 chus. For two hours farther down the river either 
 shore is bright and populous with the continuous 
 villages of the habitans, each clustering about its 
 slim-spired church, in its shallow vale by the water's 
 edge, or lifted in more eminent picturesqueness 
 upon some gentle height. The banks, nowhere 
 lofty or abrupt, are such as in a southern land some 
 majestic river might flow between, wide, slumbrous, 
 open to all the heaven and the long day till the 
 very set of sun. • But no starry palm glasses its 
 crest in the clear cold green from these low brinks ; 
 the pale birch, slender and delicately fair, mirrors 
 here the wintry whiteness of its boughs ; and this 
 is the sad great river of the awful North. 
 
 Gradually, as the day wore on, the hills which 
 had shrunk almost out of sight on one hand, and 
 on the other were dark purple in the distance, 
 drew near the shore, and at one point on the north- 
 em side rose almost from the water's edge. The 
 river expanded into a lake before them, and in their 
 lap some cottages, and half-way up the hillside, 
 among the stuntrf pines, a much-galleried hotel 
 proclaimed a resort of fashion in the heart of what 
 seemed otherwise a wilderness. Indian huts sheathed 
 in birch-bark nestled at the foot of the rocks, which 
 were rich in orange and scarlet stains ; out of the 
 tops of the huts curled the blue smoke, and at the 
 
30 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 door of one stood a squaw in a flame-red petticoat ; 
 others in bright shawls squatted about on the rocks, 
 each' with a circle of dogs and papooses. But all 
 this warmth of color only served, like a winter sun? 
 set, to heighten the chilly and desolate sentiment 
 of the scene. The light dresses of the ladies on the 
 veranda struck cold upon the eye ; in the faces of 
 the sojourners who lounged idly to the steamer's 
 landing-place, the passenger could fancy a sad 
 resolution to repress their tears when the boat 
 should go away and leave them. She put off two 
 or three old peasant-women who were greeted by 
 other such on the pier, as if returned from a long 
 journey ; and then the crew discharged the vessel 
 of a prodigious freight of onions which formed 
 the sole luggage these old women had brought from 
 Quebec. Bale after bale of the pungent bulbs 
 was borne ashore in the careful arms of the deck- 
 hands, and counted by the owners ; at last order 
 was given to draw in the plank, when a passionate 
 cry burst from one of the old women, who extended 
 both hands with an imploring gesture towards the 
 boat. A bale of onions had been left aboard ; a 
 deck-hand seized it and ran quickly ashore with it, 
 and then back again, followed .,by the benedictions 
 of the tranquilized and comforted beldam. The 
 gay sojourners at Murray Bay controlled their 
 grief, and as Mr. Arbuton turned from them, the 
 boat, pushing out, left them to their fashionable 
 desolation. She struck across to the southern shore, 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 31 
 
 to land passengers for Cacouna, a watering-place 
 greater than Murray Bay. The tide, which rises 
 fifteen feet at Quebec, is the impulse, not the savor 
 of the sea ; but at Cacouna the water is salt, and 
 the sea-bathing lacks nothing but the surf ; and 
 hither resort in great numbers the Canadians who 
 fly their cities during the fierce, brief fever of the 
 northern summer. The watering-place village and 
 hotel is not in sight from the landing, but, as at 
 Murray Bay, the sojourners thronged the pier, as 
 if the arrival of the steamboat were the great 
 event of their day. That afternoon they were in 
 unusual force, having come on foot and by omnibus 
 and calash ; and presently there passed down through 
 their ranks a strange procession with a band of mu- 
 sic leading the way to the steamer. 
 
 "It's an Indian wedding," Mr. Arbuton heard 
 one of the boat's oflicers saying to the gentleman 
 with the ex-military air, who stood next him beside 
 the rail ; and now, the band having drawn aside, 
 he saw the bride and groom, — the latter a com- 
 mon, stolid-faced savage, and the former pretty and 
 almost white, with a certain modesty and sweetness 
 of mien. Before them went a young American, 
 with a jaunty Scotch cap and a visage of supernat- 
 ural gravity, as the master of ceremonies which 
 he had probably planned; arm in arm with him 
 walked a portly chieftain in black broadcloth, pre- 
 posterously adorned on the breast with broad flat 
 disks of silver in two rows. Behind the bridal 
 
32 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 couple came the whole village in pairs, men and 
 •women, and children of all ages, even to brown 
 babies in arms, gay in dress and indescribably seri- 
 ous in demeanor. They Avere mated ' in some sort 
 according to years and size ; and the last couple 
 were young fellows paired in an equal tipsiness. 
 These reeled and wavered along the pier ; and when 
 
 the other wedding guests 
 "' '^'"^ crowned the day's festiv- 
 
 ity by going aboard the 
 steamer, they followed 
 dizzily downa the gang- 
 way. Midway they 
 lurched heavily ; the 
 spectators gave a cry; 
 but they had happily 
 lurched in opposite direc- 
 tions ; their grip upon 
 each other's arms held, 
 and a forward stagger 
 launched them victori- 
 ously aboard in a heap. They had scarcely dis- 
 appeared from sight, when, having as it were in- 
 stantly satisfied their curiosity concerning the boat, 
 the other guests began to go ashore in due order. 
 Mr. Arbuton waited in a slight anxiety to see 
 whether the tipsy couple could repeat their ma- 
 noeuvre successfully on an upward incline ; and 
 they had just appeared on the gangway, when he 
 felt a hand passed carelessly and as if unconsciously 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 33 
 
 through his aain, and at the same moment a voice 
 said, " Those are a pair of disappointed lovers, I 
 suppose." 
 
 He looked round and perceived the young lady 
 of the party he had made up his mind to have 
 nothing to do with, resting one hand on the rail, 
 and sustaining herself with the other passed through, 
 his arm, while she was altogether intent upon the 
 scene below. The ex-military gentleman, the head 
 of the party, and apparently her kinsman, had 
 stepped aside without her knowing, and she had 
 unwittingly taken Mr. Arbuton's arm. So much 
 was clear to him, but what he was to do was not 
 so plain. It did not seem quite his place to tell 
 her of her mistake, and yet it seemed a piece of 
 unfairness not to do so. To leave the matter alone, 
 however, was the simplest, safest, and pleasantest ; 
 for the pressure of the pretty figure lightly thrown 
 upon his arm had something agreeably confiding 
 and appealing in it. So he waited till the young 
 lady, turning to him for some response, discovered 
 her error, and disengaged herself with a face of 
 mingled horror and amusement. Even then he had 
 no inspiration. To speak of the mistake in tones 
 of compliment would have been grossly out of place ; 
 an explanation was needless ; and to her munnured 
 excuses, he could only bow silently. She flitted 
 into the cabin, and he walked away, leaving the 
 Indians to stagger ashore as they might. His arm 
 seemed stiU to sustain that elastic weight, and a 
 
34 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 voice haunted his ear with the words, " A pair of 
 disappointed lovers, I suppose ; " and still more 
 awkward and stupid he felt his own part in the 
 affair to be ; though at the same time he was not 
 without some obscure resentment of the young girl's 
 mistake as an intrusion upon him. 
 v It was late twilight when the boat reached Ta- 
 doussac, and ran into a sheltered cove under the 
 shadow of uplands on which a quaint village perched 
 and dispersed itself on a country road in summer 
 cottages ; above these in turn rose loftier heights of 
 barren sand or rock, with here and there a rank of 
 sickly pines dying along their sterility. It had been 
 harsh and cold all day when the boat moved, for it 
 was running full in the face of the northeast ; the 
 river had widened almost to a sea, growing more 
 and more desolate, with a few lonely islands break- 
 ing its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and 
 lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat- 
 topped blufEs thickly overgrown with stunted ever- 
 greens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of 
 the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered 
 by rounded heights of rock, steals down from the 
 north out of regions of gloomy and ever-during 
 solitude. This is the Saguenay ; and in the cold 
 evening light under which the traveller approaches 
 its mouth, no landscape could look more forlorn 
 than that of Tadoussac, where early in the six- 
 teenth century the French traders fixed their iirst 
 post, and where still the oldest church north of 
 Florida is standing. * 
 
UP THE SAGUENAT. 35 
 
 The steamer lies here five hours, and supper was 
 no sooner over than the passengers went ashore in 
 the gathering dusk. Mr. Arbuton, guarding his 
 distance as usual, went too, with a feeling of sur- 
 prise at his own concession to the popular impulse. 
 He was not without a desire to see the old church, 
 wondering in a half-compassionate way what such a, 
 bit of American antiquity would look like ; and he 
 had perceived since the little embarrassment at 
 Cacouna that he was a discomfort to the young lady 
 involved by it. He had caught no gUmpse of her 
 till supper, and then she had briefly supped with an 
 air of such studied unconsciousness of his presence 
 that it was plain she was thinking of her mistake 
 every moment. "'Well, I'll leave her the freedom 
 of the boat while we stay," thought Mr. Arbuton 
 as he went ashore. He had not the least notion 
 whither the road led, but like the rest he followed 
 it up through the village, and on among the cottages 
 which seemed for the most part empty, and so down 
 a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far be- 
 neath the tremulous rustic bridge, he heard the 
 mysterious crash and fall of an unseen torrent. 
 Before him towered the shadowy hills up into the 
 starless night ; he thrilled with a sense of the lone- 
 liness and remoteness, and he had a formless wish 
 that some one qualified by the proper associations 
 and traditions were there to share the satisfaction 
 he felt in the whole effect. At the same instant he 
 was once more aware of tha^ delicate pressure, that 
 
36 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 weight so lightly, sweetly borne upon his arm. It 
 startled him, and again he followed the road, which 
 with a sudden turn brought him in sight of a hotel 
 and in sound of a bowling-alley, and therein young 
 ladies' cackle and laughter, and he wondered a little 
 scornfully who could be spending the summer there. 
 A bay of the river loftily shut in by rugged hills lay 
 before him, and on the shore, just above high-tide, 
 stood what a wandering shadow told him was the 
 ancient church of Tadoussac. The windows were 
 faintly tinged with red as from a single taper burn- 
 ing within, and but that the elements were a little 
 too bare and simple for one so used to the rich effects 
 of the Old World, Mr. Arbuton might have been 
 touched by the vigil which this poor, chapel was still 
 keeping after three hundred years in the heart of 
 that gloomy place. While he stood at least toler- 
 ating its appeal, he heard voices of people talking 
 in the obscurity near the church door, which they 
 seemed to have been vainly trying for entrance. 
 " Pity we can't see the inside, isn't it ? " 
 " Yes ; but I am so glad to see any of it. Just 
 think of its having been built in the seventeenth 
 century ! " 
 
 " Uncle Jack would enjoy it, wouldn't he ? " 
 " Oh yes, poor Uncle Jack ! I feel somehow as if 
 I were cheating him out of it. He ought to be here 
 in my place. But I do like it ; and, Dick, I don't 
 know what I can ever say or do to you and Fanny 
 for bringing me." 
 
UP THE SAGUENAT. 37 
 
 " Well, Kitty, postpone the subject till you can 
 think of the right thing. We're in no hurry." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton heard a shaking of the door, as of a 
 final attempt upon it before retreat, and then the 
 voices faded into inarticulate sounds in the dark- 
 ness. They were the voices, he easily recognized, 
 of the young lady who had taken his arm, and of 
 that kinsman of hers, as he seemed to be. He 
 blamed himself for having not only overheard 
 them, but for desiring to hear more of their talk, 
 and he resolved to follow them back to the boat at a 
 discreet distance. But they loitered so at every 
 point, or he unwittingly made such haste, that hei 
 had overtaken them as they entered the lane be-^ 
 tween the outlying cottages, and he could not help 
 being privy to their talk again. 
 
 " Well, it may be old, Kitty, but I don't think it's 
 lively." 
 
 "It isrCt exactly a whirl of excitement, I must 
 confess." 
 
 " It's the deadliest place I ever saw. Is that a 
 swing in front of that cottage ? No, it's a gibbet. 
 Why, they've all got 'em ! I suppose they're for 
 the summer tenants at the close of the season. 
 What a rush there would be for them if the boat 
 should happen to go off and leave her passengers ! " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton thought this rather a coarse kind of 
 drolling, and strengthened himself anew in his reso- 
 lution to avoid those people. 
 
 They now came in sight of the steamer, where in 
 
38 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 the cove she lay illumined with all her lamps, and 
 through every -window and door and crevice was 
 bursting with the ruddy light. Her brilliancy con- 
 trasted vividly with the obscurity and loneliness of 
 the shore, where a few lights glimmered in the vil- 
 lage houses, and under the porch of the village store 
 some desolate idlers — habitans and half-breeds — 
 had clubbed their miserable leisure. Beyond the 
 steamer yawned the wide vacancy of the greater 
 river, and out of this gloomed the course of the Sa- 
 guenay. 
 
 " Oh, I hate to go on board ! " said the young 
 lady. " Do you think he's got back yet ? It's per- 
 fect misery to meet him." 
 
 " Never mind, Kitty. He probably thinks you 
 didn't mean anything by it. I don't believe you 
 would have taken his arm if you hadn't supposed it 
 was mine, any way." 
 
 She made no answer to this, as if too much over- 
 come by the true state of the t.ase to be troubled by 
 its perversion. Mr. Arbuton, foUovsdng them on 
 board, felt himself in the unpleasant character of 
 persecutor, some one to be shunned and escaped by 
 every manoeuvre possible to self-respect. He was to 
 be the means, it appeared, of spoiHng the enjoyment 
 of the voyage for one who, he inferred, had not often 
 the opportunity of such enjoyment. He had a will- 
 ingness that she should think well and not ill of 
 him ; and then at the bottom of all was a sentiment 
 of superiority, which, if he had given it shape, 
 
UP THE SAGUENAY. 39- 
 
 would have been noilegse oblige. Some action was 
 due to himself as a gentleman. 
 
 The young lady went to seek the matron of the 
 party, and left her companion at the door of the 
 saloon, wistfully fingering a cigar in one hand, and 
 feeling for a match with the other. Presently he 
 gave himseK a clap on the waistcoat which he had 
 found empty, and was turning away, when Mr. Ar- 
 bnton said, offering his own lighted cigar, " May I 
 be of use to you ? " 
 
 The other took it with a hearty, " Oh yes, thank 
 you ! " and, with many inarticulate murmurs of sat- 
 isfaction, lighted his cigar, and returned Mr. Ar- 
 buton's with a brisk, half-military bow. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton looked at him narrowly a moment. 
 " I'm afraid," he said abruptly, " that I've most un- 
 luckily been the cause of annoyance to one of the 
 ladies of your party. It isn't a thing to apologize 
 for, and I hardly know how to say that I hope, if 
 she's nofMready forgotten the matter, she'U do so." 
 Saying this, Mr. Arbuton, by an impulse which he 
 would have been at a loss to explain, offered his 
 card. 
 
 His action had the effect of frankness, and the 
 other took it for cordiality. He drew near a lamp, 
 and looked at the name and street address on the 
 card, and then said, " Ah, of Boston ! My name is 
 Ellison; I'm of Milwaukee, Wisconsin." And he 
 laughed a free, trustful laugh of good companionship. 
 " Why yes, my cousin's been tormenting herself 
 
40 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 about her mistake the whole afternoon; but of 
 course it's all right, you know. Bless my heart ! it 
 was the most natural thing in the world. Have you 
 been ashore ? There's a good deal of repose about 
 Tadoussac, now; but it must be a lively place in 
 winter! Such a cheerful lookout from these cot- 
 tages, or that hotel over yonder ! "We went over to 
 see if we could get into the little old church ; the pur- 
 ser told me there are some lead tablets there, left by 
 Jacques Cartier's men, you know, and dug up in the 
 neighborhood. I don't think it's likely, and I'm bear- 
 ing up very well under the disappointment of not get- 
 ting in. I've done my duty by the antiquities of the 
 place ; and now I don't care how soon we are off." 
 
 Colonel Ellison was talking in the kindness of his 
 heart to change the subject which the younger gen- 
 tleman had introduced, in the belief, which would 
 scarcely have pleas^ed the other, that he was much 
 embarrassed. His good-nature went still further ; 
 and when his cousin returned presently, with Mrs. 
 Ellison, he presented Mr. Arbuton to the ladies, and 
 then thoughtfully made Mrs. Ellison walk up and 
 down the deck with him for the exercise she would 
 not take ashore, that the others might be left to 
 deal with their vexation alone. 
 
 " I'm very sorry, Miss Ellison," said Mr. Arbu- 
 ton, " to have been the means of a mistake to you 
 to-day." 
 
 " And I was dreadfully ashamed to make you the 
 victim of my blunder," answered Miss Ellison peni- 
 
UP THE SAGUEXAT. 41 
 
 tently ; and a little silence ensued. Then as if she 
 had suddenly been able to alienate the case, and see 
 it apart from herself in its unmanageable absurdity, 
 she broke into a confiding laugh, very like her 
 cousiu's, and said, " Why, it's one of the most hope- 
 less things I ever heard of. I don't see what in the 
 world can be done about it." 
 
 " It is rather a difficult matter, and I'm not pre- 
 pared to say myself. Before I make up my mind 
 I should like it to happen again." 
 
 Mr. Axbuton had no sooner made this speech, 
 which he thought neat, than he was vexed with 
 himself for having made it, since nothing was fur- 
 ther from his purpose than a flirtation. But the 
 dark, vicinity, the young girl's prettiness, the ap- 
 parent freshness and reliance on his sympathy from 
 which her frankness came, were too much : he tried 
 to congeal again, and ended in some feebleness about 
 the scenery, which was indeed very lonely and wild, 
 after the boat started up the Saguenay, leaving the 
 few lights of Tadoussac to blink and fail behind her. 
 He had an absurd sense of being alone in the world 
 there with the young lady ; and he suffered himself 
 to enjoy the situation, which was as perfectly safe 
 as anything could be. He and Miss Ellison had 
 both come on from Niagara, it seemed, and they 
 talked of that place, she consciously withholding the 
 fact that she had noticed Mr. Arbuton there ; they 
 had both come down the Rapids of the St. Law- 
 rence, and they had both stopped a day in Montreal. 
 
42 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 These common experiences gave them a surprising 
 interest for each other, which was enhanced by the 
 discovery that their experiences differed thereafter, 
 and that whereas she had passed three days at Que- 
 bec, he, as we know, had come on directly from 
 Montreal. 
 
 " Did you enjoy Quebec very much, Miss Elli- 
 son ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, indeed ! It's a beautiful old town, with 
 everything in it that I had always read about and 
 never expected to see. You know it's a walled 
 city." 
 
 " Yes. But I confess I had forgotten it. till this 
 morning. Did you find it all that you expected a 
 walled city to be ? " 
 
 " More, if possible. There were some Boston 
 people with us there, and they said it was exactly 
 like Europe. They fairly sighed over it, and it 
 seemed to remind them of pretty nearly everything 
 they had seen abroad. They were just married." 
 
 " Did that make Quebec look like Europe ? " 
 
 " No, but I suppose it made them willing to see 
 it in the pleasantest light. Mrs. March — that was 
 their name — wouldn't allow me to say that I en- 
 joyed Quebec, because if I hadn't seen Europe, I 
 couldn't properly enjoy it. ' You may thinh you 
 enjoy it,' she was always saying, ' but that's merely 
 fancy.' Still I cling to my delusion. But I don't 
 know whether I cared more for Quebec, or the beau- 
 tiful little villages in the country all about it. The 
 
UP THE SAGUENAT. 43 
 
 whole landscape looks just like a dream of ' Evange- 
 line.' " 
 
 " Indeed ! I must certaialy stop at Quebec. I 
 should like to see an American landscape that put 
 one in mind of anything. What can your imagina- 
 tion do for the present scenery ? " 
 
 " I don't thiok it needs any help from me," re- 
 plied the young girl, as if the tone of her compan- 
 ion had patronized' and piqued her. She turned as 
 she spoke and looked up the sad, lonely river. The 
 moon was making its veiled face seen through the 
 gray heaven, and touching the black stream with 
 hints of melancholy Hght. On either hand the im- 
 inhabitable shore rose in desolate grandeur, friend- 
 less heights of rock with a thin covering of pines 
 seen in dim outline along their tops and deepening 
 into the solid dark of hollows and ravines upon their 
 sides. The cry of some vnld bird struck through 
 the silence of which the noise of the steamer had 
 grown to be a part, and echoed away to nothing. 
 Then from the saloon there came on a sudden the 
 notes of a song ; and Miss Ellison led the way 
 within, where most of the other passengers were 
 grouped about the piano. The English girl with 
 the corn-colored hair sat, in ravishing picture, at 
 the instrument, and the commonish man and his 
 very plain wife were singing with heavenly sweet- 
 ness together. 
 
 " Isn't it beautiful ! " said Miss Ellison. " How 
 nice it must be to be able to do such things ! " 
 
44 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 "Yes? do you think so? It's rather public," 
 answered her companion. 
 
 "When the English people had ended, a grave, 
 elderly Canadian gentleman sat down to give what 
 he believed a comic song, and sent everybody dis- 
 consolate to bed. 
 
 "Well, Kitty?" cried Mrs. EUison, shutting 
 herself inside the young lady's state-room a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " Well, Fanny ? " 
 
 " Isn't he handsome ? " 
 
 " He is, indeed." 
 
 " Is he nice ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Sweet ? " 
 
 " Jce-cream," said Kitty, and placidly let herself 
 be kissed an enthusiastic good night. Before Mrs. 
 Ellison slept she wished to ask her husband one 
 question. 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Should you want Kitty to marry a Bostonian ? 
 They say Bostonians are so cold." 
 
 " What Bostonian has been asking Kitty to 
 marry him ? " 
 
 " Oh, how spiteful you are ! I didn't say any 
 had. But if there should ? " 
 
 " Then it'll be time to think about it. You've 
 married Kitty right and left to everybody who's 
 looked at her since we left Niagara, and I've wor- 
 ried myself to death investigating the character of 
 
DP THE SAGUENAY. 45 
 
 her husbands. Now I'm not going to do it any 
 longer, — till she has an offer." 
 
 " Very well. Tou can depreciate your own 
 cousin, if you Hke. But I know what I shall do. 
 I shall let her wear all my best things. How for- 
 tunate it is, Richard, that we're exactly of a size ! 
 Oh, I am so glad we brought Kitty along ! If she 
 should marry and settle down in Boston — no, I 
 hope she could get her husband to live in New 
 York " — 
 
 " Go on, go on, my dear ! " cried Colonel Elli- 
 son, with a groan of despair. " Kitty has talked 
 twenty-five minutes with this young man about the 
 hotels and steamboats, and of course he'll be round 
 to-morrow morning asking my consent to marry her 
 as soon as we can get to a justice of the peace. My 
 hair is gradually turning gray, and I shaE be bald 
 before my time ; but I don't mind that if you find 
 any pleasure in these little hallucinations of yours. 
 Go on ! " 
 
II. 
 
 MKS. BLUSON S LITTLE MANCEUVKE. 
 
 >--v. 
 
 The next morning our tourists found themselves 
 at rest in Ha-Ha Bay, at the head of navigation for 
 the larger steamers. The long line of sullen hills 
 had fallen away, and the -morning sun shone warm 
 
 on what in a 
 friendlier cli- 
 mate would 
 have been a 
 very lovely 
 landscape. The 
 bay was an ir- 
 regular ovs^, 
 with shores 
 that rose in 
 bold but not 
 lofty heights on 
 one side, while 
 on the other lay a narrow plain with two villages 
 clinging about the road that followed the crescent 
 beach, and lifting each the slender tin-clad spire of 
 its church to sparkle in the sun. 
 
 At the head of the bay was a mountainous top, 
 and along its waters were masses of rocks, gayly 
 
MRS. Ellison's little maxceuvre. 47 
 
 painted with lichens and stained with metallic tints 
 of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of 
 stunted pines was the only forest in sight, though 
 Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port, and some 
 schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous 
 pine plank. The steamboat-wharf was all astir with 
 the hveliest toil and leisure. The boat was taking 
 on wood, which was brought in wheelbarrows to the 
 top of the steep, smooth gangway-planking, where 
 the habitant in charge planted his broad feet for the 
 downward sHde, and was hurled aboard more or less 
 en masse by the fierce velocity of his heavy-laden 
 wheelbarrow. Amidst the confusion and hazard of 
 this feat a procession of other habitans marched, 
 aboard, each one bearing under his arm a coffin- 
 shaped wooden box. The rising fear of Colonel 
 EUisou, that these boxes represented the loss of the 
 whole infant population of Ha-Ha Bay, was checked 
 by the reflection that the region could not have pro- 
 duced so many children, and cahned altogether by 
 the purser, who said that they were full of huckle- 
 berries, and that Colonel Ellison could have as 
 many as "he liked for fifteen cents a bushel. This 
 gave him a keen sense of the poverty of the land, 
 and he bought of the boys who came aboard such 
 abundance of wild red raspberries, in all manner of 
 birch-bark canoes and goblets and cornucopias, that 
 he was obliged to make presents of them to the very 
 dealers whose stock he had exhausted, and he was 
 in treaty with the local haK-wit — very fine, with a 
 
48 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 hunchback, and a massive wen on one side of his 
 head — to take charity in the wild fruits of his na- 
 tive province, when the crowd about him was gently 
 opened by a person who advanced with a flourishing 
 bow and a sprightly " Good morning, good morning, 
 sir!" "How do you do?" asked Colonel Elli- 
 son ; but the other, intent on business, answered, 
 " I am the only person at Ha-Ha Bay who speaks 
 English, and I have come to ask if you would not 
 like to make a promenade in my horse and buggy 
 upon the mountain before breakfast. You shall be 
 gone as long as you will for one shilling and six- 
 pence. I will show you all that there is to be seen 
 about the place, and the beautiful view of the bay 
 from the top of the mountain. But it is elegant, 
 you know, I can assure you." 
 
 The speaker was so fluent of his English, he had 
 such an audacious, wide-branching mustache, such 
 a twinkle in his left eye, — which wore its lid in a 
 careless, slouching fashion, — that the heart of man 
 naturally clove to him ; and Colonel Ellison agreed 
 on the spot to make the proposed promenade, for 
 himself and both his ladies, of whom he went joy- 
 fully in search. He found them at the stern of the 
 boat, admiring the wild scenery, and looking 
 
 " Fresh as the mom and as the season fair." 
 
 He was not a close observer, and of his wife's ward- 
 robe he had the ignorance of a good husband, who, 
 as soon as the pang of paying for her dresses is past, 
 
MBS. Ellison's little man(euvbe. 49 
 
 forgets whatever she has ; but he could not help 
 seeing that some gayeties of costume which he had 
 dimly associated with his wife now enhanced the 
 charms of his cousin's nice little face and figure. A 
 scarf of lively hue carelessly tied about the throat to 
 keep off the morning chill, a prettier ribbon, a more 
 styHsh jacket than Miss Ellison owned, — what do 
 I know ? — an air of preparation for battle, caught 
 the colonel's eye, and a conscious red stole respon- 
 sive into Kitty's cheek. 
 
 " Kitty," said he, " don't you let yourself be 
 made a goose of." 
 
 " I hope she won't — by you ! " retorted his wife, 
 " and I'll thank you. Colonel Ellison, not to be a 
 Betty, whatever you are. I don't think it's manly 
 to be always noticing ladies' clothes." 
 
 " Who said anything about clothes ? " demanded 
 the colonel, taking his stand upon the letter. 
 
 " WeU, don't you, at any rate. Yes, I'd like to 
 ride, of all things ; and we've time enough, for 
 breakfast isn't ready till half past eight. Where's 
 the carriage ? " 
 
 The only English scholar at Ha-Ha Bay had 
 taken the Hght wraps of the ladies and was moving 
 off with them. " This way, this way," he said, 
 waving his hand towards a larger number of ve- 
 hicles on the shore than could have been reasonably 
 attributed to Ha-Ha Bay. " I hope you won't 
 object to having another passenger with you ? 
 There's plenty of room for all. He seems a very 
 4 
 
50 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 nice, gentlemanly person," said he, -with a queer, 
 patronizing graciousness which he had no doubt 
 caught from his English patrons. 
 
 " The more the merrier," answered Colonel Elli- 
 son, and " Not in the least ! " said his wife, not 
 meaning the proverb. Her eye had swept the 
 whole array of vehicles and had found them all 
 empty, save one, in which she detected the blame- 
 lessly coated back of Mr. Arbuton. But I ought 
 perhaps to explain Mrs. Ellison's motives better 
 than they can be made to appear in her conduct. 
 She cared nothing for Mr. Arbuton ; and she had 
 no logical wish to see Kitty in love with him. But 
 here were two young people thrown somewhat ro- 
 mantically together ; Mrs. Ellison was a born match- 
 maker, and to have refrained from promoting their 
 better acquaintance in the interest of abstract mat- 
 rimony was what never could have entered into her 
 thought or desire. Her whole being closed for the 
 time about this purpose ; her heart, always warm 
 towards Kitty, — whom she admired with a sort of 
 generous frenzy, — expanded with all kinds of 
 lovely designs ; in a word, every dress she had she 
 would instantly have bestowed upon that worshipful 
 creature who was capable of adding another mar- 
 riage to the world. I hope the reader finds nothing 
 vulgar or unbecoming in this, for I do not ; it was 
 an enthusiasm, pure and simple, a beautiful and un- 
 selfish abandon ; and I am sure men ought to be 
 sorry that they are not worthier to be favored by it. 
 
MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANCEUVKE. 51 
 
 Ladies hare often to lament in the midst of their 
 finesse that, really, no man is deserving the fate 
 they devote themselves to prepare for him, or, in 
 other words, that women cannot marry women. 
 
 I am not going to be so rash as try to depict 
 Mrs. Ellison's arts, for then, indeed, I should make 
 her appear the clumsy conspirator she was not, and 
 should merely convict myself of ignorance of such 
 matters. Whether Mr. Arbuton was ever aware of 
 them, I am not sure : as a man he was, of course, 
 obtuse and blind ; but then, on the other hand, he 
 had seen far more of the world than Mrs. EUison, 
 and she may have been clear as day to him. Prob- 
 ably, though, he did not detect any design ; he 
 could not have conceived of such a thing in a person 
 with whom he had been so irregularly made ac- 
 quainted, and to whom he felt himself so hopelessly 
 superior. A film of ice such as in autumn you find 
 casing the still pools early in the frosty mornings 
 had gathered upon his manner over night ; but it 
 thawed under the greetings of the others, and he 
 jumped actively out of the vehicle to offer the ladies 
 their choice of seats. When aU was arranged he 
 found himself at Mrs. Ellison's side, for Kitty had 
 somewhat eagerly climbed to the front seat with the 
 colonel. In these circumstances it was pure zeal 
 that sustained Mrs. Ellison in the flattering con- 
 stancy with which she babbled on to Mr. Arbuton 
 and refrained from openly resenting Kitty's con- 
 tumacy. 
 
52 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 As the wagon began to ascend the hill, the road 
 was so rough that the springs smote together with 
 pitiless jolts, and the ladies uttered some irrepressible 
 moans. " Never mind, my dear," said the colonel, 
 turning about to his wife, " we're got all the English 
 there is at Ha-Ha Bay, any way." Whereupon the 
 driver gave him a wink of sudden liking and good- 
 fellowship. At the same time his tongue was loosed, 
 and he began to talk of himself. " You see my 
 dog, how he leaps at the horse's nose? He is a 
 moose-dog, and keeps himself in practice of catching 
 the moose by the nose. You ought to come in the 
 hunting season. I could furnish you with Indians 
 and everything you need to hunt with. I am a 
 dealer in wild beasts, you know, and I must keep 
 prepared to take them." 
 
 " Wild beasts ? " 
 
 " Yes, for Barnum and the other showmen. I deaJ 
 in deer, wolf, bear, beaver, moose, cariboo, wild- 
 cat, link" — 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Link — link ! You say deer for deers, and link 
 for lynx, don't you ? " 
 
 " Certainly," answered the unblushing colonel. 
 " Are there many link about here ? " 
 
 " Not many, and they are a very expensive ani- 
 mal. I have been shamefully treated in a link that 
 I have sold to a Boston showman. It was a difficult 
 beast to take ; bit my Indian awfully ; and Mr. Doo- 
 little would not give the price he promised." 
 
MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANCEUVRE. 53 
 
 " What an outrage 1 " 
 
 " Yes, but it was not so bad as it might have 
 been. He wanted the money back afterwards ; the 
 link died in about two weeks," said the dealer in 
 wild animals, with a smile that curled his mus- 
 tache into his ears, and a glance at Colonel Ellison. 
 " He may have been bruised, I suppose. He may 
 have been homesick. Perhaps he was never a very 
 strong link. The link is a curious animal, miss," he 
 said to Kitty, in conclusion. 
 
 They had been slowly climbing the mountain road, 
 from which, on either hand, the pasture-lands fell 
 away in long, irregular knolls and hollows. The 
 tops were quite barren, but in the little vales, de- 
 spite the stones, a short grass grew very thick and 
 tenderly green, and groups of kine tinkled their soft 
 bells in a sweet, desultory assonance as they cropped 
 the herbage. Below, the bay filled the oval of the 
 hills with its sunny expanse, and the white steamer, 
 where she lay beside the busy wharf, and the black 
 lumber-ships, gave their variety to the pretty scene, 
 which was completed by the picturesque villages on 
 the shore. It was a very simple sight, but somehow 
 very touching, as if the soft spectacle were but a 
 respite from desolation and solitude ; as indeed it 
 was. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton must have been talking of travel 
 elsewhere, for now he said to Mrs. Ellison, " This 
 looks like a bit of Norway ; the bay yonder might 
 very well be a fjord of the Northern sea." 
 
64 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Mrs. Ellison murmured her sense of obligation to 
 the bay, the fjord, and Mr. Arbuton, for their com- 
 plaisance, and Kitty remembered that he had some- 
 what snubbed her the night before for attributing any 
 suggestive grace to the native scenery. " Then 
 you've really found something in an American land- 
 scape. I suppose we ought to congratulate it," she 
 said, in smiling enjoyment of her triumph. 
 
 The colonel looked at her with eyes of humorous 
 question ; Mrs. Ellison looked blank ; and Mr. Ar- 
 buton, having quite forgotten what he had said to 
 provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and an- 
 swered nothing ; for he had this trait also in common 
 with the sort of Englishman for whom he was taken, 
 that he never helped out your conversational ven- 
 ture, but if he failed to respond inwardly, left you 
 with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as 
 it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very 
 evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally 
 look like a blundering attack upon him. But just 
 then the driver came to her rescue ; he said, " Gen- 
 tlemen and ladies, this is the end of the mountain 
 promenade," and, turning his horse's head, drove 
 rapidly back to the village. 
 
 At the foot of the hill they came again to the 
 church, and his passengers wanted to get out and 
 look into it. " Oh, certainly," said he, " it isn't fin- 
 ished yet, but you can say as many prayers as you 
 like in it.',' 
 
 The church was decent and clean, like most Ca- 
 
MRS. Ellison's little man(euvbe. 65 
 
 nadian cEurches, and at this early hour there was a 
 good number of the villagers at their devotions. 
 The lithographic pictures of the stations to Calvary 
 were, of course, on its walls, and there was the ordi- 
 nary tawdriness of paint and carving about the high 
 altar. 
 
 " I don't like to see these things," said Mrs. Elli- 
 son. " It really seems to savor of idolatry. Don'ti 
 you think so, Mr. Arbuton ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know. I doubt if they're the sort 
 of people to be hurt by it." 
 
 " They need a good stout faith in cold climates, I 
 can tell you," said the colonel. " It helps to keep 
 them warm. The broad church would be too full 
 of draughts up here. They want something snug 
 and tight. Just imagine one of these poor devils 
 listening to a liberal sermon about birds and fruits 
 and flowers and beautiful sentiments, and then driv- 
 ing home over the hills with the mercury thirty 
 degrees below zero ! He couldn't stand it." 
 
 "Yes, yes, certainly," said Mr. Arbuton, and 
 looked about him with an eye of cold, uncompas- 
 sionate inspection, as if he were trying it by a stand- 
 ard of taste, and, on the whole, finding the poor little 
 church vulgar. 
 
 When they mounted to their places' again, the 
 talk fell entirely to the colonel, who, as his wont 
 was, got what information he could out of the driver. 
 It appeared, in spite of his theory, that they 
 were not all good Catholics at Ha-Ha Bay. " This 
 
66 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 chap, for example," said the Erenchman, touching 
 himself on the breast and using the slang he must 
 have picked up from American travellers, "is no 
 Catholic, — not much! He has made too many- 
 studies to care for religion. There's a large French 
 party, sir, in Canada, that's opposed to the priests 
 and in favor of annexation." 
 
 He satisfied the colonel's utmost curiosity, dis- 
 coursing, as he drove by the log-built cottages which 
 were now and then sheathed in birch bark, upon 
 the local affairs, and the character and history of 
 such of his feUow-villagers as they met. He knew 
 the pretty girls upon the street, and saluted them by 
 name, interrupting himself with these courtesies in 
 the lecture he was giving the colonel on life at Ha- 
 Ha Bay. There was only one brick house (which 
 he had built himself, but had been obliged to sell in 
 a season unfavorable for -wild beasts), and the other 
 edifices dropped through the social scale to some 
 picturesque barns thatched with straw. These he 
 excused to his Americans, but added that the un- 
 gainly thatch was sometimes useful in saving the 
 lives of the cattle toward the end of an unusually 
 long, hard winter. 
 
 " And the people," asked the colonel, " what do 
 they do in the winter to pass the time ? " 
 
 "Draw the wood, smoke the pipe, court the 
 ladies. But wouldn't you like to see the inside 
 of one of our poor . cottages ? I shall be very 
 proud to have you look at mine, and to have you 
 
MRS. Ellison's little manoeuvre. 57 
 
 driiik a glass of milk from my cows. I am sorry 
 that I cannot offer you brandy, but there's none 
 to be bought in the place." 
 
 "Don't speak of it! For an eye-opener there 
 is nothing like a glass of milk," gayly answered 
 the colonel. 
 
 They entered the best room of the house, — 
 wide, low-ceiled, dimly lit by two small windows, 
 and fortified against the winter by a huge Canada 
 stove of cast-iron. It was rude but neat, and had 
 an air of decent comfort. Through the window 
 appeared a very little vegetable garden with a bor- 
 der of the hardiest flowers. " The large beans 
 there," explained the host, " are for soup and coffee. 
 My com," he said, pointing out some rows of dwarf- 
 ish maize, " has escaped the early August frosts, 
 and so I expect to have some roasting-ears yet this 
 summer." 
 
 " Well, it isn't exactly what you'd call an inviting 
 climate, is it ? " asked the colonel. 
 
 The Canadian seemed a hard little man, but he 
 answered now with a kind of pathos, " It's cruel ! 
 I came here when it was all bush. Twenty years 
 I have lived here, and it has not been worth while. 
 If it was to do over again, I should rather not live 
 anywhere, I was bom in Quebec," he said, as if 
 to explain that he was used to mild climates, and 
 began to tell of some events of his life at Ha-Ha 
 Bay. " I wish you were going to stay here awhile 
 with me. You wouldn't find it so bad in the sum- 
 
58 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 mer-time, I can assure you. There are bears in the 
 bush, sir," he said to the colonel, " and you might 
 easily kill one." 
 
 " But then I should be helping to spoil your trade 
 in wild beasts," replied the colonel, laughing. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton looked like one who might be very 
 tired of this. He made no sign of interest either in 
 the early glooms and privations or the summer 
 bears of Ha-Ha Bay. He sat in the quaint parlor, 
 with his hat on his knee, in the decorous and patient 
 attitude of a gentleman making a call. 
 
 He had no feeling, Kitty said to herself ; but that 
 is a matter about which we can easily be wrong. 
 It was rather to be said of Mr. Arbuton that he 
 had always shrunk from knowledge of things out- 
 side of a very narrow world, and that he had not a 
 ready imagination. Moreover, he had a personal 
 dislike, as I may call it, of poverty ; and he did 
 not enjoy this poverty as she did, because it was 
 strange and suggestive, though doubtless he would 
 have done as much to relieve distress. 
 
 " Rather too much of his autobiography," he said 
 to Kitty, as he waited outside the door with her, 
 while the Canadian quieted his dog, which was 
 again keeping himself in practice of catching the 
 moose by making vicious leaps at the horse's nose. 
 " The egotism of that kind of people is always so 
 aggressive. But I suppose he's in the habit of throw- 
 ing himself upon the sympathy of summer visitors 
 in this way. You can't offer a man so little as shil- 
 
And fainted in Ms arms. —Page 58. 
 
MKS. ELLISONS LITTLE MANOEUVEE. 59 
 
 ling and sixpence who's taken you into his confi- 
 dence. Did you find enough that was novel in his 
 place to justify him in bringing us here, Miss 
 EUison ? " he asked, with an air he had of taking 
 you of course to be of his mind, and which equally 
 offended you whether you were so or not. 
 
 Every face that they had seen in their drive had 
 told its pathetic story to Kitty ; every cottage that 
 they passed she had entered in thought, and dreamed 
 out its humble drama. What their host had said 
 gave breath and color to her fancies of the struggle 
 of life there, and she was startled and shocked 
 when this cold doubt was cast upon the sympathetic 
 tints of her picture. She did not know what to say 
 at first ; she looked at Mr. Arbuton with a sudden 
 glance of embarrassment and trouble ; then she an- 
 swered, " I was very much interested. I don't agree 
 with you, I believe ; " which, when she heard it, 
 seemed a resentful little speech, and made her will- 
 ing for some occasion to soften its effect. But 
 nothing occurred to her during the brief diive bg/ck 
 to the boat, save the fact that the morning air was 
 delicious. 
 
 " Yes, but rather cool," said Mr. Arbuton, whose 
 feelings apparently had not needed any balm ; and 
 the talk fell again to the others. 
 
 On the pier he helped her down from the wagon, 
 for the colonel was intent on something the driver 
 was saying, and then offered his hand to Mrs. 
 Ellison. 
 
60 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 She sprang from her place, but stumbled slightly, 
 and when she touched the ground, " I believe I 
 turned my foot a little," she said with a laugh. 
 " It's nothing, of course," and fainted in his arms. 
 
 Kitty gave a cry of alarm, and the next instant 
 the colonel had relieved Mr. Arbuton. It was a 
 scene, and nothing could have annoyed him more 
 than this tumult which poor Mrs. Ellison's mis- 
 fortune occasioned among the bystanding habitans 
 and deck-hands, and the passengers eagerly cran- 
 ing forward over the bulwarks, and running ashore 
 to see what the matter was. Few men know just 
 how to offer those little offices of helpfulness which 
 such emergencies demand, and Mr. Arbuton could 
 do nothing after he was rid of his burden ; he 
 hovered anxiously and uselessly about, while Mrs. 
 Ellison was carried to an airy position on the bow 
 of the boat, where in a few minutes he had the 
 great satisfaction of seeing her open her eyes. It 
 was not the moment for him to speak, and he 
 walked somewhat guiltily away with the dispersing 
 crowd. 
 
 Mrs. Ellison addressed her first words to pale 
 Kitty at her side. " You can have all my things, 
 now," she said, as if it were a clause in her will, 
 and perhaps it had been her last thought before un- 
 consciousness. 
 
 " Why, Fanny," cried Kitty, with an hysterical 
 laugh, " you're not going to die ! A sprained ankle 
 isn't fatal ! " 
 
MRS. Ellison's little manceuvre. 61 
 
 " No ; but IVe heard that a person with a sprained 
 ankle can't put their foot to the ground for weeks ; 
 and I shall only want a dressing-gown, you know, 
 to lie on the sofa in." With that, Mrs. Ellison 
 placed her hand tenderly on Kitty's head, like a 
 mother wondering what will become of a helpless 
 child during her disability ; in fact she was men- 
 tally weighing the advantages of her wardrobe, 
 which Kitty would now fully enjoy, against the loss 
 of the friendly strategy which she would now lack. 
 Helpless to decide the matter, she heaved a sigh. 
 
 " But, Fanny, you won't expect to travel in a 
 dressing-gown . ' ' 
 
 " Indeed, I wish I knew whether I could travel in 
 anything or not. But the next twenty-four hours 
 win show. If it swells up, I shall have to rest 
 awhile at Quebec ; and if it doesn't, there may be 
 something, internal. I've read of accidents when 
 the person thought they were perfectly well and 
 comfortable, and the first thing they knew they 
 were in a very dangerous state. That's the worst 
 of these internal injuries : you never can tell. Not 
 that I think there's anything of that kind the mat- 
 ter with me. But a few days' rest won't do any 
 harm, whatever happens ; the stores in Quebec are 
 quite as good and a little cheaper than in Montreal ; 
 and I could go about in a carriage, you know, and 
 put in the time as well in one place as the other. 
 I'm sure we could get on very pleasantly there ; and 
 the colonel needn't be home for a month yet. I 
 
62 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 suppose that I could hobble into the stores on a 
 crutch." 
 
 Whilst Mrs. Ellison's monologue ran on with 
 scarcely a break from Kitty, her husband was gone 
 to fetch her a cup of tea and such other light re- 
 freshment as a lady may take after a swoon. When 
 he returned she bethought herself of Mr. Arbuton, 
 who, having once come back to see if all was going 
 well, had vanished again. 
 
 " Why, our friend Boston is bearing up under his 
 share of the morning's work like a hero — or a lady 
 with a sprained ankle," said the colonel as he ar- 
 ranged the provision. " To see the havoc he's mak- 
 ing in the ham and eggs and chiccory is to be con- 
 vinced that there is no appetizer like regret for the 
 sufferings of others." 
 
 " Why, and here's poor Kitty not had a bite 
 yet I " cried Mrs. EUison. " Kitty, go off at once 
 and get your breakfast. Put on my " — 
 
 " Oh, don't, Fanny, or I can't go ; and I'm really 
 very hungry." 
 
 " Well, I won't then," said Mrs. Ellison, seeing 
 the rainy cloud in Kitty's eyes. " Go just as you 
 are, and don't mind me." And so Kitty went, 
 gathering courage at every pace, and sitting down 
 opposite Mr. Arbuton with a vivid color to be sure, 
 but otherwise lion-bold. He had been upbraiding 
 the stars that had thrust him further and further 
 at every step into the intimacy of these people, as 
 he called them to himself. It was just twenty-four 
 
MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANCEUVBE. 63 
 
 hours, he reflected, since he had met them, and re- 
 solved to have nothing to do with them, and in that 
 time the young lady had brought him under the ne- 
 cessity of apologizing for a blunder of her own ; he 
 had played the eavesdropper to her talk ; he had 
 sentimentalized the midnight hour with her ; they 
 had all taken a morning ride together ; and he had 
 ended by having Mrs. Ellison sprain her ankle and 
 faint in his arms. It was outrageous ; and what 
 made it worse was that decency obliged him to take 
 henceforth a regretful, deprecatory attitude towards 
 Mrs. Ellison, whom he liked least among these peo- 
 ple. So he sat vindictively eating an enormous 
 breakfast, in a sort of angry abstraction, from which 
 Kitty's coming roused him to say that he hoped 
 Mrs. Ellison was better. 
 
 " Oh, very much ! It's just a sprain." 
 
 " A sprain may be a very annoying thing," said 
 Mr. Arbuton dismally. " Miss Ellison," he cried, 
 " I've been nothing but an affliction to your party 
 since I came on board this boat ! " 
 
 " Do you think evil genius of our party would be 
 too harsh a term ? " suggested Kitty. 
 
 " Not in the least ; it would be a mere euphe- 
 mism, — base flattery, in fact. Call me something 
 worse." 
 
 " I can't think of anything. I must leave you to 
 your own conscience. It was a pity to end our ride 
 in that way ; it would have been such a pleasant 
 ride I " And Kitty took heart from his apparent 
 
64 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCR. 
 
 mood to speak of some facts of the morning that 
 had moved her fancy. " What a strange little nest 
 it is up here among these half-thawed hills ! and 
 imagine the winter, the fifteen or twenty months of 
 it, they must have every year. I could almost have 
 shed tears over that patch of corn that had escaped 
 the early August frosts. I suppose this is a sort of 
 Indian summer that we are enjoying now, and that 
 the cold weather will set in after a week or two. 
 My cousin and I thought that Tadoussac was some- 
 what retired and composed last night, but I'm sure 
 that I shall see it in its true light, as a metropolis, 
 going back. I'm afraid that the turmoil and bustle 
 of Eriecreek, when I get home " — 
 
 " Eriecreek ? — when you get home ? — I thought 
 you lived at Milwaukee." 
 
 " Oh, no ! It's my cousins who live at Milwau- 
 kee. I live at Eriecreek, New York State." 
 
 " Oh ! " Mr. Arbuton looked blank and not 
 altogether pleased. Milwaukee was bad enough, 
 though he understood that it was largely peopled 
 from New England, and had a great German ele- 
 ment, which might account for the fact that these 
 people were not quite barbaric. But this Eriecreek, 
 New York State I » I don't think I've heard of it," 
 he said. 
 
 " It's a small place," observed Kitty, " and I be- 
 lieve it isn't noted for anything in particular ; it's 
 not even on any railroad. It's in the northwest 
 part of the State." 
 
MRS. Ellison's little man(euvee. 65 
 
 " Isn't it in the oil-regions ? " groped Mr. Arbu- 
 ton. 
 
 " Why, the oil-regions are rather migratory, you 
 know. It used to be in the oil-regions ; but the oil 
 ■was pumped out, and then the oil-regions gracefully 
 ■withdrew and left the cheese-regions and grape-re- 
 gions to come back and take possession of the old 
 derricks and the rusty boilers. You might suppose 
 from the appearance of the meadows, that all the 
 boilers that ever blew up had come do'wn in the 
 neighborhood of Eriecreek. And every field has its 
 derrick standing just as the last dollar or the last 
 drop of oil left it." 
 
 ilr. Arbuton brought his fancy to bear upon 
 Eriecreek, and wholly failed to conceive of it. He 
 did not Hke the notion of its being thrust -within 
 the range of his knowledge ; and he resented its be- 
 ing the home of Miss Ellison, whom he was begin- 
 ning to accept as a not quite comprehensible yet 
 certainly agreeable fact, though he still had a dis- 
 position to cast her off as something incredible. He 
 asked no further about Eriecreek, and presently she 
 rose and went to join her relatives, and he went to 
 smoke his cigar, and to ponder upon the problem 
 presented to him in this young girl from whose lo- 
 cality and conjecturable experiences he was at loss 
 how to infer her as he found her here. 
 
 She had a certain self-reliance mingling with an 
 innocent trust of others, which Mrs. Isabel March. 
 had described to her husband as a charm potent to 
 
 5 
 
66 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 make everybody sympathetic and good-natured, but 
 which it would not be easy to account for to Mr. 
 Arbuton. In part it was a natural gift, and partly 
 it came from mere ignorance of the world ; it was 
 the unsnubbed fearlessness of a heart which did not 
 suspect a sense of social difference in others, or im- 
 agine itself misprized for anything but a fault. For 
 such a false conception of her relations to polite so- 
 ciety, Kitty's Uncle Jack was chiefly to blame. In 
 the fierce democracy of his revolt from his Virginian 
 traditions he had taught his family that a belief in 
 any save intellectual and moral distinctions was a 
 mean and cruel superstition ; he had contrived to 
 fix this idea so deeply in the education of his chil- 
 dren, that it gave a coloring to their lives, and 
 Kitty, when her turn came, had the effect of it in 
 the character of those about her. In fact she ac- 
 cepted his extreme theories of equality to a degree 
 that delighted her uncle, who, having held them 
 many years, was growing perhaps a little languid 
 in their tenure, and was glad to have his grasp 
 strengthened by her faith. Socially as well as po- 
 litically Eriecreek was almost a perfect democracy, 
 and there was little in Kitty's circumstances to con- 
 tradict the doctor's teachings. The brief visits 
 which she had made to Buffalo and Erie, and, since 
 the colonel's marriage, to Milwaukee, had not suf- 
 ficed to undeceive her ; she had never suffered slight 
 save from the ignorant and uncouth ; she innocently 
 expected that in people of culture she should always 
 
MKs. Ellison's little manceuvbe. 67 
 
 find conimunity of feeling and ideas ; and she had 
 met Mr. Arbuton all the more trustfully because as 
 a Bostonian he must be cultivated. 
 
 In the secluded life which she led perforce at 
 Eriecreek there was an abundance of leisure, which 
 she bestowed upon books at an age when most girls 
 are sent' to school. The doctor had a good taste of 
 an old-fashioned kind in literature, and he had a 
 library pretty well stocked with the elderly English 
 authors, poets and essayists and novelists, and here 
 and there an historian, and these Kitty read child- 
 like, liking them at the time in a certain way, and 
 storing up in her mind things that she did not un- 
 derstand for the present, but whose beauty and 
 value dawned upon her from time to time, as she 
 grew older. But of far more use and pleasure to 
 her than these now somewhat mouldy classics were 
 the more modem books of her cousin Charles, 
 — that pride and hope of his father's heart, who 
 had died the year before she came to Eriecreek. 
 He was named after her own father, and it was as 
 if her Uncle Jack found both his son and his brother 
 in her again. When her taste for reading began to 
 show itself in force, the old man one day imlocked 
 a certain bookcase in a little upper room, and gave 
 her the key, saying, with a broken pride and that 
 queer Virginian pomp which still clung to him, 
 " This was my son's, who would one day have been 
 a great writer ; now it is yours." After that the 
 doctor would pick up the books out of this collection 
 
68 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 which Kitty was reading and had left lying about 
 the rooms, and look into tliem a little way. Some- 
 times he fell asleep over them ; sometimes when he 
 opened on a page penciled with marginal notes, he 
 would put the volume gently down and go verj'^ 
 quickly out of the room. 
 
 " Kitty,. I reckon you'd better not leave poor 
 Charley's books around where Uncle Jack can get 
 at them," one of the girls, Virginia or Rachel, 
 would say ; " I don't believe he cares much for 
 those writers, and the sight of the books just tries 
 him." So Kitty kept the books, and herself for 
 the most part with them, in the upper chamber 
 which had been Charles Ellison's room, and where, 
 amongst the witnesses of the dead boy's ambitious 
 dreams, she grew dreamer herself and seemed to in- 
 herit with his earthly place his own fine and gentle 
 spirit. 
 
 The doctor, as his daughter suggested, did not 
 care much for the modern authors in whom his son 
 had delighted. Like many another simple and 
 pure-hearted man, he thought that since Pope there 
 had been no great poet but Byron, and he could 
 make nothing out of Tennyson and Browning, or 
 the other contemporary English poets. Amongst 
 the Americans he had a great respect for Whittier, 
 but he preferred Lowell to the rest because he had 
 written " The Biglow Papers," and he never would 
 allow that the last series was half so good as the 
 first. These and the other principal poets of our 
 
MRS. ELLISON S LITTLE MAN(EUVEE. 69 
 
 nation and language Kitty inherited from her 
 cousin, as well as a full stock of the contemporary 
 novelists and romancers, whom she liked better 
 than the poets, on the whole. She had also the ad- 
 vantage of the magazines and reviews which used to 
 come to him, and the house overflowed with news- 
 papers of every kind, from the " Eriecreek Courier " 
 to the " New York Tribune." What with the com- 
 ing and going of the eccentric visitors, and this con- 
 tinual reading, and her rides about the country with 
 her Uncle Jack, Kitty's education, such as it was, 
 went on very actively and with the effect, at least, 
 to give her a great liveliness of mind and several 
 decided opinions. Where it might have warped 
 her out of natural simplicity, and made her con- 
 ceited, the keen and wholesome airs which breathed 
 continually in the ElUson household came in to re- 
 store her. There was such kindness in this dis- 
 cipline, that she never could remember when it 
 wounded her ; it was part of the gayety of those 
 times when she would sit down with the girls, and 
 they took up some work together, and rattled on in 
 a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge of satire for 
 whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, 
 and just a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. 
 The last queer guest, some neighborhood gossip, 
 some youthful folly or pretentiousness of Kitty's, 
 some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys 
 if they happened to be at home, and came lounging 
 in, were the themes out of which they contrived 
 
70 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 * 
 
 such jollity as never was, save when in Uncle Jack's 
 presence they fell upon some characteristic action 
 or theory of his, and turned it into endless ridicule. 
 But of such people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton 
 could have made nothing if he had known them. 
 In many things he was an excellent person, and 
 greatly to be respected for certain qualities. He 
 was very sincere ; his mind had a singular purity 
 and rectitude ; he was a scrupulously just person 
 so far as he knew. He had traits that would have 
 fitted hira very well for the career he had once 
 contemplated, and he had even made some prelim- 
 inary studies for the ministry. But the very gen- 
 erosity of his creed perplexed him, his mislikers 
 said ; contending that he could never have got on 
 with the mob of the redeemed. " Arbuton," said 
 a fat young fellow, the supposed wit of the class, 
 " thinks there are persons of low extraction in 
 heaven ; but he doesn't like the idea." And Mr. 
 Arbuton did not like the speaker very well, either, 
 nor any of his poorer fellow-students, whose glove- 
 less and unfashionable poverty, and meagre board 
 and lodgings, and general hungry dependence upon 
 pious bequests and neighborhood kindnesses, of- 
 fended his instincts. " So he's given it up, has 
 he ? " moralized the same wit, upon his retirement. 
 " If Arbuton could have been a divinely com- 
 missioned apostle to the best society, and been 
 obliged to save none but well-connected, old-estab- 
 lished, and cultivated souls, he might have gone 
 
MBS. ELLISOX'S UTILE MASCEUYBE. 71 
 
 into the ministry." This was a coarse construc- 
 tion of the truth, but it was not altogether a per- 
 version. It was long ago that he had abandoned 
 the thought of the ministry, and he had since 
 travelled, and read law, and become a man of 
 society and of clubs; but he still kept the ti-aits 
 that had seemed to make his vocation clear. On 
 the other hand he kept the prejudices that were 
 imagined to have disqualified him. He was an 
 exclusive by training and by instinct. He gave 
 ordinary humanity credit for a certain measure of 
 sensibility, and it is possible that if he had known 
 more kinds of men, he would have recognized 
 merits and excellences which did not now exist for 
 him ; but I do not think he would have liked 
 them. His doubt of these Western people was the 
 most natural, if not the most justifiable thing in 
 the world, and for Kitty, if he could have known 
 all about her, I do not see how he could have be- 
 lieved ia her at all. As it was, he went iu search 
 of her party, when he had smoked his cigar, and 
 found them on the forward promenade. She had 
 left him in quite a lenient mood, although, as she 
 perceived with amusement, he had done nothing 
 to merit it, except give her cousin a sprained ankle. 
 At the moment of his reappearance, Mrs. EUison 
 had been telling Kitty that* she thought it was be- 
 ginning to swell a little, and so it could not be any- 
 thing internal ; and Kitty had understood that she 
 meant her ankle as well as if she had said so, and 
 
72 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 had sorrowed and rejoiced over her, and the colonel 
 had been inculpated for the whole affair. This 
 made Mr. Arbuton's excuses rather needless, though 
 they were most graciously received. 
 
III. 
 
 ON THE "WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 
 
 By this time tlie boat was moying down the 
 river, and every one was alive to the scenery. The 
 procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights on 
 either shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had 
 disappeared behind a curve, and it hardly ceased, 
 save at one point, before the boat reentered the St. 
 Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost* 
 uninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, 
 and if ever a narrow vale divides them, it is but to 
 open drearier solitudes to the eye. In such a valley 
 would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few 
 poor huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible 
 from the boat, wound up from the river through the 
 valley, and led to wildernesses all the forlorner for 
 the devastation of their forests. Now and then an 
 island, rugged as the shores, broke the long reaches 
 of the grim river with its massive rock and dark 
 evergreen, and seemed in the distance to forbid es- 
 cape from those dreary waters, over which no bird 
 flew, and in which it was incredible any fish swam. 
 
 Mrs. Ellison, with her foot comfortably and not 
 ungracefully supported on a stool, was in so little 
 pain as to be looking from time to time at one of 
 
74 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 the guide-books which the colonel had lavished upon 
 his party, and which she was disposed to hold to 
 very strict account for any excesses of description. 
 
 " It says here that the water of the Saguenay is 
 as black as ink. Do you think it is, Richard ? " 
 
 " It looks so." 
 
 " Well, but if you took some up in your hand? " 
 
 " Perhaps it wouldn't be as black as the best 
 Maynard and Noyes, but it would be black enough 
 for all practical purposes." 
 
 " Maybe," suggested Kitty, " the guide-book 
 means the kind that is light blue at first, but ' be- 
 comes a deep black on exposure to the air,' as the 
 label says." 
 
 " What do you think, Mr. Arbuton ? " asked 
 Mrs. Ellison with unabated anxiety. 
 
 " Well, reaUy, I don't know," said Mr. Arbuton, 
 who thought it a very trivial kind of talk, " I can't 
 say, indeed. I haven't taken any of it up in my 
 hand." 
 
 " That's true," said Mrs. Ellison gravely, with an 
 accent of reproval for the others who had not 
 thought of so simple a solution of the problem, 
 " very true." 
 
 The colonel looked into her face with an air of 
 well-feigned alarm. " You don't think the sprain 
 has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, and 
 walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. 
 Mrs. Ellison did not care for this or any other gibe, 
 if she but served her own purposes ; and now, hav- 
 
ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 75 
 
 ing made everybody laugh and given the conversa- 
 tion a lively turn, she vi^as as perfectly content as if 
 she had not been herself an offering to the cause of 
 cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal to any sacri- 
 fice in the enterprise she had undertaken, and would 
 not only- have given Kitty all her worldly goods, 
 but would have quite effaced herself to further her 
 own designs upon Mr. Arbuton. She turned again 
 to her guide-book, and left the young people to con- 
 tinue the talk in unbroken gayetj'. They at once 
 became serious, as most people do after a hearty 
 laugh, which, if you think, seems always to have 
 something strange and sad in it. But besides, Kitty 
 was oppressed by the coldness that seemed perpetu- 
 ally to hover in Mr. Arbuton's atmosphere, while 
 she was interested by his fastidious good looks and 
 his blameless manners and his air of a world differ- 
 ent from any she had hitherto known. He was one 
 of those men whose perfection makes you feel guilty 
 of misdemeanor whenever they meet you, and whose 
 greeting turns your honest good-day coarse and 
 common ; even Kitty's fearless ignorance and more 
 than Western disregard of dignities were not proof 
 against him. She had found it easy to talk with 
 Mrs. March as she did with her cousin at home ; 
 she liked to be frank and gay in her parley, to jest 
 and to laugh and to make harmless fun, and to sen- 
 timentalize in a half-earnest way ; she liked to be 
 with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she 
 could take her natural tone with him. She won- 
 
76 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 dered at her daring lightness at the breakfast- table ; 
 she waited for him to say something, and he said, 
 with a glance at the gray heaven that always over- 
 hangs the Saguenay, that it was beginning to rain, 
 and unfurled the slender silk umbrella which har- 
 monized so perfectly with the London effect of his 
 dress, and held it over her. Mrs. Ellison sat within 
 the shelter of the projecting roof, and diligently pe- 
 rused her book with her eyes, and listened to their 
 talk. 
 
 " The great drawback to this sort of thing in 
 America," continued Mr. Arbuton, " is that there 
 is no human interest about the scenery, fine as it 
 is." 
 
 "Why, I don't know," said 'Kitty, "there was 
 that little settlement round the saw-mill. Can't 
 you imagine any human interest in the lives of the 
 people there ? It seems to me that one might make 
 almost anything out of them. Suppose, for ex- 
 ample, that the owner of that mill was a disap- 
 pointed man who had come here to bury the wreck 
 of his life in — sawdust ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! That sort of thing ; certainly. But 
 I didn't mean that, I meant something historical. 
 There is no past, no atmosphere, no traditions, you 
 know." 
 
 " Oh, but the Saguenay has a tradition," said 
 Kitty. "You know that a party of the first ex- 
 plorers left their comrades at Tadoussac, and came 
 up the Saguenay three hundred years ago, and 
 
ox THE WAT BACK TO QUEBEC. 77 
 
 never were seen or heard of again. I think its so 
 in keeping with the looks of the river. The Sague- 
 nay would never tell a secret." 
 
 " Um ! " uttered Mr. Arbuton, as if he were not 
 quite sure that it was the Saguenay's place to have 
 a legend of this sort, and disposed to snub the 
 legend because the Saguenay had it. After a little 
 silence, he began to speak of famous rivers abroad. 
 
 " I suppose," Kitty said, " the Rhine has tradi- 
 tions enough, hasn't it ? " 
 
 '• Yes,' he answered, " but I think the Rhine 
 rather overdoes it. You can't help feeling, you 
 know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and — com- 
 mon. Have you ever seen the Rhine ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! This -is almost the first I've seen of 
 anything. Perhaps," she added, demurely, yet with 
 a tremor at finding herseK about to make light of 
 Mr. Arbuton, " if I had had too much of tradition 
 on the Rhine I should want more of it on the Sa- 
 guenay." 
 
 " Why, you must allow there's a golden mean in 
 everything, Miss Ellison," said her companion with 
 a lenient laugh, not feehng it disagreeable to be 
 made light of by her. 
 
 " Yes ; and I'm afraid we're going to find Cape 
 Trinity and Cape Eternity altogether too big when 
 we come to them. Don't you think eighteen hun- 
 dred feet excessively high for a feature of river 
 scenery? " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton really did have an objection to the 
 
78 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, 
 
 exaggerations of nature on this continent, and se- 
 cretly thought them in bad taste, but he had never 
 formulated his feeling. He was not sure but it was 
 ridiculous, now that it was suggested, and yet the 
 possibility was too novel to be entertained without 
 suspicion. 
 
 However, when after a while the rumor of their 
 
 approach to the 
 great objects of 
 the Saguenay 
 journey had 
 spread among 
 the passengers, 
 and they began 
 to assemble at 
 points favorable 
 for the enjoy- 
 ment of the 
 spectacle, he 
 was glad to 
 have secured 
 the place he held with Miss Ellison, and a sympa- 
 thetic thrill of excitement passed through his loath 
 superiority. The rain ceased as they drew nearer, 
 and the gray clouds that had hung so low upon the 
 hills sullenly lifted from them and let their growing 
 height be seen. The captain bade his sight-seers 
 look at the vast Roman profile that showed itself 
 upon the rock, and then he pointed out the wonder- 
 ful Gothic arch, the reputed doorway of an unex- 
 
ox THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 
 
 79 
 
 plored cavern, under which an upright shaft of 
 stone had stood for ages statue-like, till not many 
 winters ago the frost heaved it from its base, and it 
 plunged headlong down through the ice into the un- 
 fathomed depths below. The unvarying gloom of 
 the pines was lit now by the pensive glimmer of 
 birch- trees, and this gray tone gave an indescrib- 
 able sentiment 
 of pathos and 
 of age to the 
 scenery. Sud- 
 denly the boat 
 rounded the cor- 
 ner of the three 
 steps, each five 
 hundred feet 
 high, in which 
 Cape Eternity 
 climbs from the 
 river, and crept 
 in under the 
 naked side of the awful cliff. It is sheer rock, 
 springing from the black water, and stretching up- 
 ward with a weary, effort-like aspect, in long im- 
 pulses of stone marked by deep seams from space to 
 space, till, fifteen hundred feet in air, its vast brow 
 beetles forward, and frowns with a scattering fringe 
 of pines. There are stains of weather and of oozing 
 springs upon the front of the cliff, but it is height 
 alone that seems to seize the eye, and one remem- 
 
80 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 •^ *j^ 
 
 
 if 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 bers afterwards these details, which are indeed so 
 few as not properly to enter into the effect. The 
 rock fully justifies its attributiTe height to the eye, 
 
ox THE WAT BACK TO QUEBEC. 81 
 
 "whicli follows the upward rush of the mighty ac- 
 clivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-capt 
 summit, when the measureless mass seems to swing 
 and s^vay overhead, and the nerves tremble with the 
 same terror that besets him who looks downward 
 from the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly 
 grim and stem ; no touch of beauty relieves the 
 austere majesty of that presence. At the foot of 
 Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and 
 it spreads, a black expanse, in the rounding hollow 
 of shores of unimaginable wUdness and desolation, 
 and issues again in its river's course around the base 
 of Cape Trinity. This is yet loftier than the sister 
 cliff, but it slopes gently backward from the stream, 
 and from foot to crest it is heavily clothed with a 
 forest of pines. The woods that hitherto have 
 shagged the hills with a stunted and meagre 
 groAvth, showing long stretches scarred by fire, now 
 assume a stately size, and assemble themselves com- 
 pactly upon the side of the mountain, setting their 
 serried stems one rank above another, tiU the sum- 
 mit is crowned with the mass of their dark green 
 plumes, dense and soft and beautiful ; so that the 
 spirit perturbed by the spectacle of the other cliff is 
 calmed and assuaged by the serene grandeur of this. 
 There have been, to be sure, some human agen- 
 cies at work even under the shadow of Cape Eter- 
 nity to restote the spirit to self-possession, and per- 
 'haps none turns from it wholly dismayed. Kitty, 
 at any rate, took heart from some works of art 
 
82 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 which the cliff wall displayed near the water's edge. 
 One of these was a liyely fresco portrait of Lieu- 
 tenant-General Sherman, with the insignia of his 
 rank, ahd the other was an even more striking 
 effigy of General O'Neil, of the Armies of the Irish 
 Republic, wearing a threatening aspect, and de- 
 signed in a bold conceit of his presence there as 
 conqueror of' Canada in the year 1875. Mr. Arbu- 
 ton was inclined to resent these intrusions upon the 
 sublimity of nature, and he could riot conceive, 
 without disadvantage to them, how Miss Ellison 
 and the colonel should accept them so cheerfully as 
 part of the pleasure of the whole. As he listened 
 blankly to their exchange of jests he found himself 
 awfully beset by a temptation which one of the 
 boat's crew placed before the passengers. This was 
 a bucket full of pebbles of inviting size ; and the 
 man said, " Now, see which can hit the cliff. It's 
 farther than any of you can throw, though it looks 
 so near." 
 
 ^ The passengers cast themselves upon the store 
 of missiles. Colonel Ellison most actively among 
 them. None struck the cliff, and suddenly Mr. 
 Arbuton felt a blind, stupid, irresistible longing to 
 try his chance. The spirit of his college days, of 
 his boating and ball-playing youth, came upon 
 him. He picked up a pebble, while Kitty opened 
 her eyes in a stare of dumb surprise. Then he 
 wheeled and threw it, and as it struck against the 
 cliff with a shock that seemed to have broken all 
 
ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 83 
 
 the windows on the Back Bay, he exulted in a 
 sense of freedom the havoc caused him. It was 
 as if for an instant he had rent away the ties of 
 custom, thrown off the bonds of social aUtegiance, 
 broken down and trampled upon the conventions 
 which his whole life long he had held so dear and 
 respectable. In that moment of frenzy he feared 
 himself capable of shaking hands with the shabby 
 Englishman in the Glengarry cap, or of asking the 
 whole admiring company of passengers down to 
 the bar. A cry of applause had broken from them 
 at his achievement, and he had for the first time 
 tasted the sweets of popular favor. Of course a 
 revulsion must come, and it must be of a corre- 
 sponding violence ; and the next moment Mr. Ar- 
 buton hated them all, and most of aU Colonel 
 Ellison, who had been loudest in his praise. Him 
 he thought for that moment everything that was 
 aggressively and intrusively vulgar. But he could 
 not utter these friendly impressions, nor is it so 
 easy to withdraw from any concession, and he 
 found it impossible to repair his broken defenses. 
 Destiny had been against him from the beginning, 
 and now why should he not strike hands with it 
 for the brief half-day that he was to continue in 
 these people's society ? In the morning he would 
 part from them forever, and in the mean time why 
 should he not try to please and be pleased ? There 
 might, to be sure, have been many reasons why 
 he should not do this; but however the balance 
 
84 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 stood he now yielded himself passively to his fate. 
 He was polite to Mrs. Ellison, he was attentive to 
 Kitty, and as far as he could he entered into the 
 fantastic spirit of her talk with the colonel'. He 
 was not a dull man ; he had quite an apt wit of 
 his own, and a neat way of saying things ; but 
 humor always seemed to him something not per- 
 fectly well bred ; of course he helped to praise it 
 in some old-established diner-out, or some woman 
 of good fashion, whose mots it was customary to 
 repeat, and he even tolerated it in books ; but he 
 was at a loss with these people, who looked at life 
 in so bizarre a temper, yet without airiness or pre- 
 tension, nay, with a whimsical readiness to acknowl- 
 edge kindred in every droll or laughable thing. 
 
 The boat stopped at Tadoussac on her return, 
 and among the spectators who came down to the 
 landing was a certain very pretty, conscious-look- 
 ing, silly, bridal-faced young woman, — imaginably 
 the belle of the season at that forlorn watering- 
 place, — who before coming onboard stood awhile 
 attended by a following of those elderly imperial 
 and colonial British who heavily flutter round the 
 fair at such resorts. She had an air of utterly 
 satisfied vanity, in which there was no harm in the 
 world, and when she saw that she had fixed the 
 eyes of the shoreward-gazing passengers, it ap- 
 peared as if she fell into a happy trepidation too 
 blissful to be passively borne ; she moistened her 
 pretty red lips with her tongue, she twitched her 
 
ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 85 
 
 mantle, she settled the bow at her lovely throat, 
 she bridled and tossed her -graceful head. 
 
 " What should you do next, Kitty ? " asked the 
 colonel, who had been sympathetically intent upon 
 all this. 
 
 " Oh, I think I should pat my foot," answered 
 Batty; and in fact the charming simpleton on 
 shore, having perfected her attitude, was tapping 
 the ground nervously with the toe of her adorable 
 slipper. 
 
 After the boat started, a Canadian lady of ripe 
 age, yet of a vivacity not to be reconciled with the 
 notion of the married state, capered briskly about 
 among her somewhat stolid and indifEerent friends, 
 saying, " They're going to fire it as soon as we 
 round the point ; " and presently a dull boom, as 
 of a small piece of ordnance discharged in the 
 neighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gath- 
 ering fog, and this elderly sylph clapped her hands 
 and exulted : " They've fired it, they've fired it ! 
 and now the captain will blow the whistle in an- 
 swer." But the captain did nothing of the kind, 
 and the lady, after some more gklish effervescence, 
 upbraided him for an old owl and an old mu£E, and 
 so sank into such a flat and spiritless calm that she 
 was sorrovcful to see. 
 
 " Too bad, Mr. Arbuton, isn't it ? " said the 
 colonel ; and Mr. Arbuton listened in vague doubt 
 while Kitty built up with her cousin a touching 
 romance for the poor lady, supposed to have spent 
 
86 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 the one brilliant and successful summer of her life 
 at Tadoussac, where her admirers had agreed to be- 
 moan her loss in this explosion of gunpowder. They 
 asked him if he did not wish the captain had 
 whistled ; and " Oh ! " shuddered Kitty, " doesn't 
 it all make you feel just as if you had been doing 
 it yourself?" — a question which he hardly knew 
 how to answer, never having, to his knowledge, 
 done a ridiculous thing in his life, much less been 
 guilty of such behavior as that of the disappointed 
 lady. 
 
 At Cacouna, where the boat stopped to take on 
 the horses and carriages of some home-returning 
 sojourners, the pier was a labyrinth of equipages 
 of many sorts and sizes, and a herd of bright- 
 hooded, gayly blanketed horses gave variety to 
 the human crowd that soaked and steamed in the 
 fine, slowly falling rain. A draught-horse was 
 every three minutes driven into their midst with 
 tedious iteration as he slowly drew baskets of coal 
 up from the sloop unloading at the wharf, and each 
 time they closed solidly upon his retreat as if they 
 never expected to see that horse again while the 
 world stood. They were idle ladies and gentle- 
 men under umbrellas, Indians and habitans taking 
 the rain stolidly erect or with shrugged shoulders, 
 and two or three clergymen of the curate type, 
 who might have stepped as they were out of any 
 dull English novel. These were talking in low 
 voices and putting their hands to their ears to 
 
ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 
 
 87 
 
 catch the replies of the lady-passengers who hung 
 upon the rail, and twaddled back as dryly as if 
 there was no moisture in life. All the while the 
 safety-valves hissed with the escaping steam, and 
 the boat's crew silently toiled with the grooms of 
 the different horses to get the 
 equipages on board. With the 
 carriages it was an affair of mere 
 muscle, but the horses required 
 to be managed with braiu. No 
 sooner had one of them placed 
 his fore feet on the gangway 
 plank than he protested by back- 
 ing up over a mass of patient Ca- 
 nadians, carrying with him half 
 a dozen grooms and deck-hands. 
 Then his hood was drawn over 
 his eyes, and he was bhndly 
 walked up and down the pier, 
 and back to the gangway, which 
 he knew as soon as he touched 
 it. He pulled, he pranced, he 
 shied, he did all that a bad and 
 stubborn horse can do, till at last 
 a groom mounted his back, a clump of deck-hands 
 tugged at his bridle, and other grooms, tenderly 
 embracing him at different points, pushed, and he 
 was thus conveyed on board with mingled affection 
 and ignominy. None of the Canadians seemed 
 amused by this ; they regarded it with serious com- 
 
88 A CHAUCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 posure as a fitting decorum, and Mr. Arbuton had 
 no comment to make upon it. But at the first em- 
 brace bestowed upon the horse by the grooms the 
 colonel said absently, " Ah I long-lost brother," and 
 Kitty laughed ; and as the scruples of each brute 
 were successively overcome, she helped to give some 
 grotesque interpretation to the various scenes of the 
 melodrama, while Mr. Arbuton stood beside her, 
 
 and sheltered 
 her with his um- 
 brella ; and a 
 spice of malice 
 in her heart told 
 her that he 
 viewed this 
 drolling, and es- 
 pecially her part 
 grave misgiving, 
 zest of transgression 
 to her excess, mixed with dismay ; for the 
 tricksy spirit in her was not a domineering spirit, 
 but was easily abashed by the moods of others. 
 She ought not to have laughed at Dick's speeches, 
 she soon told herself, much less helped him on. She 
 dreadfully feared that she had done something inde- 
 corous, and she was pensive and silent over it as she 
 moved listlessly about after supper ; and she sat at 
 last thinking in a dreary sort of perplexity on what 
 had passed during the day, which seemed a long 
 one. 
 
ox THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 89 
 
 The shabby Englishman with his wife and sister 
 were walking up and down the cabin. By and by 
 they stopped, and sat down at the table, facing 
 Kitty; the elder woman, with a civil freedom, ad- 
 dressed her some commonplace, and the four were 
 presently in lively talk ; for Kitty had beamed upon 
 the woman in return, having already longed to know 
 something of them. The world was so fresh to her, 
 that she could find delight in those poor singing or 
 acting folk, though she had soon to own to herself 
 that their talk was not very witty nor very wise, 
 and that the best thing about them was their good- 
 nature. The colonel sat at the end of the table 
 with a newspaper ; Mrs. Ellison had gone to bed ; 
 and Kitty was beginning to tire of her new ac- 
 quaintance, and to wonder how she could get away 
 from them, when she saw rescue in the eye of Mr. 
 Arbuton as he came down the cabin. She knew 
 he was looking for her ; she saw him check himself 
 with a start of recognition ; then he walked rapidly 
 by the group, without glancing at them. 
 
 " Burr ! " said the blond girl, drawing her blue 
 knit shawl about her shoulders, "isn't it cold?" 
 and she and her friends laughed. 
 
 " Oh dear ! " thought Kitty, " I didn't suppose 
 they were so rude. I'm afraid I must say good 
 night," she added aloud, after a little, and stole 
 away, the most conscience-stricken creature on that 
 boat. She heard those people laugh again after she 
 left them. 
 
IV. 
 
 ME. ABBUTON'S INSPIKATION. 
 
 The next morning, when Mr. Arbuton awoke, 
 he found a clear light upon the world that he had 
 left wrapped in fog at midnight. A heavy gale 
 was blowing, and the wide river was running in 
 seas that made the boat stagger in her course, and 
 now and then struck her bows with a force that 
 sent the spray from their seething tops into the 
 faces of the people on the promenade. The sun, 
 out of rifts of the breaking clouds, launched broad 
 splendors across the villages and farms of the level 
 landscape, and the crests and hollows of the waves ; 
 and a certain joy of the air penetrated to the 
 guarded consciousness of Mr. Arbuton. Involunta- 
 rily he looked about for the people he meant to 
 have nothing more to do with, that he might appeal 
 to the sympathies of one of them, at least, in his 
 sense of such an admirable morning. But a great 
 many passengers had come on board, during the 
 night, at Murray Bay, where the brief season was 
 ending, and their number hid the Ellisons from him. 
 When he went to breakfast, he found some one had 
 taken his seat near them, and they did not notice him 
 as he passed by in search of another chair. Kitty 
 
MR. aebuton's inspiration. , 91 
 
 and the colonel were at table alone, and, they both 
 ■wore preoccupied faces. After breakfast he sought 
 them out and- asked for Mrs. Ellison, who had 
 shared in most of the excitements of the day be- 
 fore, helping herself about with a pretty limp, and 
 who certainly had not, as her husband phrased it, 
 kept any of the meals waiting. 
 
 " Why," said the colonel, " I'm afraid her ankle's 
 worse this morning, and that we'll have to lie by at 
 Quebec for a few days, at any rate." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton heard this sad news with a cheerful 
 aspect unaccountable in one who was concerned at 
 Mrs. Ellison's misfortune. He smiled, when he 
 ought to have looked pensive, and he laughed at 
 the colonel's joke when the latter added, " Of 
 course, this is a great hardship for my cousin, who 
 hates Quebec, and wants to get home to Eriecreek 
 as soon as possible." 
 
 Kitty promised to bear her trials with firmness, 
 and Mr. Arbuton said, not very consequently, as 
 she thought, " I had been planning to spend a 
 few days in Quebec, myself, and I s'hall have the 
 opportunity of inquiring about Mrs. Ellison's con- 
 valescence. In fact," he added, turning to the 
 colonel, " I hope you'll let me be of service to you 
 in getting to a hotel." 
 
 And when the boat landed, Mr. Arbuton actually 
 busied himself in finding a carriage and putting the 
 various Ellison wraps and bags into it. Then he 
 helped to support Mrs. Ellison ashore, and to lift 
 
92 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 her to the best place. He raised his hat, and had 
 good morning on his tongue, when the astonished 
 colonel called out, " Why, the deuce ! You're going 
 to ride up with us ! " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton thought he had better get another 
 carriage ; he should incommode Mrs. Ellison ; but 
 Mrs. Ellison protested that he would not at all ; 
 and, to cut the matter short, he mounted to the 
 colonel's side. It was another stroke of fate. 
 
 At the hotel they found a line of people reaching 
 half-way down the outer steps from the inside of 
 the office. 
 
 " Hallo ! what's this ? " asked the colonel of the 
 last man in the queue. 
 
 " Oh, it's a little procession to the hotel register ! 
 We've been three quarters of an hour in passing a 
 given point," said the man, who was plainly a fel- 
 low-citizen. 
 
 " And haven't got by yet," said the colonel, tak- 
 ing to the speaker. " Then the house is full ? " 
 
 " Well, no ; they haven't begun .to throw them 
 out of the window." 
 
 " His humor is degenerating, Dick," said Kitty ; 
 and " Hadn't you better go inside and inquire ? " 
 asked Mrs. Ellison. It was part of the Ellison 
 travelling joke for her thus to prompt the colonel 
 in his duty. 
 
 " I'm glad you mentioned it, Fanny. I was just 
 going to drive off in despair." The colonel vanished 
 within doors, and after long delay came out flushed, 
 
MR. AEBUTON S INSPIRATION. 93 
 
 but not witli triumph. " On the express condition 
 that I have ladies with me, one an invahd, I am 
 promised a room on the fifth floor some time during 
 the day. They tell me the other hotel is crammed, 
 and it's no use to go there." 
 
 Mrs. Ellison was ready to weep, and for the first 
 time since her accident she harbored some bitter- 
 ness against Mr. Arbuton. They all sat silent, 
 and the colonel on the sidewalk silently wiped his 
 brow. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton, in the poverty of his invention, 
 wondered if there was not some lodging-house 
 where they could find shelter. 
 
 " Of course there is," cried Mrs. Ellison, beam- 
 ing upon her hero, and calling Kitty's attention to 
 his ingenuity by a pressure with her well foot. 
 " Richard, we must look up a boarding-house." 
 
 " Do you know of any good boarding-houses ? " 
 asked the colonel of the driver, mechanically. 
 
 " Plenty," answered the man. 
 
 " Well, drive us to twenty or thirty first-class 
 ones,", commanded the colonel ; and the search be- 
 gan. ' 
 
 The colonel first asked prices and looked at 
 rooms, and if he pronounced any apartment unsuit- 
 able, Kitty was dispatched by Mrs. Ellison to view 
 it and refute him. As often as she confirmed him, 
 Mrs. Ellison was sure that they wete both too fas- 
 tidious, and they never turned away from a door 
 but they closed the gates of paradise upon that 
 
94 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 afflicted lady. She began to believe that they should 
 find no place whatever, when at last they stopped 
 before a portal so unboarding-house-like in all out- 
 ward signs, that she maintained it was of no use to 
 ring, and imparted so much of her distrust to the 
 colonel that, after ringing, he prefaced his demand 
 for rooms with an apology for supposing that there 
 were rooms to let there. Then, after looking at 
 them, he returned to the carriage and reported that 
 the whole affair was perfect, and that he should 
 look no farther. Mrs. Ellison replied that she never 
 could trust his judgment, he was so careless. Kitty 
 inspected the premises, and came back in a trans- 
 port that alarmed the worst fears of Mrs. Ellison. 
 She was sure that they had better look farther, she 
 knew there were plenty of nicer places. Even if 
 the rooms were nice and the situation pleasant, she 
 was certain that there must be some drawbacks which 
 they did not know of yet. Whereupon her husband 
 lifted her from the carriage, and bore her, without 
 reply or comment of any kind, into the house. 
 
 Throughout the search Mr. Arbuton had been 
 making up his mind that he would part with his 
 friends as soon as they found lodgings, give the day 
 to Quebec, and take the evening train for Gorham, 
 thus escaping the annoyances of a crowded hotel, 
 and ending at once an acquaintance which he ought 
 never to have let go so far. As long as the Ellisons 
 were without shelter, he felt that it was due to 
 himself not to abandon them. But even now that 
 
S-( -«■ 
 
iiR. aebuton's inspiration. 95 
 
 they were happily housed, had he done all that no- 
 bility obliged ? He stood irresolute beside the car- 
 riage. 
 
 " Won't you come up and see where we live ? " 
 asked Kitty, hospitably.- 
 
 " I shall be very glad," said Mr. Arbuton. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said the colonel, in the par- 
 lor, " I didn't engage a room for you. I supposed 
 you'd rather take your chances at the hotel." 
 
 " Oh, I'm going away to-night." 
 
 " Why, that's a pity ! " 
 
 " Yes, I've no fancy for a cot-bed in the hotel 
 parlor. But I don't quite like to leave you here, 
 after bringing this calamity upon you." 
 
 " Oh, don't mention that ! I was the only one to 
 blame. We shall get on splendidly here." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton suffered a vague disappointment. 
 At the bottom of his heart was a formless hope 
 that he might in some way be necessary to the El- 
 hsons in their adversity ; or if not that, then that 
 something might entangle him further and compel 
 his stay. But they seemed quite equal in them- 
 selves to the situation ; they were in far more com- 
 fortable quarters than they could have hoped for, 
 and plainly should want for nothing ; Fortune put 
 on a smiling face, and bade him go free of them. 
 He fancied it a mocking smile, though, as he stood 
 an instant silently weighing one thing against an- 
 other. The colonel was patiently waiting his mo- 
 tion ; Mrs. Ellison sat watching him from the sofa ; 
 
96 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Kitty moved about the room with averted face, — 
 a pretty domestic presence, a household priestess 
 ordering the temporary Penates. Mr. Arbuton 
 opened his hps to say farewell, but a god spoke 
 through them, — inconsequently, as the gods for 
 the -most part do, — saying, "Besides, I suppose 
 you've got all the rooms here." 
 
 " Oh, as to that I don't know," answered the 
 colonel, not recognizing the language of inspiration, 
 " let's ask." Kitty knocked a photograph-book off 
 the table, and Mrs. Ellison said, " Why, Kitty ! " 
 But nothing more was spoken till the landlady 
 came. She had another room, but doubted if it 
 would answer. It was in the attic, and was a back 
 room, though it had a pleasant outlook. Mr. Ar- 
 buton had no doubt that it would do very well for 
 the day or two he was going to stay, and took it 
 hastily, without going to look at it. He had his 
 valise carried up at once, and then he went to the 
 post-office to see if he had any letters, offering to 
 ask also for Colonel Ellison. 
 
 Kitty stole off to explore the chamber given her 
 at the rear of the house ; that is to say, she 
 opened the window looking out on what their host- 
 ess told her was the garden of the Ursuline Con- 
 vent, and stood there in a mute transport. A 
 black cross rose in the midst, and all about this 
 wandered the paths and alleys, of the garden, 
 through clumps of lilac-bushes and among the 
 spires of hollyhocks. The grounds were enclosed 
 
MR. arbuton's inspiration. 9T 
 
 by high walls in part, and in part by the group of 
 the convent edifices, built of gray stone, high 
 gabled, and topped by dormer-windowed steep 
 roofs of tin, which, under the high morning sun, 
 lay an expanse of keenest splendor, while many a 
 grateful shadow dappled the full-foliaged garden 
 below. Two slim, tall poplars stood against the 
 gable of the chapel, and shot their tops above its 
 roof, and under a porch near them two nuns sat 
 motionless in the sun, black-robed, vnth black veils 
 falling over their shoulders, and their white faces 
 lost in the white linen that draped them from 
 breast to crown. Their hands lay quiet in their 
 laps, and they seemed unconscious of the. other 
 nuns walking in the garden-paths with little chil- 
 dren, their pupils, and answering their laughter 
 from time to time with voices as simple and inno- 
 cent as their own. Kitty looked down upon them 
 aU with a swelling heart. They were but figures in 
 a beautiful picture of something old and poetical ; 
 but she loved them, and pitied them, and was most 
 happy in them, the same as if they had been real. 
 It could not be that they and she were in the same 
 world : she must be dreaming over a book in 
 Charley's room at Eriecreek. She shaded her eyes 
 for a better look, when the noonday gun boomed 
 from the citadel ; the bell upon the chapel jangled 
 harshly, and those strange maskers, those quaint 
 black birds with white breasts and faces, flocked in- 
 doors. At the same time a small dog under her 
 7 
 
98 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 window howled dolorously at the jangling of the 
 bell ; and Kitty, with an impartial joy, turned from 
 the pensive romance of the convent garden to the 
 mild comedy of the scene to which his woful note 
 attracted her. When he had uttered his anguish, 
 he relapsed into the quietest small French dog that 
 ever was, and lay down near a large, tranquil cat, 
 whom neither the bell nor he had been able to stir 
 from her slumbers in the sun ; a peasant-like old 
 man kept on sawing wood, and a little child stood 
 still amidst the larkspurs and marigolds of a tiny 
 garden, while over the flower-pots on the low win- 
 dow-siU of the neighboring house to which it be- 
 longed, a young, motherly face gazed peacefully out. 
 The great extent of the convent grounds had left 
 this poor garden scarce breathing-space for its 
 humble blooms ; with the low paling fence that 
 separated it from the adjoining house-yards it looked 
 like a toy-garden or the background of a puppet- 
 show, and in its way it was as quaintly unreal to 
 the young girl as the nunnery itself. 
 
 When she saw it first, the city's walls and other 
 warlike ostentations had taken her imagination with 
 the historic grandeur of Quebec ; but the fasci- 
 nation deepened now that she was admitted, as it 
 were, to the religious heart and the domestic privacy 
 of the famous old town. She was romantic, as most 
 good young girls are ; and she had the same pleas- 
 ure in the strangeness of the thiAgs about her as 
 she would have felt in the keeping of a charming 
 
IIB. abbuton's ixspibatios. 99 
 
 story. To Fanny's " Well, Kitty, I suppose all this 
 just suits you," when she had returned to the little 
 parlor where the sufferer lay, she answered with a 
 sigh of irrepressible content, " Oh yes I could any- 
 thing be more beautiful ? " and her enraptuj-ed eye 
 dwelt upon the low ceilings, the deep, wide chim- 
 neys eloquent of the mighty fires with which they 
 must roar in winter, the French windows with their 
 curious and clumsy fastenings, and every little de- 
 tail that made the place alien and precious. 
 
 Fanny broke into a langh at the visionary absence 
 in her face. 
 
 " Do you think the place is good enough for your 
 hero and heroine ? " asked she, slyly ; for Kitty had 
 one of those family reputes, so hard to survive, for 
 childish attempts of her own in the world of fiction 
 where so great part of her life had been passed ; and 
 Mrs. Ellison, who was as unhterary a soul as ever 
 breathed, admired her with the heartiness which 
 nnim^inative people often feel for their idealizing 
 friends, and beheved that she was always deep in 
 the mysteries of some plot. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," Etty answered with a little 
 color, " about heroes and heroines ; but I'd hke to 
 live here, myself. Yes," she continued, rather to 
 herself than to her listener, " I do believe this is 
 what I was made for. I've always wanted to live 
 amongst old things, in a stone house with dormer- 
 windows. Why, there isn't a single dormer-window 
 in Eriecreek, nor even a brick house, let alone a 
 
100 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 stone one. Oh yes, indeed ! I was meant for an old 
 country." 
 
 " "Well, then, Kitty, I don't see what you're to 
 do but to marry East and live East ; or else find 
 a rich husband, and get him to take you to Europe 
 to live." 
 
 " Yes ; or get him to come and live in Quebec. 
 That's all I'd ask, and he needn't be a very rich 
 man, for that." 
 
 " Why, you poor child, what sort of husband 
 could you get to settle down in this dead old 
 place?" 
 
 " Oh, I suppose some kind of artist or literary 
 man." 
 
 This was not Mrs. Ellison's notion of the kind of 
 husband who was to realize for Kitty her fancy for 
 life in an old country ; but she was content to let 
 the matter rest for the present, and, in a serene 
 thankfulness to the power that had brought two 
 marriageable young creatures together beneath the 
 same roof, and under her own observance, she com- 
 posed herself among the sofa-cushions, from which 
 she meant to conduct the campaign against Mr. 
 Arbuton with relentless vigor. 
 
 " Well," she said, " it won't be fair if you are 
 not happy in this world, Kitty, you ask so little of 
 it ; " while Kitty turned to the window overlooking 
 the street, and lost herself in the drama of the 
 passing figures below. They were new, and yet 
 oddly familiar, for she had long known them in the 
 
MB. ABBUTONS KSPIBATIOX. 
 
 101 
 
 realm of romance. The peasant- women who went 
 by, in hats of felt or straw, some on foot with 
 baskets, and some in their light market-carts, were 
 all, in their wrinkled and crooked age or their fresh- 
 faced, strong-limbed youth, her friends since child- 
 hood in many a tale of France 
 or Germany; and the black- 
 robed priests, who mixed with 
 the passers on the narrow 
 wooden sidewalk, and now and 
 then courteonsly gave way, or 
 lifted their wide-rimmed hats in 
 a grave, smiling salutation, were 
 more recent acquaintances, but 
 not less intimate. They were 
 out of old romances about Italy 
 and Spain, in which she was 
 very learned ; and this butcher's 
 boy, tilting along through the 
 crowd with a half-staggering 
 run, was from any one of Dick- 
 ens's stories, and she divined 
 that the four-armed wooden 
 trough on his shoulder was the butcher's tray, which 
 figures in every novelist's description of a London 
 street-crowd. There . were many other types, as 
 French mothers of families with market-baskets on 
 their arms; very pretty French school-girls with 
 books under their arms ; wild-looking country boys 
 with red raspberries in birch-bark measures; and 
 
102 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 quiet gliding nuns with white hoods and downcast 
 faces : each of whom she unerringly relegated to an 
 appropriate corner of her world of 
 unreality. A young, mild-faced, 
 spectacled Anglican curate she did 
 not give a moment's pause, but 
 rushed him instantly through the 
 whole series of Anthony TroUope's 
 novels, which dull books, I am ^ 
 sorry to say, she had read, and "i 
 liked, every 
 one ; and tlien 
 she began to 
 find various 
 people astray 
 out of Thack- 
 eray. The trig 
 corporal, with 
 the little visor- 
 less cap worn so jauntily, the 
 light stick carried in one hand, 
 and the broad-sealed official doc- 
 ument in the other, had also, in 
 his breast-pocket, one of those 
 brief, infrequent missives which 
 Lieutenant Osborne used to send 
 to poor Amelia ; a tall, awkward 
 officer did duty for Major Dob- 
 bin ; and when a very pretty lady driving a pony 
 carriage, with a footman in livery on the little perch 
 behind her, drew rein beside the pavement, and a 
 
MB. abbuton's ENSPIBATION. 103 
 
 handsome young captain in a splendid uniform sa- 
 luted her and began talking with her in a languid, 
 affected way, it was Osborne recreant to the thought 
 of his betrothed, one of whose tender letters he kept, 
 twirling in his fingers while he talked. 
 
 Most of the people whom she saw passing had 
 letters or papers, and, in fact, they were coming 
 from the post-office, where the noonday maUs had 
 just been opened. So she went on turning sub- 
 stance into shadow, — unless, indeed, flesh and 
 blood is the illusion, — and, as I am bound to own, 
 catching at very slight pretexts in many cases for 
 the exercise of her sorcery, when her eye fell upon 
 a gentleman at a little distance. At the same mo- 
 ment he raised his eyes from a letter at which he 
 had been glancing, and ran them along the row of 
 houses opposite, till they rested on the window at 
 which she stood. Then he smiled and lifted his 
 hat, and, with a start, she recognized Mr. Arbuton, 
 while a certain chill struck to her heart through the 
 tumult she felt there. TiU he saw her there had 
 been such a cold reserve and hauteur in his bearing, 
 that the trepidation which she had felt about him 
 at times, the day before, and which had worn quite 
 away under the events of the morning, was renewed 
 again, and the aspect in which he had been so strange 
 that she did not know him, seemed the only one that 
 lie had ever worn. This effect lasted till Mr. Arbu- 
 ton could find his way to her, and place in her eagei 
 hand a letter from the girls and Dr. Ellison. She 
 forgot it then, and vanished till she read her letter. 
 
MR. ABBTJTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 
 
 The first care of Colonel Ellison had been to call 
 a doctor, and to know the worst about the sprained 
 ankle, upon which his plans had fallen lame ; and 
 the worst was that it was not a bad sprain, but Mrs. 
 Ellison, haYing been careless of it the day before, 
 had aggravated the hurt, and she must now have 
 that perfect rest, which physicians prescribe so reck- 
 lessly of other interests and duties, for a week at 
 least, and possibly two or three. 
 
 The colonel was still too much a soldier to be im- 
 patient at the doctor's order, but he was of far too 
 active a temper to be quiet under it. He therefore 
 proposed to himself nothing less than the capture 
 of Quebec in an historical sense, and even before 
 dinner he began to prepare for the campaign. He 
 sallied forth, and descended upon the bookstores 
 wherever he found them lurking, in whatsoever re- 
 cess of the Upper or Lower Town, and returned 
 home laden with guide-books to Quebec, and mono- 
 graphs upon episodes of local history, such as are 
 produced in great quantity by the semi-clerical lit- 
 erary taste of out-of-the-way Catholic capitals. The 
 colonel (who had gone actively into business, after 
 
MR. AEBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 105 
 
 leaving the army, at the close of the war) had 
 always a newspaper somewhere about him, but he 
 was not a reader of many books. Of the volumes 
 in the doctor's library, he had never in former days 
 willingly opened any but the plays of Shakespeare, 
 and Don Quixote, long passages of which he knew 
 by heart. He had sometimes attempted other 
 books, but for the most of Kitty's favorite authors 
 he professed as frank a contempt as for the Mound- 
 Builders themselves. He had read one book of 
 travel, namely, " The Innocents Abroad," which he 
 held to be so good a book that he need never 
 read anything else about the countries of which it 
 treated. When he brought in this extraordinary 
 collection of pamphlets, both Kitty and Fanny 
 knew what to expect ; for the colonel was as ready 
 to receive literature at second-hand as to avoid its 
 original sources. He had in this way picked up a 
 great deal of useful knowledge, and he was famous 
 for clipping from newspapers scraps of instructive 
 fact, all of which he relentlessly reihembered. He 
 had already a fair outline of the local history in his 
 mind, and this had been deepened and freshened by 
 Dr. EUison's recent talk of his historical studies. 
 Moreover, he had secured in the course of the pres- 
 ent journey, from his wife's and cousin's reading of 
 divers guide-books, a new store of names and dates, 
 which he desired to attach to the proper localities 
 with their help. 
 
 " Light reading for leisure hours, Fanny," said 
 
106 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Kitty, looking askance at the colonel's literature as 
 she sat down near her cousin after dinner. 
 
 " Yes ; and you start fair, ladies. Start with 
 Jacques Cartier, ancient mariner of Dieppe, in the 
 year 1635. No favoritism in this investigation ; no 
 bringing forward of Champlain or Montcalm pre- 
 maturely ; no running off on subsequent conquests 
 or other side-issues. Stick to the discovery, and 
 the names of Jacques Cartier 'and Donnacona. 
 Come, do something for an honest living." 
 
 "Who was Donnacona?" demanded Mrs. Elli- 
 son, with indifference. 
 
 " That is just what these fascinating little vol- 
 umes will tell us. Kitty, read something to your 
 suffering cousins about Donnacona, — he sounds un- 
 commonly like an Irishman," answered the colonel, 
 establishing himself in an easy-chair ; and Kitty 
 picked up a small sketch of the history of Quebec, 
 and, opening it, fell into the trance which came 
 upon her at the touch of a book, and read on for 
 some pages to Herself. 
 
 " "Well, upon my word," said the colonel, " I 
 might as well be reading about Donnacona myself, 
 for any comfort I get." 
 
 " Oh, Dick, I forgot. I was just looking. Now 
 I'm really going to commence." 
 
 " No, not yet," cried Mrs. Ellison, rising on her 
 elbow. " Where is Mr. Arbuton ? " 
 
 "What has he to do with Donnacona, my 
 dear ? " 
 
MB. AKBUTON MAKES HDISELF AGREEABLE. 107 
 
 " Everything. You know he's stayed on our ac- 
 count, and I never heard of anything so impolite, 
 so inhospitable, as ofEering to read without him. 
 Go and call him, Richard, do." 
 
 " Oh, no," pleaded Kitty, " he won't care about it. 
 Don't call him, Dick." 
 
 " Why, Kitty, I'm surprised at you ! When you 
 read so beautifully ! You needn't be ashamed, I'm 
 sure." 
 
 " I'm not ashamed ; but, at the same time, I 
 don't want to read to him." 
 
 " Well, call him any way, colonel. He's in his 
 room." 
 
 " If you do," said Kitty, with superfluous dig- 
 nity, " I must go away." 
 
 " Very well, Kitty, just as you please. Only I 
 want Richard to witness that I'm not to blame if 
 Mr. Arbuton thinks us unfeeling or neglectful." 
 
 " Oh, if he doesn't say what he thinks, it'll make 
 no diEEerence." 
 
 " It seems to me that this is a good deal of fuss 
 to make about one human being, a mere passing 
 man and brother of a day, isnt it ? " said the 
 colonel. " Go on with Donnacona, do." 
 
 There came a knock at the door. Kitty leaped 
 nervously to her feet, and fled out of the room. 
 But it was only the little French serving-maid upon 
 some errand which she quickly dispatched.. 
 
 " Well, now what do you think ? " asked Mrs. 
 EUison. 
 
108 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " Why, I think you've a surprising knowledge ol 
 French for one who studied it at school. Do you 
 suppose she understood you ? " 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! ■ You know I mean Kitty and 
 her very queer behavior. Richard, if you moon at 
 me in that stupid way," she continued, " I shall cer- 
 tainly end in an insane asylum. Can't you see 
 what's under your very nose ? " 
 
 " Yes, I can, Fanny," answered the colonel, "if 
 anything's there. But I give you my word, I don't 
 know any more than millions yet unborn what 
 you're driving at." The colonel took up the book 
 which Kitty had thrown down, and went to his room 
 to try to read up Donnacona for himself, while his 
 wife penitently turned to a pamphlet in French, 
 which he had bought with the others. " After all," 
 she thought, " men will be men ; " and seemed not 
 to find the fact wholly wanting in consolation. 
 
 A few minutes after there was a murmur of voices 
 in the entry without, at a window looking upon the 
 convent garden, where it happened to Mr. Arbuton, 
 descending from his attic chamber, to find Kitty 
 standing, a pretty shape against the reflected light 
 of the convent roofs, and amidst a little greenery of 
 house-plants, tall geraniums, an overarching ivy, 
 some delicate roses. She had paused there, on her 
 way from Fanny's to her own room, and was look- 
 ing into the garden, where a pair of silent nuns 
 were pacing up ajid down the paths, turning now 
 their backs with the heavy sable coiffure sweeping 
 
MB. ABBUTON MAKES HUISELF AGBEEABLE. 109 
 
 their black robes, and now their still, mask-like 
 faces, set in that stiff framework of white linen. 
 Sometimes they came so near that she could distin- 
 guish their features, and imagide an expression that 
 she should know if she saw them again ; and while 
 she stood seK-forgetfully feigning a character for 
 each of them, Mr. Arbuton spoke to her and took 
 his place at her side. 
 
 " We're remarkably favored in having this bit of 
 opera under our windows, Miss Ellison," he said, 
 and smiled as Kitty answered, " Oh, is it really like 
 an opera ? I never saw one, but I could imagine it 
 must be beautiful," and they both looked on in 
 silence a moment, while the nuns moved, shadow- 
 like, out of the garden, and left it empty. 
 
 Then Mr. Arbuton said something to ' which 
 Kitty answered simply, " I'U see if my cousin 
 doesn't want me," and presently stood beside Mrs. 
 Ellison's sofa, a little conscious in color. " Fanny, 
 Mr. Arbuton has asked me to go and see the cathe- 
 dral with him. Do you think it would be right ? " 
 
 Mrs. EUison's triumphant heart rose to her lips. 
 " Why, you dear, particular, innocent little goose," 
 she cried, flinging her arms about Kitty, and kissing 
 her till the young girl blushed again ; " of course it 
 would ! Go ! You mustn't stay mewed up in here. 
 I sha'n't be able to go about with you ; and if I 
 can judge by the colonel's hreathing, as he calls it, 
 from the room in there, he won't, at present. But 
 the idea of your having a question of propriety ! " 
 
110 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 And indeed it was the first time Kitty had ever had 
 such a thing, and the remembrance of it put a kind 
 of restraint upon her, as she strolled demurely be- 
 side Mr. Arbuton towards the cathedral. 
 
 " You must be guide," said he, " for this is my 
 first day in Quebec, you know, and you are an old 
 inhabitant in comparison." ' 
 
 " I'll show the way," she answered, " if you'll 
 interpret the sights. I think I must be stranger to 
 them, than you, in spite of my long residence. 
 Sometimes I'm afraid that I do only fancy I enjoy 
 these things, as Mrs. March said,. for I've no Euro- 
 pean experiences to contrast them with. I know 
 that it %eems very delightful, though, and quite like 
 what I should expect in Europe." 
 
 " You'd expect very little of Europe, then, in 
 most things ; though there's no disputing that it's a 
 very pretty illusion of the Old World." 
 
 A few steps had brought them into the market- 
 square in front of the cathedral, where a little be- 
 lated traffic still lingered in the few old peasant- 
 women hovering over baskets of such fruits and 
 vegetables as had long been out of season in the 
 States, and the housekeepers and serving-maids 
 cheapening these wares. A sentry moved mechan- 
 ically up and down before the high portal of the 
 Jesuit Barracks, over the arch of which were stiU 
 ■the letters I. H. S. carved long ago upon the key- 
 stone ; and the ancient edifice itself, vdth its yellow 
 stucco front and its grated windows, had every right 
 
MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. Ill 
 
 to be a monastery turned barracks in France or 
 Italy. A row of quaint stone houses — inns and 
 shops — formed the upper side of the Square ; while 
 the modern buildings of the Rtie Fabrique on the 
 lower side might serve very well for that show of 
 improvement which deepens the 
 sentiment of the neighboring an- 
 tiquity and decay in Latin towns. 
 As for the cathedral, which faced 
 the convent from across the 
 Square, it was as cold and torpid 
 a bit of Renaissance as could be 
 found in Rome itself. A red- 
 coated soldier or two passed 
 through the Square ; three or four 
 neat little French policemen 
 lounged about in blue uniforms 
 and flaring havelocks ; some wal- 
 nut-faced, blue-eyed old citizens 
 and peasants sat upon the thresh- 
 olds of the row of old houses, and 
 gazed dreamily through the smoke 
 of their pipes at the slight stir and 
 glitter of shopping about the fine stores of the Rue 
 Fabrique. An air of serene disoccupation pervaded 
 the place, with which the occasional riot of the driv- 
 ers of the long row of calashes and carriages in front 
 of the cathedral did not discord. Whenever a stray 
 American wandered into the Square, there was a 
 wild flight of these drivers towards him, and his 
 
112 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 person was lost to sight amidst their pantomime. 
 They did not try to underbid eaph other, and they 
 were perfectly good-humored ; as soon as he had 
 made his choice, the rejected multitude returned to 
 their places on the curbstone, pursuing the success- 
 ful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, 
 while the horses went on munching the contents of 
 their leathern head-bags, and tossing them into the 
 air to shake down the lurking grains of corn. 
 
 " It is like Europe ; your friends were right," 
 said Mr. Arbuton as they escaped into the cathe- 
 dral from one of these friendly onsets. " It's quite 
 the atmosphere of foreign travel, and you ought to 
 be able to realize the feelings of a tourist." 
 
 A priest was saying mass at one of the side- 
 altars, assisted by acolytes in their every-day 
 clothes ; and outside of the railing a market-woman, 
 with a basket of choke-cherries, knelt among a few 
 other poor people. Presently a young English 
 couple came in, he with a dashing India scarf about 
 his hat, and she very stylishly, dressed, who also 
 made their genuflections with the rest, and then sat 
 down and dropped their heads in prayer. 
 
 " This is like enough Europe, too," murmured 
 Mr. Arbuton. " It's very good North Italy ; or 
 South, for the matter of that." 
 
 " Oh, is it ? " answered Kitty, joyously. " I 
 thought it must be ! " And she added, in that 
 trustful way of hers, " It's all very familiar ; but 
 then it seems to me on this journey that I've seen 
 
ME. AKBUTON MAKES fflMSELF AGREEABLE. 113 
 
 a great many things that I know I've only read of 
 before;" and so followed Mr. Arbuton in his tour 
 of the pictures. 
 
 She was as ignorant of art as any Roman or 
 Florentine ^1 whose life has been passed in the 
 midst of it; and she believed these 
 mighty fine pictures, and was 
 puzzled by Mr. Arbuton's 
 !j behavior towards them, who 
 |;| was too little imaginative or 
 
 1 
 
 too conscientious to make merit for them out of the 
 things they suggested. He treated the poor altar- 
 pieces of the Quebec cathedral with the same harsh 
 indifference he would have shown to the second-rate 
 paintings of a European gallery ; doubted the Van- 
 dyck, and cared nothing for the Conception, " in 
 
114 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, 
 
 the style of Le Brun," over the high-altar, though 
 it had the historical interest of having survived 
 that bombardment of 1759 which destroyed the 
 church. 
 
 Kitty innocently singled out the worst picture in 
 the place as her favorite, and then was piqued, and 
 presently frightened, at his cold reluctance about it. 
 He made her feel that it was very bad, and that 
 she shared its inferiority, though he said nothing to 
 that effect. She learned the shame of not being a 
 connoisseur in a connoisseur's company, and she 
 perceived more painfully than ever before that a 
 Bostonian, who had been much in Europe, might 
 be very uncomfortable to the simple, untravelled 
 American. Yet, she reminded herself, the Marches 
 had been in Europe, and they were Bostonians also ; 
 and they did not go about putting everything under 
 foot ; they seemed to care for everything they saw, 
 and to have a friendly jest, if not praises, for it. 
 She liked that ; she would have been well enough 
 ■ pleased to have Mr. Arbuton laugh outright at her 
 picture, and she could have joined him in it. But 
 the look, however flattered into an air of polite 
 question at last, which 'he had bent upon her, 
 seemed to outlaw her and condemn her taste in 
 everything. As they passed out of the cathedral, 
 she would rather have gone home than continued 
 the walk as he begged her, if she were not tired, to 
 do ; but this would have been flight, and she was 
 
MB. AEBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 115 
 
 not a coward. So they sauntered down the Rue 
 Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As they 
 went by the door of Hotel Musty, her pleasant 
 friends came again into her mind, and she said, 
 " This is where we stayed last week, with Mr. and 
 Mrs. March." 
 
 " Those Boston people ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do you know where they Uve in Boston ? " 
 " Why, we have titieir address ; but I can't think 
 of it. I believe somewhere in the southern part of 
 the city " — 
 
 "The South End?" 
 
 " Oh yes, that's it. Have yon ever heard of 
 them?" 
 » No." 
 
 " I thought perhaps you might have known Mr. 
 March. He's in the insurance business " — 
 
 " Oh no ! No, I don't know him," said Mr. Ar- 
 buton, eagerly. Kitty wondered if there could be 
 anything wrong with the business repute of Mr. 
 March, but dismissed the thought as unworthy ; 
 and having perceived that her friends were snubbed, 
 she said bravely, that they were the most delightful 
 people she had ever seen, and she was sorry that 
 they were not still in Quebec. He shared her re- 
 gret tacitly, if at all, and they walked in silence 
 to the gate, whence they strolled down the winding 
 street outside the wall into the Lower Town. But 
 it was not a pleasant ramble for Kitty : she was in 
 
116 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 a dim dread of hitherto unseen and unlmagined 
 trespasses against good taste, not only in pictures 
 and people, but in all life, which, from having been 
 a very smiling prospect when she set out with Mr. 
 Arbuton, had suddenly become a narrow pathway, 
 in which one must pick one's way with more regard 
 to each step than any general end. All this was as 
 obscure and uncertain as the intimations which 
 had produced it, and which, in words, had really 
 amounted to nothing. But. she felt more and more 
 that in her companion there was something wholly 
 alien to the influences which had shaped her ; and 
 though she could not know how much, she was sure 
 of enough to make her dreary in his presence. 
 
 They wandered through the quaintness and noise- 
 less bustle of the Lower Town thoroughfares, and 
 came by and by to that old church, the oldest in 
 Quebec, which was built near two hundred years 
 ago, in fulfillment of a vow made at the repulse of 
 Sir William Phipps's attack upon the city, and 
 further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this 
 church should be ruined by the fire in which a suc- 
 cessful attempt of the English was yet to involve 
 the Lower Town. A painting, which represented 
 the vision of the nun, perished in the conflagration 
 which verified it, in 1759 ; but the walls of the an- 
 cient structure remain to witness this singular piece 
 of history, which Kitty now glanced at furtively in 
 one of the colonel's guide-books ; since her ill-for- 
 tune with the picture in the cathedral, she had not 
 openly cared for anything. 
 
MB. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 117 
 
 At one side of the church there was a booth for 
 the sale of crockery and tin ware ; and there was 
 an every-day cheerfulness of small business in the 
 shops and tented stands about the square on which 
 the church faced, and through which there was con- 
 tinual passing of heavy burdens from the port, 
 swift calashes, and slow, country-paced market- 
 carts. 
 
 ilr. Arbuton made no motion to enter the 
 church, and Kitty would not hint the curiosity she 
 felt to see the interior ; and while they lingered a 
 moment, the door opened, and a peasant came out 
 with a little coffin in his arms. His eyes were dim 
 and his face wet with weeping, and he bore the lit- 
 tle coffin tenderly, as if his caress might reach the 
 dead child within. Behind him she came who must 
 be the mother, her face deeply hidden in her veil. 
 Beside the pavement waited a shabby calash, with 
 a driver half asleep on his perch ; and the man, still 
 clasping his precious burden, clambered into the ve- 
 hicle, and laid it upon his knees, while the woman 
 groped, through her tears and veil, for the step. 
 Kitty and her companion had moved reverently 
 aside ; but now !Mr. Arbuton came forward, and 
 helped the woman to her place. She gave him a 
 hoarse, sad " Merci ! " and spread a fold of her 
 shawl fondly over the end of the little coffin ; the 
 drowsy driver whipped up his beast, and the calash 
 jolted away. 
 
 Kitty cast a grateful glance upon Mr. Arbuton, 
 
118 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 as they now entered the church, by a common im- 
 pulse. On their way towards the high-altar they 
 passed the rude black bier, with the tallow candles 
 yet smoking in their black wooden candlesticks. A 
 few worshippers were dropped here and there in the 
 vacant seats, and at a principal side-altar knelt a 
 poor woman praying before a wooden. eflBgy of the 
 dead Christ that lay in a glass case under the altar. 
 The image was of life-size, and was painted to rep- 
 resent life, or rather death, with false hair and 
 beard, and with the muslin drapery managed to 
 expose the stigmata : it was stretched upon a bed 
 strewn with artificial flowers ; and it was dreadful. 
 But the poor soul at her devotions there prayed to 
 it in an ecstacy of supplication, flinging her arms 
 asunder with imploring gesture, clasping her hands 
 and bowing her head upon them, while her person 
 swayed from side to side in the abandon of her 
 prayer. Who could she be, and what was her 
 mighty need of blessing or forgiveness? As her 
 wont was, Kitty threw her own soul into the imag- 
 ined case of the' suppliant, the tragedy of her desire 
 or sorrow. Yet, like all who suffer sympathetically, 
 she was not without consolations unknown to the 
 principal; and the waning afternoon, as it lit up 
 the conventional ugliness of the old church, and the 
 paraphernalia of its worship, relieved her emotional 
 self-abandon with a remote sense of content, so that 
 it may have been a jealousy for the integrity of her 
 own reverie, as well as a feeling for the poor woman. 
 
.xO.-\ 
 
 Heir person swayed from side to side. — Page 118. 
 
MR. AKBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 119 
 
 that made her tremble lest Mr. Arbuton should in 
 some way disparage the spectacle. I suppose that 
 her interest in it was more an aesthetic than a spir- 
 itual one ; it embodied to her sight many a scene of 
 penitence that had played before her fancy, and I 
 do not know but she would have been willing to 
 have the suppliant guilty of some dreadful misdeed, 
 rather than eating meat last Friday, which was 
 probably her sin. However it was, the ancient 
 crone before that ghastly idol was precious to her, 
 and it seemed too great a favor, when at last the 
 suppliant wiped her eyes, rose trembling from her 
 knees, and, approaching Kitty, stretched towards 
 her a shaking palm for charity. 
 
 It was a touch that transfigured all, and gave 
 even Mr. Arbuton's neutrality a light of ideal char- 
 acter. He bestowed the alms craved of him in 
 tiun, he did not repulse the beldame's blessing ; 
 and Kitty, who was already moved by his kindness 
 to that poor mourner at the door, forgot that the 
 earlier part of their walk had been so miserable, and 
 climbed back to the Upper Town through the Pres- 
 cott Gate in greater gayety than she had yet known 
 that day in his company. I think he had not done 
 much to make her cheerful ; but it is one of the ad- 
 vantages of a temperament like his, that very little 
 is expected of it, and that it can more easily than 
 any other make the human heart glad ; at the least 
 softening in it, the soul frolics with a craven light- 
 someness. For this reason Kitty was able to enjoy 
 
120 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 with novel satisfaction the picturesqueness of Moun- 
 tain Street, and they both admired the huge shoul- 
 der of rock near the gate, with its poplars atop, and 
 the battery at the brink, with the muzzles of the 
 guns thrust forward against the sky. She could not 
 move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of 
 the circus-bills plastered half-way up the rock ; but 
 he tolerated the levity with which she commented 
 on them, and her light sallies upon passing things, 
 and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home 
 in serene satisfaction. 
 
 "Well, Kitty," said the tenant of the sofa, as 
 Kitty and the colonel drew up to the table on which 
 the tea was laid at the sofa-side, " you've had a nice 
 walk, haven't you ? " 
 
 *' Oh yes, very nice. That is, the first part of it 
 wasn't very nice ; but after a while we reached an 
 old church in the Lower Town, — which was very 
 interesting, — and then we appeared to cheer up 
 and take a new start." 
 
 " Well," asked the colonel, " what did you find so 
 interesting at that old church ? " 
 
 " Why, there was a baby's funeral ; and an old 
 woman, perfectly crushed by some trouble or other, 
 praying before an altar, and " — 
 
 " It seems to take very little to cheer you up," 
 said the colonel. " All you ask of your fellow- 
 beings is a heart-breaking bereavement and a re- 
 ligious agony, and you are lively at once. Some 
 people might require human sacrifices, but yon 
 don't." 
 
Jm. AEBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 121 
 
 Kitty looked at her cousin a moment with vague 
 amaze. The grossness of the absurdity flashed 
 upon her, and she felt as if another touch must 
 bring the tears. She said nothing ; but Mrs. Elli- 
 son, who saw only that she was cut off from her 
 heart's desire of gossip, came to the rescue. 
 
 " Don't answer a word, Kitty, not a single word ; 
 I never heard anything more insulting from one 
 cousin to another ; and I should say it, if I was 
 brought into a court of justice." 
 
 A sudden burSt of laughter from Katty, who hid 
 her conscious face in her hands, interrupted Mrs. 
 Ellison's defense. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Ellison, piqued at her de- 
 sertion, " I hope you understand yourselves. I 
 don't." This was Mrs. ElHson's attitude towards 
 her husband's whole family, who on their part 
 never had been able to account for the colonel's 
 choice except as a joke, and sometimes questioned if 
 he had not perhaps carried the joke too far; though 
 they loved her too, for a kind of passionate gener- 
 osity and sublime, inconsequent unselfishness about 
 her. 
 
 " What I want to know, now" said the colonel, 
 as soon as Kitty would let him, " and I'll try to 
 put it as politely as I can, is simply this : What 
 made the first part of your walk so disagreeable ? 
 You didn't see a wedding party, or a child rescued 
 from a horrible death, or a man saved from drown- 
 ing, or anything of that kind, did you ? " 
 
122 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 But the colonel would have done better not to 
 say anything. His wife was made peevish by his 
 persistence, and the loss of the harmless pleasure 
 upon which she had counted in the history of 
 Kitty's walk with Mr. Arbuton. Kitty herself 
 would not laugh again ; in fact she grew serious 
 and thoughtful, and presently took up a book, and 
 after that went to her own room, where she stood 
 awhile at her window, and looked out on the 
 garden of the Ursulines. The moon hung full orb 
 in the stainless heaven, and deepened the mystery 
 of the paths and trees, and lit the silvery roofs and 
 chimneys of the convent with tender effulgence. A 
 wandering odor of leaf and flower stole up from the 
 garden, but she perceived the sweetness, like the 
 splendor, with veiled sqnses. She was turning 
 over in her thought the incidents of her walk, and 
 trying to make out if anything had really hap- 
 pened, first to provoke her against Mr. Arbuton, 
 and then to reconcile her to him. Had he said or 
 done anything about her favorite painting (which 
 she hated now), or the Marches, to offend her ? Or 
 if it had been his tone and manner, was his after- 
 conduct at the old church sufficient penance ? 
 What was it he had done that common humanity 
 did not require ? Was he so very superior to com- 
 mon humanity, that she should meekly rejoice at 
 his kindness to the afflicted mother? Why need 
 she have cared for his forbearance towards the rapt 
 devotee ? She became aware that she was ridicu- 
 
MB. AEBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 123 
 
 lous. " Dick was right," she confessed, " and I will 
 
 not let myself be made a goose of ; " and when the 
 
 bugle at the citadel called the 
 
 soldiers to rest, and the harsh 
 
 chapel-bell bade the nuns go 
 
 »^ a ^i»> tH dream of hearen, she also fell 
 
 II ^H^ w asleep, a smile on her lips and 
 
 a Hght heart in her breast. 
 
VI, 
 
 A LETTER OP KITTY S. 
 
 QpEBEC, Avgntt — , 1870. 
 
 Deab Girls, — Since the 
 letter I wrote you a day or 
 two after we got here, we 
 have been going on rery 
 much as you might have ex- 
 pected. A whole week has 
 passed, but we still bear our 
 enforced leisure with forti- 
 tude ; and, though Boston 
 and New York are both fad- 
 ing into the improbable (as far as we are concerned), 
 Quebec continues inexhaustible, and I don't be- 
 grudge a moment of the time we are giving it. 
 
 Fanny still keeps her sofa ; the first enthusiasm 
 of her affliction has worn away, and she has noth- 
 ing to sustain her now but planning our expeditions 
 about the city. She has got the map and the his- 
 tory of Quebec by heart, and she holds us to the 
 literal fulfillment of her instructions. On this ac- 
 count, she often has to send Dick and me out 
 together when she would like to keep him with her, 
 for she won't trust either of us alone, and when we 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. J 25 
 
 come back she examines us separately to see whether 
 we have skipped anything. This makes us faithful 
 in the smallest things. She says she is detevmined 
 that Uncle Jack shall have a full and circumstantial 
 report from me of all that he wants to know about 
 the celebrated places here, and I really think he 
 will, if I go on, or am goaded on, in this way. It's 
 pure devotion to the cause in Fanny, for you know 
 she doesn't care for such things herself, and has no 
 pleasure in it but carrying a 'point. Her chief con- 
 solation under her trial of keeping still is to see how 
 I look in her different dresses. She sighs over me 
 as I appear in a new garment, and says, Oh, if she 
 only had the dressing of me ! Then she gets up 
 and limps and hops across the room to where I 
 stand before the glass, and puts a pin here and a 
 ribbon there, and gives my hair (which she has 
 dressed herself) a little dab, to make it lie differ- 
 ently, and then scrambles back to her sofa, and 
 knocks her lame ankle against something, and Hes 
 there groaning and enjoying herself like a martyr. 
 On days when she thinks she is never going to get 
 well, she says she doesn't know why she doesn't give 
 me her things at once and be done with it ; and on 
 days when she thinks she is going to get well right 
 away, she says she will have me one made some- 
 thing like whatever dress I have got on, as soon as 
 she's home. Then up she'll jump again for the 
 exact measure, and tell me the history of every 
 stitch, and hbw she'll have it altered just the least 
 
126 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 grain, and differently trimmed to suit my com- 
 plexion better ; and ends by having promised to get 
 me something not in the least like it. You have 
 some idea already of what Fanny is ; and aU you 
 have got to do is to multiply it by about fifty thou- 
 sand. Her sprained ankle simply intensifies her 
 whole character. 
 
 Besides helping to compose Fanny's expedition- 
 ary corps, and really exerting himself in the cause 
 of Uncle Jack, as he calls it, Dick is behaving 
 beautifully. Every morning, after breakfast, he 
 goes over to the hotel, and looks at the arrivals 
 and reads the newspapers, and though we never 
 get anything out of him afterwards, we somehow 
 feel informed 'of all that is going on. He has 
 taken to smoking a clay pipe in honor of the Cana- 
 dian fashion, and he wears a gay, barbaric scarf 
 of Indian muslin wound round his hat and flying 
 out behind ; because the Quebeckers protect them- 
 selves in that way against sunstroke when the ther- 
 mometer gets up among the sixties. He has also 
 bought a pair of snow-shoes to be prepared for the 
 other extreme of weather, in case anything else 
 should happen to Fanny, and detain us into the 
 winter. When he has rested from his walk to the 
 hotel, we usually go out together and explore, as 
 we do also in the afternoon ; and in the evening 
 we walk on Durham Terrace, — a promenade over- 
 looking the river, where the whole cramped and 
 crooked city goes for exercise. It's a formal pa- 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 127 
 
 rade in tlie evening; but one morning I went 
 there before breakfast, for a change, and found it 
 the resort of careless ease ; two or three idle boys 
 were sunning themselves on the carriages of the 
 big guns that stand on the Terrace, a little dog 
 was barking at the chimneys of the Lower Town, 
 and an old gentleman was walking up and down 
 in his dressing-gown and slippers, just as if it were 
 his own front porch. He looked something like 
 Uncle Jack, and I wished it had been he, — to see 
 the smoke curling softly up from the Lower Tovm, 
 the bustle^ about the market-place, and the ship- 
 ping in the river, and the haze hanging over the 
 water a little way off, and the near hills all silver, 
 and the distant ones blue. 
 
 But if we are coming to the grand and the beau- 
 tiful, why, there is no direction in which you can 
 look about Quebec without seeing it; and it is 
 always mixed up with something so familiar and 
 homelike, that my heart warms to it. The Jesuit 
 Barracks are just across the street from us in the 
 foreground of the most magnificent landscape ; the 
 building is — think, you Eriecreeks of an hour ! — 
 two hundred years old, and it looks five hundred. 
 The English took it away from the Jesuits in 1760, 
 and have used it as barracks ever since ; but it isn't 
 in the least changed, so that a Jesuit missionary 
 who visited it the other day said that it was as if his 
 brother priests had been driven out of it the week 
 before. Well, you might think so old and so hisr 
 
128 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 torical a place would be putting on airs, but it takes 
 as kindly to domestic life as a new frame-house, and 
 I am never tired of looking over into the yard at 
 the frowsy soldiers' wives hanging out clothes, and 
 the unkempt children playing among the burdocks, 
 and chickens and cats, and the soldiers themselves 
 caiTying about the officers' boots, or sawing wood 
 and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. They 
 are oflf dignity as well as off duty, then ; but when 
 they are on both, and in full dress, they make our 
 volunteers (as I remember them) seem very shabby 
 and slovenly. 
 
 Over the belfry of the Barracks, our windows 
 command a view of half Quebec, with its roofs and 
 spires dropping down the slope to the Lower Town, 
 where the masts of the ships in the river come ta- 
 pering up among them, and then of a plain stretch- 
 ing from the river in the valley to a range of moun- 
 tains against the horizon, with far-off white villages 
 glimmering out of their purple folds. The whole 
 plain is bright with houses and harvest-fields ; and 
 the distinctly divided farms — the owners cut them 
 up every generation, and give each son a strip of 
 the entire length — run back on either hand, from 
 .the straight roads bordered by poplars, while the 
 highways near the city pass between lovely villas. 
 
 But this landscape and the Jesuit Barracks, with 
 all their merits, are nothing to the Ursuline Con- 
 vent, just under our back windows, which I told 
 you something about in my other letter. We have 
 
A LETTKE OF KITTY'S. 129 
 
 been reading up its history since, and we know 
 about Madame de la Peltrie, the noble Norman 
 lady wbo founded it in 1640. She was very rich 
 and Tery beautiful, and a saint from the beginning, 
 so that when her husband died, and her poor old 
 father wanted her to marry again and not go into 
 a nunnery, she didn't mind cheating him by a sham 
 maiTiage with a devout gentleman ; and she came 
 to Canada as soon as her father was dead, with an- 
 other saint, Marie de I'lncamation, and founded 
 this convent. The first building is standing yet, as 
 strong as ever, though everything but the stone 
 walls was burnt two centuries ago. Only a few 
 years since an old ash-tree, under which the Ursu- 
 lines first taught the Indian children^ blew down, 
 and now a large black cross marks its place. The 
 modern nuns are in the garden nearly the whole 
 morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former 
 nuns haunt it ; and in very bright moonlight I my- 
 self do a bit of Madame de la Peltrie there, and 
 teach little Indian boys, who dwindle like those 
 in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an en- 
 chanted place, and I wish we had it in the back yard 
 at Erieereek, though I don't think the neighbors 
 would approve of the architecture. I have adopted 
 two nuns for my own : one is tall and slender and 
 pallid, and you can see at a glance that she broke 
 the heart of a mortal lover, and knew it, when sha 
 became the bride of heaven ; and the other is short 
 and plain and plump, and looks as comfortable and 
 
 9 
 
130 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANOE. 
 
 commonplace as life-after-dinner. When the world 
 is bright I revel in the statue-like sadness of the 
 beautiful nun, who never laughs or plays with the 
 little girl pupils ; but when the world is dark — as 
 the best of worlds will be at times for a minute or 
 two — I take to the fat nun, and go in for a clumsy 
 romp with the children ; and then I fancy that I 
 am wiser if not better than the fair slim Ursuline. 
 But whichever I am, for the time being, I am vexed 
 with the other ; yet they always are together, as if 
 they were counterparts. I think a nice story might 
 be written about them. 
 
 In Wolfe's siege of Quebec this Ursuline Garden 
 of ours was everywhere torn up by the falling 
 bombs, and the sisters were driven out into the 
 world they had forsaken forevpr, as Fanny has been 
 reading in a little French account of the events, 
 written at the time, by a nun of the General Hos- 
 pital. It was there the Ursulines took what refuge 
 there was ; going from their cloistered school-rooms 
 and their innocent little ones to the wards of the 
 hosp'.tal, filled with the wounded and dying of either 
 side and echoing with their dreadful groans. What 
 a sad, evil, bewildering world they had a glimpse 
 of ! In the garden here, our poor Montcalm — I 
 belong to the French side, please, in Quebec — was 
 buried in a grave dug for him by a bursting shell. 
 They have his skull now in the chaplain's room 
 of the convent, where we saw it the other day. 
 They have made it comfortable in a glass box. 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 131 
 
 neatly bound with black, and covered with a white 
 lace drapery, just as if it were a saints'. It was 
 broken a httle in taking it out of the grave ; and a 
 few years ago, some English officers borrowed it to 
 look at, and were horrible enough to pull out some 
 of the teeth. Tell Uncle Jack the head is very 
 broad above the ears, but the forehead is small. 
 
 The chaplain also showed us a copy of an old 
 painting of the first convent, Indian lodges, Madame 
 de la Pellrie's house, and Madame herself, very 
 splendidly dressed, with an Indian chief before her, 
 and some French cavaUers riding down an avenue 
 towards her. Then he showed us some of the nuns' 
 work in albums, painted and lettered in a way to 
 give me an idea of old missals. By and by he 
 went into the chapel with us, and it gave such a 
 queer notion of his indoors life to have him put on 
 an overcoat and india-rubbers to go a few rods 
 through the open air to the chapel door ; he had not 
 been very well, he said. When he got in, he took 
 off his hat, and put on an octagonal priest's cap, 
 and showed us everything in the kindest way — and 
 his manners were exquisite. There were beautiful 
 paintings sent out from France at the time of the 
 Revolution ; and wood-carvings round the high- 
 altar, done by Quebec artists in the beginning of 
 the last century ; for he said they had a school of 
 arts then at St. Anne's, twenty miles below the 
 city. Then there was an ivory crucifix, so life-like 
 that you could scarcely bear to look at it. But what 
 
132 . A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 I most cared for was the tiny twinkle of a votive 
 lamp which he pointed out to us in one comer of 
 the nuns' chapel : it was lit a hundred and fifty 
 years ago by two of our French officers when their 
 sister took the veil, and has never been extinguished 
 since, except during the siege of 1759. Of course, 
 I think a story might be written about this ; and 
 the truth is, the possibilities of fiction in Quebec 
 are overpowering ; I go about in a perfect haze of 
 romances, and meet people at every turn who have 
 nothing to do but invite the passing novelist into 
 their houses, and have their likenesses done at once 
 for heroes and heroines. They needn't change a 
 thing about them, but sit just as they are ; and if 
 this is in the present, only think how the whole past 
 of Quebec must be crying out to be put into histor- 
 ical romances ! 
 
 I wish you could see the houses, and how substan- 
 tial they are. I can only think of Eriecreek as an 
 assemblage of huts and bark-lodges in contrast. 
 Our boarding-house is comparatively slight, and has 
 stone walls only a foot and a half thick, but the 
 average is two feet and two and a half ; and the 
 other day Dick went through the Laval University, 
 — he goes everywhere and gets acquainted with 
 everybody, — and saw the foundation walls of the 
 first building, which have stood all the sieges and 
 conflagrations since the seventeenth century ; and 
 no wonder, for they are six feet thick, and form 
 a series of low-vaulted corridors, as heavy, he says, 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY S. 
 
 133 
 
 its the casemates of a fortress. There is a beautiful 
 old carved staircase there, of the same date ; and 
 he liked the president, a priest, ever so much ; and 
 we like the looks of all the priests we see ; they are 
 so handsome and polite, and they all speak English, 
 with some funny httle defect. The other day we 
 asked such a nice young priest about the way to 
 Hare Point, where it is said the Recollet friars had 
 
 their first mission on the marshy meadows: he 
 didn't know of this bit of history, and we showed 
 him our book, " Ah ! you see, the book say ' pro- 
 hah-\j the site.' If it had said certainly, I should 
 have known. But pro-5aS-ly, pro-5a6-ly, you see ! " 
 However, he showed us the way, and down we went 
 through the Lower Town,.and out past the General 
 Hospital to this Pointe aux Li^vres, which is famous 
 also because somewhere near it, on the St. Charles, 
 
134 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Jacques Cartier wintered in 1536, and kidnapped 
 the Indian king Donnacona, whom he carried to 
 France. And it was here Montcalm's forces tried 
 to rally after their defeat by WoKe. (Please read 
 this several times to Uncle Jack, so that he can have 
 it impressed upon him how faithful I am in my his- 
 torical researches.) 
 
 It makes me dreadfully angry and sad to think 
 the French should have been robbed of Quebec, 
 after what they did to build it. But it is still quite 
 a French city in everything, even to sympathy with 
 France in the Prussian war, which you would 
 hardly think they would care about. Our landlady 
 says the very boys in the street know about the 
 battles, and. explain, every time the French are 
 beaten, how they were outnumbered and betrayed, 
 — something the way we used to do in the first of 
 our war. 
 
 I suppose you will think I am crazy ; but I do 
 wish Uncle Jack would wind up his practice at Er^e- 
 creek, and sell the house, and come to live at 
 Quebec. I have been asking prices ot things, and 
 I find that everything is very cheap, even ac- 
 cording to the Eriecreek standard ; we could get a 
 beautiful house on the St. Louis Road for two hun- 
 dred a year ; beef is ten or twelve cents a pound, 
 and everything else in proportion. Then besides 
 that, the washing is sent out into the country to be 
 done by the peasant-women, and there isn't a crumb 
 of bread baked in the house, but it all comes from 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 135 
 
 the bakers ; and only t^ink, girls, what a relief that 
 ■would be ! Do get Uncle Jack to consider it seri- 
 ously/. 
 
 Since I began this letter the afternoon has worn 
 away — the light from the sunset on the mountains 
 would glorify our supper table without extra charge, 
 if we lived here — and the twilight has passed, and 
 the moon has come up over the gables and dormer- 
 windows of the convent, and looks into the garden 
 so invitingly that I can't help joining her. So I 
 will put my writing by tiU to-morrow. The 
 going-to-bed bell has rung, and the red lights have 
 vanished one by one from the windows, and the 
 nuns are asleep, and another set of ghosts are play- 
 ing in the garden with the copper-colored phantoms 
 of the Indian children of long ago. What ! not 
 Madame de la Pelfcrie ? Oh ! how do they hke 
 those little fibs of yours up in heaven ? 
 
 Sunday afternoon. — As we were at the French 
 cathedral last Sunday, we went to the English to- 
 day ; and I could easily have imagined myself in 
 some church of Old England, hearing the royal 
 family prayed for, and Hstening to the pretty poor 
 sermon dehvered with such an English hrogue. The 
 people, too, had such Englishy faces and such queer 
 little eccentricities of dress ; the yoimg lady that 
 sang contralto in the choir wore a scarf Hke a man's 
 on her hat. The cathedral isn't much, architectur- 
 ally, I suppose, but it affected me very solemnly, 
 and I couldn't help feeling that it was as much a 
 
136 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 part of British power and grandeur as the citadel 
 itself. Over the bishop's seat drooped the flag of a 
 Crimean regiment, tattered by time and battles, 
 which was hung up here with great ceremonies, in 
 
 1860, when the Prince of 
 Wales presented them with 
 new colors ; and up in the 
 gallery was a kind of glo- 
 rified pew for royal high- 
 nesses and governor-gen- 
 erals and so forth, to sit in 
 when they are here. There 
 are tablets and monumental 
 busts about the walls ; and 
 one to the memory of the 
 Duke of Lenox, the gov- 
 ernor-general who died in 
 the middle of the last cent- 
 ury from the bite of a fox ; 
 which seemed an odd fate 
 for a duke, and somehow 
 made me very sorry for 
 hiin. 
 
 Fanny, of course, couldn't 
 go to church with me, and 
 Dick got out of it by lin- 
 gering too late over the newspapers at the hotel, 
 and so I trudged off with our Bostonian, who is still 
 with us here. I didn't dwell much upon him in my 
 last letter, and I don't believe now I can make him 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 137 
 
 quite clear to you. He has been a good, deal abroad, 
 and he is Europeanized enough not to think much 
 of America, though I can't find that he quite ap- 
 proves of Europe, and his experience seems not to 
 have left him any particular country in either hemi- 
 sphere. 
 
 He isn't the Bostonian of Uncle Jack's imagina- 
 tion, and I suspect he wouldn't hke to be. He is 
 rather too young, still, to have much of an anti- 
 slaverj'^ record, and even if he had lived soon 
 enough, I think that he would not have been a John 
 Brown man. I am afraid that he believes in " vul- 
 gar and meretricious distinctions " of all sorts, and 
 that he hasn't an atom of " magnanimous democ- 
 racy " in him. In fact, I find, to my great aston- 
 ishment, that some ideas which I thought were held 
 only in England, and which I had never seriously 
 -thought of, seem actually a part of Mr. Arbuton's 
 nature or education. He talks about the lower 
 classes, and tradesmen, and the best people, and 
 good families, as I supposed nobody in this country 
 ever did, — in earnest. To be sure, I have always 
 been reading of characters who had such opinions, 
 but I thought they were just put into novels to eke 
 out somebody's unhappiness, — to keep the high- 
 born daughter from marrying beneath her for love, 
 and so on ; or else to be made fun of in the person 
 of some silly old woman or some odious snob ; and 
 I could hardly beheve at first that our Bostonian 
 was serious in talking in that way. Such things 
 
138 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 sound SO differently in real life ; and I laughed at 
 them till I found that he didn't know what to make 
 of my laughing, and then I took leave to differ with 
 him in some of his notions ; but he never disputes 
 anything I say, and so makes it seem rude to differ 
 with him. • I always feel, though- he begins it, as if 
 I had thrust my opinions upon him. But in spite 
 of his weaknesses and disagreeabilities, there is 
 something really high about him ; he is so scrupu- 
 lously true, so exactly just, that Uncle Jack him- 
 self couldn't be more so ; though you can see that 
 he respects his virtues as the peculiar result of some 
 extraordinary system. Here at Quebec, though he 
 goes round patronizing the landscape and the an- 
 tiquities, and coldly smiling at my little enthusi- 
 asms, there is really a great deal that ought to be at 
 least improving in him. I get to paying him the 
 same respect that he pays himself, and imbues his 
 very clothes with, till everything he has on appears 
 to look like him and respect itself accordingly. I 
 have often wondered what his hat, his honored hat, 
 for instance, would do, if I should throw it out of 
 the front window. It would make an earthquake, 
 I believe. 
 
 He is politely curious about us ; and from time 
 to time, in a shrinking, disgusted way, he asks some 
 leading question about Eriecreek, which he doesn't 
 seem able to form any idea of, as much as I explain 
 it. He clings to his original notion, that it is in the 
 heart of the Oil Regions, of which he has seen pic- 
 
A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 139 
 
 tures in the illustrated papers ; and when . I assert 
 myself against his opinions, he treats me very gin- 
 gerly, as if I were an explosive sprite, or an inflam- 
 mable naiad from a torpedoed well, and it wouldn't 
 be quite safe to oppose me, or I would disappear 
 with a flash and a bang. 
 
 When Dick isn't able to go with me on Fanny's 
 account, Mr. Arbuton takes his place in the expe- 
 ditionary corps ; and we have visited a good many 
 points of interest together, and now and then he 
 talks very entertainingly about his travels. But I 
 don't think they have made him very cosmopolitan. 
 It seems as if he went about with a little imaginary 
 standard, and was chiefly interested in things, to see 
 whether they fitted it or not. Trifling matters an- 
 noy him ; and when he finds sublimity mixed up 
 with absurdity, it almost makes him angry. One 
 of the oddest and oldest-looking buildings in Quebec 
 is a Kttle one-story house on St. Louis Street, to 
 which poor General Montgomery was taken after he 
 was shot ; and it is a pastry-cook's now, and the 
 tarts and cakes in the window vexed Mr. Arbuton 
 so much — not that he seemed to care for Mont- 
 gomery — that I didn't dare to laugh. 
 
 I Hve very httle in the nineteenth centurj' at 
 present, and do not care much for people who do. 
 Still I have a few grains of affection left for Uncle 
 Jack, which I want you to give him. 
 
 I suppose it will take about six stamps to pay this 
 letter. I forgot to say that Dick goes to be bar- 
 
140 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 bered every day at the " Montcalm Shaving and 
 Shampooing Saloon," so called because they say 
 Montcalm held his last council of war there. It is 
 a queer little steep-roofed house, with a flowering 
 bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full of snap- 
 dragons, before it. 
 
 We shall be here a week or so yet, at any rate, 
 and theli, I think, we shall go straight home, Dick 
 has lost so much time already. 
 
 With a great deal of love. 
 
 Your Kitty. 
 
VII. 
 
 LOVES YOUNG DEEAM. 
 
 With the two young people whose days now 
 lapsed away together, it could not be said that Mon- 
 day varied much from Tuesday, or ten o'clock from 
 half past three ; they were not always certain what 
 day of the week it was, and sometimes they fancied 
 that a thing which happened in the morning had 
 taken place yesterday afternoon. 
 
 But whatever it was, and however uncertain in 
 time and character their slight adventure was to 
 themselves, Mrs. Ellison secured all possible knowl- 
 edge of it from Kitty. Since it was her misfortune 
 that promoted it, she considered herself a martyr 
 to Kitty's acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, and be- 
 lieved that she had the best claim to any gossip 
 that could come of it. She lounged upon her sofa, 
 and listened with a patience superior j;o the maiden 
 caprice with which her inquisition was sometimes 
 met; for if that delayed her satisfaction it also 
 employed her arts, and the final triumph of getting 
 everything out of Kitty afforded her a delicate self- 
 flattery. But commonly the young girl was ready 
 enough to speak, for she was glad to have the light 
 of a worldlier mind and a greater experience than 
 
142 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 her own on Mr. Arbuton's character : if Mrs. Elli- 
 son was not the wisest head, still talking him over 
 was at least a relief from thinking him over ; and. 
 then, at the end of the ends, when were ever two 
 women averse to talk of a man ? 
 
 She commonly sought Fanny's sofa when she 
 returned from her rambles through the city, and 
 gave a sufficiently strict account of what had hap- 
 pened. This was done light-heartedly and with 
 touches of burlesque and extravagance at first ; but 
 the reports grew presently to have a more serious 
 tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times 
 that she would fall itito a puzzled silence in the 
 midst of her narration ; or else she would meet a 
 long procession of skillfully marshaled questions 
 with a flippancy that no one but a martyr could 
 have suffered. But Mrs. Ellison bore all and would 
 have borne much more in that cause. Baffled at 
 one point, she turned to another, and the sum of her 
 researches was often a clearer perception of Kitty's 
 state of mind than the young girl herself possessed. 
 For her, indeed, the whole affair was full of mystery 
 and misgiving. 
 
 " Our acquaintance has the charm of novelty 
 every time we meet," she said once, when pressed 
 hard by Mrs. Ellison. " "We are growing better 
 strangers, Mr. Arbuton and I. By and by, some 
 morning, we shall not know each other by sight. I 
 can barely recognize him now, though I thought I 
 knew him pretty well once. I want you to un- 
 
LOVES youkg dream. 143 
 
 derstand that I speak as an unbiased spectator, 
 Fanny." 
 
 " Oh, Kitty ! how can you accuse me of trying to 
 pry into your afEairs ! " cries injured Mrs. Ellison, 
 and settles herself in a more comfortable posture for 
 listening. 
 
 " I don't accuse you of anything. I'm sure 
 you've a right to know everything about me. Only, 
 I want you really to know." 
 
 " Yes, dear," says the matron, with hypocritical 
 meekness. 
 
 " Well," resumes Kitty, " there are things that 
 puzzle me more and more about him, — things that 
 used to amuse me at first, because I didn't actually 
 believe that they could be, and that I felt like de- 
 fying afterwards. But now I can't bear up against 
 them. They frighten me, and seem to deny me the 
 right to be what I believe I am." 
 
 " I don't understand you, Kitty." 
 
 " Why, you've seen how it is with us at home, and 
 how Uncle Jack has brought us up. We never had 
 a rule for anything except to do what was right, 
 and to be careful of the rights of others." 
 
 " Well." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Arbuton seems to have lived in a 
 world where everything is regulated by some rigid 
 law that it would be death to break. Then, you 
 know, at home we are always talking about people, 
 and discussing them ; but we always talk of each 
 person for what he is in himself, and I always 
 
144 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 thought a person could refine himself if he tried, 
 and was sincere, and not conceited. But he seems 
 to judge people according to their origin and local- 
 ity and calling, and to believe that all refinement 
 must come from just such training and circum- 
 stances as his own. Without exactly saying so, he 
 puts everything else quite out of the question. He 
 doesn't appear to dream that there can be any dif- 
 ferent opinion. He tramples upon all that I have 
 been taught to believe ; and though I cling the 
 closer to my idols, I can't help, now and then, try- 
 ing myself by his criterions ; and then I find myself 
 wanting in every civilized trait, and my whole Hfe 
 coarse and poor, and all my associations hopelessly 
 degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow, 
 and I believe that even my little experience would 
 prove them false ; but then, they are his, and I can't 
 reconcile them with what I see is good in him." 
 
 Kitty spoke with half -averted face where she sat 
 beside one of the front windows, looking absently 
 out on the distant line of violet hills beyond Charles- 
 bourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her 
 lap and letting it drop again. 
 
 " Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her diffi- 
 culties, "you oughtn't to sit against a light like 
 that. It makes your profile quite black to any one 
 back in the room." 
 
 " Oh well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality." 
 
 " Yes, but a young lady ought always to think 
 how she is looking. Suppose some one was to come 
 in." 
 
love's young dream. 145 
 
 " Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, 
 and he -wouldn't mind it. But if you like it better, 
 I'll come and sit by you," said Kitty, and took her 
 place beside the sofa. 
 
 Her hat was in her hand, her sack on her arm ; 
 the fatigue of a recent walk gave her a soft pallor, 
 and languor of face and attitude. Mrs. Ellison 
 admired her pretty looks with a generous regret 
 that they should be wasted on herself, and then 
 asked, " Where were you this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Oh, we went to the Hotel Dieu, for one thing, 
 and afterwards we looked into the court-yard of the 
 convent; and there another of his pleasant little 
 traits came out, — a way he has of always putting 
 you in the wrong even when it's a matter of no 
 consequence any way, and there needn't be any 
 right or wrong about it. I remembered the place 
 because Mrs. March, you know, showed us a rose 
 that one of the nuns in the hospital gave her, and 
 I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he gra- 
 ciously took it as if poor Mrs. March had made an 
 advance towards his acquaintance. I do wish you 
 could see what a lovely place that court-yard is, 
 Fanny. It's so strange that such a thing should 
 be right there, in the heart of this crowded city ; 
 but there it was, with its peasant cottage on one 
 side, and its long, low barns on the other, and those 
 wide-horned Canadian cows munching at the racks 
 of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all about 
 among their feet " — 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 A CRANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 
 " Yes, yes ; nerer mind all 
 
 that, Kitty. You know I hate 
 
 '"^^^'^^ nature. Go on about Mr. Arbu- 
 
 ton," said Mrs. Ellison, who did 
 
 not mean a sarcasm. 
 
 " It looked like a farm-yard in a picture, far out 
 in the country somewhere," resumed Kitty ; " and 
 Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say it was just like 
 Normandy." 
 " Kitty ! " 
 
 " He did, indeed, Fanny ; and the cows didn't go 
 down on their knees out of gratitude, either. Well, 
 off on the right were the hospital buildings climb- 
 ing up, you know, with their stone walls and 
 steep roofs, and windows dropped about over them, 
 like our convent here ; and there was an artist 
 there, sketching it aU ; he had such a brown, pleas- 
 
love's young deeam. 147 
 
 ant face, with a little black mustache and imperial, 
 and such gay black eyes, that nobody could help 
 falling in love with him ; and he was talking in 
 such a free-and-easy way with the lazy workmen 
 and women overlooking him. He jotted down a 
 little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, 
 and one of the people called out, — Mr. Arbuton 
 was translating, — ' Look there ! with one touch 
 he's made our Blessed Lady.' ' Oh,' says the painter, 
 ' that's nothing ; with three touches I can make 
 the entire Holy Family.' And they all laughed; 
 and that little joke, you know, won my heart, — I 
 don't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton; — and 
 so I said what a blessed hfe a painter's must be, for 
 it would give you a right to be a vagrant, and you 
 could wander through the world, seeing everything 
 that was lovely and funny, and nobody could blame 
 you ; and I wondered everybody who had the 
 chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took 
 it seriously, and said people had to have something 
 more than the chance to learn before they could 
 sketch, and that most of them were an affliction 
 with their sketch-books, and he had seen too much 
 of the sad effects of drawing from casts. And he 
 put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don't you 
 see ? I didn't want to learn drawing ; I wanted to 
 be a painter, and go about sketching beautiful old 
 convents, and sit on camp-stools on pleasant after- 
 noons, and joke with people. Of course, he 
 couldn't understand that. But I know the artist 
 
148 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 could. Oh, Fanny, if it had only been the painter 
 whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead 
 of Mr. Arbuton ! But the worst of it is, he is 
 making a hypocrite of me, and a cowardly, unnat- 
 ural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the 
 painter's sketch ; but I was ashamed to say I'd 
 never seen a real artist's sketch before, and I'm get- 
 ting to be ashamed, or to seem ashamed, of a great 
 many innocent things. He has a way of not seem- 
 ing to think it possible that any one he associates 
 with can differ from him. And I do differ from 
 him. I differ from him as much as my whole past 
 life differs from his ; I know I'm just the kind of 
 production he disapproves of, and that I'm alto- 
 gether irregular and unauthorized and unjustifiable ; 
 and though it's funny to have him talking to me as 
 if I must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his 
 ideas, it's provoking, too, and it's very bad for me. 
 Up to the present moment, Fanny, if you want to 
 know, that's the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on 
 me. I'm being gradually snubbed and scared into 
 treasons, stratagems, and spoils." 
 
 Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, 
 for she was one of those women who like a snub 
 from the superior sex, if it does not involve a slight 
 to their beauty or their power of pleasing. But 
 she thought it best not to enter into the question, 
 and merely said, " But surely, Kitty, there are a, 
 great many things in Mr. Arbuton that you miist 
 respect." 
 
love's young dream. .149 
 
 " Respect ? Oh, yes, indeed ! But respect isn't 
 just the thing for one who seems to consider himself 
 sacred. Say revere, Fanny ; say revere ! " 
 
 Kitty had risen from her chair, but Mrs. Ellison 
 waved her again to her seat with an imploring ges- 
 ture. " Don't go, Kitty ; I'm not half done with 
 you yet. You must tell me something more. 
 You've stirred me up so, now. I know you don't 
 always have such disagreeable times. You've often 
 come home quite happy. What do you generally 
 find to talk about ? Do tell me some particulars for 
 once." 
 
 " Why, little topics come up, you know. But 
 sometimes we don't talk at all, because I don't like 
 to say what I thiiik or feel, for fear I should be 
 thinking or feeling something vulgar. Mr. Arbu- 
 tOn is rather a blight upon conversation in that way. 
 He makes you doubtful whether there isn't sonie- 
 thing a little common in breathing and the circula- 
 tion of the blood, and whether it wouldn't be true 
 refinement to stop them." 
 
 " Stuff, Kitty ! He's very cultivated, isn't he ? 
 Don't you talk about books ? He's read everything, 
 I suppose." 
 
 " Oh yes, he's read enough." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Only sometimes it seems to me as 
 if he hadn't read because he loved it, but because 
 he thought it due to himself. But maybe I'm 
 mistaken. I could imagine a delicate poem shut- 
 
150 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 ting up half its sweetness from his cold, cold scru- 
 tiny, — if you will excuse the flo wariness of the 
 idea." 
 
 "Why, Kitty! don't you think he's refined? 
 I'm sure, I think he's a very refined person." 
 
 " He's a very elaborated person. But I don't 
 think it would make much difference to him what 
 our opinion of him was. His own good opinion 
 would be quite enough." 
 
 " Is he — is he — always agreeable ? " 
 
 " I thought we were discussing his mind, Fanny. 
 I don't Is^now that I feel like enlarging upon his 
 manners," said Kitty, slyly. 
 
 " But surely, Kitty," said the matron, with an 
 air of argument, " there's some connection between 
 his mind and his manners." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so. I don't think there's much 
 between his heart and his manners. They seem to 
 have been put on him instead of having come out 
 of him. He's very well trained, and nine times out 
 of ten he's so exquisitely polite that it's wonderful ; 
 but the tenth time he may say something so rude 
 that you can't believe it." 
 
 " Then you like him nine times out of ten." 
 
 " I didn't say that. But for the tenth time, it's 
 certain, his training doesn't hold out, and he seems 
 to have nothing natural to fall back upon. But you 
 can believe that, if he. knew he'd been .disagree- 
 able, he'd be sorry for it." 
 
 " Why, then, Kitty, how can you say that there's 
 
love's young deeam. 151 
 
 no connection between his heart and manners ? 
 This very thing proves that they come from his 
 heart. Don't be illogical, Kitty," said. Mrs. Elli- 
 son, and her nerves added, sotto voce, " if you are 
 so abominably provoking ! " 
 
 " Oh," responded the young girl, with the kind 
 of laugh that meant it was, after all, not such a 
 laughing matter, " I didn't say he'd be sorry for 
 you ! Perhaps he would ; bat he'd be certain to 
 be sorry for himself. It's with his politeness as it 
 is with his reading ; he seems to consider it some- 
 thing that's due to himself as a gentleman to treat 
 people well ; and it isn't in the least as if he 
 cared for them. He wouldn't like to fail in such a 
 point." 
 
 " But, Kitty, isn't that to his credit ? " 
 
 "Maybe. I don't say. If I knew more' about 
 the world, perhaps I should admire it. But now, 
 you see," — and here Kitty's laugh grew more nat- 
 ural, and she gave a subtle caricature of Mr. Arbu- 
 ton's air and tone as she spoke, — "I can't help 
 feeling that it's a little — vulgar." 
 
 Mrs. ElKson could not quite make out how much 
 Kitty really meant of what she had said. She 
 gasped once or twice for argument ; then she sat 
 up, and beat the sofa-pillows vengefuUy in com- 
 posing herself anew, and finally, " Well, Kitty, I'm 
 sure I don't know what to make of it all," she said 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " Why, we're not obliged to make anything of 
 
152 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 it, Fanny, there's that comfort," replied Kitty, ; and 
 then there was a silence, while she brooded over the 
 whole affair of her acquaintaince with Mr. Arbuton, 
 which this talk had failed to set in a more pleasant 
 or hopeful light. It had begun like a romance ; she 
 had pleased her fancy, if not her heart, with the 
 poetry of it ; but at last she felt exiled and strange 
 in his presence. She had no right to a different re- 
 sult, even through any deep feeling in the matter ; 
 but while she owned, with her half -sad, haH-comical, 
 consciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming 
 and expecting too much, she softly pitied herself, 
 with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it were 
 some other girl whose pretty dream had been 
 broken. Its ruin involved the loss of another ideal ; 
 for she was aware that there had been gradually 
 rising in her mind an image of Boston, different 
 alike from the holy place of her childhood, the sa- 
 cred city of the anti-slavery heroes and martyrs, and 
 from the jesting, easy, sympathetic Boston of Mr. 
 and Mrs. March. This new Boston with which Mr. 
 Arbuton inspired her was a Boston of mysterious 
 prejudices and lofty reservations ; a Boston of high 
 and difficult tastes, that found its social ideal in the 
 Old World, and that shrank from contact with the 
 reality of this ; a Boston as alien as Europe to her 
 simple experiences, and that seemed to be proud 
 only of the things that were unlike other American 
 things ; a Boston that would rather perish by fire 
 and sword than be suspected of vulgarity ; a criti- 
 
love's young dream. 153 
 
 cal, fastidious, and reluctant Boston, dissatisfied 
 with the rest of the hemisphere, and gelidly self- 
 satisfied in so far as it was not in the least the Bos- 
 ton of her fond preconceptions. It was, doubtless, 
 no more the real Boston we know and love, than 
 either of the others ; and it perplexed her more 
 than it need, even if it had not been mere phan- 
 tasm. It made her suspicious of Mr. Arbuton's be- 
 havior towards her, and observant of httle things 
 that might very well have otherwise escaped her. 
 The bantering humor, the fight-hearted trust and 
 self-reliance with which she had once met him de- 
 serted her, and only returned fitfully when some 
 accident called her out of herself, and made her for- 
 get the differences that she now too plainly saw in 
 their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater 
 and greater effort to place herself in sympathy with 
 him ; she relaxed into a languid seK-contempt, as if 
 she had been playing a part, when she succeeded. 
 " Sometimes, Fanny," she said, now, after a long 
 pause, speaking in behalf of that other girl she had 
 been thinking of, " it seems to me as if Mr. Arbu- 
 ton were all gloves and shm umbrella, — the mere 
 husk of well-dressed culture and good manners. 
 His looks do promise everything ; but oh dear me ! 
 I should be sorry for any one that was in love with 
 him. Just imagine some girl meeting with such a 
 man, and taking a fancy to him ! I suppose she 
 never would quite believe but that he must some- 
 how be what she first thought him, and she would 
 
154 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 go down to lier grave believing that she had failed 
 to understand him. What a curious story it vrould 
 make ! " 
 
 " Then, why don't you vrrite it, Kitty ? " asked 
 Mrs. Ellison. " No one could do it better." 
 
 Kitty flushed quickly ; then she smiled : " Oh, I 
 don't think I could do it at all. It wouldn't be a 
 very easy story to work out. Perhaps he might 
 never do anything positively disagreeable enough to 
 make anybody condemn him. The only way you 
 could show his character would be to have her do 
 and say hateful things to him, when she couldn't 
 help it, and then repent of it, while he was impas- 
 sively perfect through everything. And perhaps, 
 after all, he might be regarded by some stupid peo- 
 ple as the injured one. Well, Mr. Arbuton has 
 been very polite to us, I'm sure, Fanny," she said 
 after another pause, as she rose from her chair, 
 " and maybe I'm unjust to him. I beg his pardon 
 of you ; and I wish," she added with a dull disap- 
 pointment quite her own, and a pang of surprise at 
 words that seemed to utter themselves, " that he 
 would go away." 
 
 " Why, Kitty, I'm shocked," said Mrs. Ellison, 
 rising from her cushions. 
 " Yes ; so am I, Fanny." 
 " Are you really tired of him, then ? " 
 Kitty did not answer, but turned away her face a 
 little, where she stood beside the chair in which she 
 had been sitting. 
 
' No, I won't, Fanny," anmmred the yotmg girl. — Page 155. 
 
love's young dream. 155> 
 
 Mrs. Ellison put out her hand towards her; 
 " Kitty, come here," she said with imperious tender- 
 ness. 
 
 " No, I won't, Fanny," answered the young girl, 
 in a trembhng voice. She raised the glove that she 
 had been nervously swinging back and forth, and 
 bit hard upon the button of it. " I don't know 
 whether I'm tired of Mm-, — though he isn't a per- 
 son to rest one a great deal, — but I'm tired of it. 
 I'm perplexed and troubled the whole time, and I 
 don't see any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go 
 away ! Yes, he is tiresome. What is he staying 
 here for ? If he thinks himself so much better than 
 all of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our 
 company. It's quite time for him to go. No, 
 Fanny, no," cried Kitty with a little broken laugh, 
 still rejecting the outstretched hand, " I'll be flat in 
 private, if you please." And dashing her hand 
 across her eyes, she flitted out of the room. At the 
 door she turned and said, " You needn't think it'& 
 what you think it is, Fanny." 
 
 " No indeed, dear ; you're just overwrought." 
 
 " For I really wish he'd go." 
 
 But it was on this very day that Mr. Arbuton 
 found it harder than ever to renew his resolution of 
 quitting Quebec, and cutting short at once his ac- 
 quaintance with these people. He had been pledg- 
 ing himself to this in some form every day, and 
 every morrow had melted his resolution away. 
 Whatever was his opinion of Colonel and Mrs. EUi- 
 
156 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 son, it is certain that, if he considered Kitty merely 
 in relation to the present, he could not have said 
 how, by being different, she could have been better 
 than she was. He perceived a charm, that would 
 be recognized anywhere, in her manner, though it 
 was not of his world ; her fresh pleasure in all she 
 saw, though he did not know how to respond to it, 
 was very winning ; he respected what he thought 
 the good sense running through her transports ; he 
 wondered at the culture she had somewhere, some- 
 how got ; and he was so good as to find that her 
 literary enthusiasms had nothing offensive, but were 
 as pretty and naive as a girl's love of flowers. 
 Moreover, he approved of some personal attributes 
 of hers : a low, gentle voice, tender, long-lashed 
 eyes ; a trick of drooping shoulders, and of idle 
 hands fallen into the lap, one in the other's palm ; 
 a serene repose of face ; a light and eager laugh. 
 There was nothing so novel in those traits, and in 
 different combination he had seen them a thousand 
 times ; yet in her they strangely wrought upon his 
 fancy. She had that soft, kittenish way with her 
 which invites a caressing patronage, but, as lie 
 learned, she had also the kittenish equipment for 
 resenting over-condescension ; and she never took 
 him half so much as when she showed the high 
 spirit that was in her, and defied him most. 
 
 For here and now, it was all well enough ; but 
 he had a future to which he owed much, and a con- 
 science that would not leave him at rest. The fasci- 
 
love's young dream. 157 
 
 nation of meeting her so familiarly under the same 
 roof, the sorcery of the constant sight of her, were 
 becoming too much ; it would not do on any ac- 
 count ; for his own sake he must put an end to it. 
 But from hour to hour he lingered upon his unen- 
 forced resolve. The passing days, that brought 
 him doubts in which he shuddered at the great dif- 
 ference between himself and her and her people, 
 brought him also moments of bhssful forgetfulness 
 in which his misgivings were lost in the sweetness 
 of her looks, or the young grace of her motions. 
 Passing, the days rebuked his delay in vain ; a 
 week and two weeks slipped from under his feet, 
 and still he had waited for fate to part him and his 
 foUy. But now at last he would go ; and in the 
 evening, after his cigar on Durham Terrace, he 
 knocked at Mrs. Ellison's door to say that on the 
 day after to-morrow he should push on to the White 
 Moimtains. 
 
 He found the Ellisons talking over an expedition 
 for the next morning, in which he was also to take 
 part. Mrs. Ellison had already borne her full share 
 in the preparation ; for, being always at hand there 
 in her room, and having nothing to do, she had been 
 almost a willing victim to the colonel's passion for 
 information at second-hand, and had probably come 
 to know more than any other American woman of 
 Arnold's expedition against Quebec in 1775. She 
 knew why the attack was planned, and with what 
 prodigious hazard and heroical toil and endurance it 
 
158 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 was carried out ; how the dauntless little army of 
 riflemen cut their way through the untrodden forests 
 of Maine and Canada, and beleaguered the gray old 
 fortress on her rock till the red autumn faded into 
 winter, and, on the last bitter night of the year, 
 flung themselves against her defenses, and fell back, 
 leaving haK their number captive, Montgomery 
 dead, and Arnold wounded, but haplessly destined 
 to survive. 
 
 " Yes," said the colonel, " considering the age in 
 which they lived, and their total lack of modern 
 improvements, mental, moral, and physical, we must 
 acknowledge that they did pretty well. It wasn't 
 on a very large scale ; but I don't see how they 
 could have been braver, if every man had been mul- 
 tiplied by ten thousand. In fact, as it's going to be 
 all the same thing a hundred years from now, I 
 don't know but I'd as soon be one of the men that 
 tried to take Quebec as one of the men that did take 
 Atlanta. Of course, for the present, and on ac- 
 count of my afflicted family, Mr. Arbuton, I'm will- 
 ing to be what and where I am ; but just see Avhat 
 those fellows did." And the colonel drew from his 
 glowing memory of Mrs. Ellison's facts a brave his- 
 torical picture of Arnold's expedition. " And now 
 we're going to-morrow morning to look up the scene 
 of the attack on the 31st of December. Kitty, sing 
 something." 
 
 At another time Kitty might have hesitated ; but 
 that evening she was so at rest about Mr. Arbuton, 
 
love's young dkeam. 159 
 
 80 sure she cared nothing for his liking or disliking 
 anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, 
 and sang a number of songs, which I suppose were 
 as unworthy the cultivated ear as any he had heard. 
 But though they were given with an untrained 
 voice and a touch as little skilled as might be, they 
 pleased, or else the singer pleased. The simple- 
 hearted courage of the performance would alone 
 have made it charming ; and Mr. Arbuton had no 
 reason to ask himself how he should like it in Bos- 
 ton, if he were married, and should hear it from his 
 wife there. Yet when a young man looks at a 
 young girl or listens to her, a thousand vagaries 
 possess his mind, — formless imaginations, lawless 
 fancies. The question that presented itself re- 
 motely, like pain 'in a dream, dissolved in the ripple 
 of the singer's voice, and left his reverie the more 
 luxiiriously untroubled for having been. 
 
 He remembered, after saying good night, that he 
 had forgotten something: it was to tell them he 
 was going away. 
 
VIII. 
 
 XEXT MORNING. 
 
 Quebec lay sMning in the tender oblique light of 
 the northern sun when they passed next morning 
 through the Upper Town market-place and took 
 their way towards Hope Gate, where they were to 
 be met by the colonel a little later. It is easy for 
 the alert tourist to lose his course in Quebec, and 
 they, who were neither hurried nor heedful, went 
 easily astray. But the street into which they had 
 wandered, if it did not lead straight to Hope Gate, 
 had many merits, and was very characteristic of the 
 city. Most of the houses on either hand were low 
 structures of one story, built heavily of stone or 
 stuccoed brick, with two dormer-windows, full of 
 house-plants, in each roof ; the doors were each 
 painted of a livelier color than the rest of the house, 
 and each glistened with a polished brass knob, a 
 large brass knocker, or an intricate bell-pull of the 
 same resplendent metal, and a plate bearing the 
 owner's name and his professional title, which if not 
 avocat was sure to be notaire, so well is Quebec sup- 
 plied with those ministers of the l&w. At the side 
 of each house was a porte-cochere, and in this a. 
 smaller door. The thresholds and doorsteps were 
 
NEXT MORNING. 161 
 
 covered -with the neatest and brightest oil-cloth; 
 the wooden sidewalk was very clean, like the steep, 
 roughly paved street itself ; aid at the foot of the 
 hill down which it sloped was. a breadth of the city 
 wall, pierced for musketry, and, past the corner 
 of one of the houses, the half-length of cannon 
 showing. It had the charm of those 
 ancient streets, dear to Old- World 
 travel, in which the past and the 
 present, decay and repair, peace and 
 war, have made friends in an effect 
 that not only wins the eye, but, how- 
 ever illogically, touches the heart ; 
 and over the top of the wall it had 
 a stretch of such landscape as I 
 know not what Old- World street 
 can command: the St. Lawrence, 
 blue and wide ; a bit of the white 
 village of Beauport on its bank ; 
 then a vast breadth of pale-green, 
 upward-sloping meadows ; then the 
 purple heights ; and the hazy 
 heaven over them. Half-way down this happy 
 street sat the artist whom they had seen before in 
 the court of the H8tel Dieu ; he was sketching some- 
 thing, and evoking the curious life of the neighbor- 
 hood. Two school-boys in the uniform of the Sem- 
 inary paused to look at him as they loitered down 
 the pavement ; a group of children encircled him ; 
 a little girl with her hair in blue ribbons talked at a 
 11 
 
162 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 window about him to some one within ; a young ladj 
 opened her casement and gazed furtively at him ; a 
 door was set quietly ajar, and an old grandam 
 peeped out, shading, her eyfes with her hand; a 
 woman in deep mourning gave his sketch a glance 
 as she passed ; a calash with a fat Quebecker in it 
 
 ran into a cart driven 
 by a broad-hatted 
 peasant-woman, so 
 eager were both to 
 know what lie was 
 drawing ; a man lin- 
 gered even at the 
 head of the street, as 
 if it were any use to 
 stop there. 
 
 As Kitty and Mr. 
 Arbuton passed him, 
 the artist glanced at 
 her with the smile of 
 a man who believes 
 he knows how the 
 case stands, and she 
 followed his eye in 
 its withdrawal towards the bit he was sketching: 
 an old roof, and on top of this a balcony, shut in 
 vrith green blinds; yet higher, a weather-worn, 
 wood-colored gallery, pent-roofed and balustered, 
 with a geranium showing through the balusters ; a 
 dormer-window with hook and tackle, beside an 
 
NEXT MORNING. 163 
 
 Oriental-shaped payilion with a shining tin dome, — 
 a picturesque confusion of forms which had been, 
 apparently, added from time to time without design, 
 and yet were full of harmony. The unreasonable 
 succession of roofs had lifted the top far above the 
 level of the surrounding houses, into the heart of 
 the morning light, and some white doves circled 
 about the pavilion, or nestled cooing upon the 
 window-siU, where a young girl sat and sewed. 
 
 " Why, it's Hilda in her tower," said Kitty, " of 
 course ! And this is just the kind of street for such 
 a girl to look down into. It doesn't seem like a 
 street in real life, does it ? The people all look as 
 if they had stepped out of stories, and might step 
 back any moment ; and these queer little houses : 
 they're the very places for things to happen in ! " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton smiled forbearingly, as she thought, 
 at this burst, but she did not care, and she turned, 
 at the bottom of the street, and lingered a few 
 moments for another look at the whole charming 
 picture ; and then he praised it, and said that the 
 artist was making a very good sketch. " I wonder 
 Quebec isn't infested by artists the whole summer 
 long," he, added. " 3?hey go about hungrily pick- 
 ing up bits of the picturesque along our shores and 
 country roads, when they might exchange their 
 famine for a feast by coming here." 
 
 " I suppose there's a pleasure in finding out the 
 small graces and beauties of the poverty-stricken 
 subjects, that they wouldn't have in better ones, 
 
164 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 isn't there ? " asked Kitty. " At any rate, if I 
 were to write a story, I should want to take the 
 slightest sort of plot, and lay the scene in the 
 dullest kind of place, and then bring out all their 
 possibilities. I'll tell you a book after my own 
 heart: '■Details,' — just the history of a week in 
 the life of some young people who happen together 
 in an old New England country-house; nothing 
 extraordinary, little, every-day things told so ex- 
 quisitely, and all fading naturally away without any 
 particular result, only the full meaning of every- 
 thing brought out." 
 
 " And don't you think it's rather a sad ending 
 for all to fade away without any particular result ? " 
 asked the young man, stricken he hardly knew how 
 or where. " Besides, I always thought that the 
 author of that book found too much meaning in 
 everything. He did for men, I'm sure ; but I be- 
 lieve women are different, and see much more than 
 we do in a little space." 
 
 " ' Why has not man a microscopic eye? 
 For this plain reason, man is not a fly,' 
 
 nor a woman," mocked Kitty. " Have you read his 
 other books ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Aren't they delightful ? " 
 
 " They're very well ; and I always wondered he 
 could write them. He doesn't look it." 
 
 " Oh, have you ever seen him ? " 
 
 " He lives in Boston, you know." 
 
NEXT MORNING. 165 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but " — Kitty could not go on and 
 say that she had not supposed authors consorted 
 with creatures of common clay ; and Mr. Arbuton, 
 who was the constant guest of people who would 
 have thought most authors sufficiently honored in 
 being received among them to meet such men as 
 he, was very far from guessing what was in her 
 mind. 
 
 He waited a moment for her, and then said, 
 " He's a very ordinary sort of man, — not what one 
 would exactly call a gentleman, you know, in his 
 belongiags, — and yet his books have nothing of the 
 shop, nothing professionally literary, about them. 
 It seems as if almost any of us might have written 
 them." 
 
 Kitty glanced quickly at him to see if he were 
 jesting ; but Mr. Arbuton was not easily given i,o 
 irony, and he was now very much in earnest about 
 drawing on his light overcoat, which he had hitherto 
 carried on his arm with that scrupulous considera- 
 tion for it which was not dandyism, but part of his 
 self-respect ; apparently, as an overcoat, he cared 
 nothing for it ; as the overcoat of a man of his con- 
 dition he cared everything ; and now, though the 
 sun was so bright on the open spaces, in these nar- 
 row streets the garment was comfortable. 
 
 At another time, Kitty would ha,ve enjoyed the 
 care with which he smoothed it about his person, 
 but this profanation of her dearest ideals made the 
 moment serious. Her pulse quickened, and she 
 
166 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 said, " I'm afraid I can't enter into your feelings. 
 I wasn't taught to respect the idea of a gentleman 
 very much. I've often heard my uncle say that, at 
 the best, it was a poor excuse for not being just 
 honest and just brave and just kind, and a false 
 pretense of being something more. I believe, if 
 I were a man, I shouldn't want to be a gentle- 
 man. At any rate, I'd rather be the author of 
 those books, which any gentleman might have writ- 
 ten, than all the gentlemen who didn't, put to- 
 gether." 
 
 In the career of her indignation she had uncon- 
 sciously hurried her companion forward so swiftly 
 that they had reached Hope Gate as she spoke, and 
 interrupted the reverie in which Colonel Ellison, 
 loafing up against the masonry, was contemplating 
 the sentry in his box. 
 
 " You'd better not overheat yourself so early in 
 the day, Kitty," said her cousin, serenely, with a 
 glance at her flushed face ; " this expedition is not 
 going to be any joke." 
 
 Now that Prescott Gate, by which so many thou- 
 sands of Americans have entered Quebec since Ar- 
 nold's excursionists failed to do so is demolished, there 
 is nothing left so picturesque and characteristic as 
 Hope Gate, and I doubt if anywhere in Europe 
 there is a more mediseval -looking bit of military 
 architecture. The heavy stone gateway is black 
 with age, and the gate, which has probably never 
 been closed in our century, is of massive frame set 
 
NEXT MORNING. 
 
 167 
 
 thick with mighty bolts and spikes. The wall here 
 sweeps along the brow of the crag on which the 
 city is built, and a steep street drops down, by stone- 
 parapeted curves and angles, from the Upper to the 
 Lower Town, where, in 1775, nothing but a narrow 
 lane bordered the St. Lawrence. A considerable 
 breadth of land has since been won from the river, 
 and several streets and many piers now stretch be- 
 tween this alley and the 
 water ; but the old Sault 
 au Matelot still crouches 
 and creeps along under 
 the shelter of the city 
 wall and the over- 
 hanging rock, which is 
 thickly bearded with 
 weeds and grass, and 
 trickles with abundant 
 moisture. It must be 
 an ice-pit in winter, and 
 I should think it the 
 
 last spot on the continent for the summer to find ; 
 but when the summer has at last found it, the 
 old Sault au Matelot puts on a vagabond air of 
 Southern leisure and abandon, not to be matched 
 anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting 
 rock near Hope Gate, behind which the defeated 
 Americans took refuge from the fire of tTieir ene- 
 mies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic 
 squalor and gypsy luxury of color : sag-roofed barns 
 
168 
 
 A. CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-chested work- 
 shops of every sort lounge along in tumble-down 
 succession, and lean up against the cliff in every 
 imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepi- 
 tude ; light 
 wooden gal- 
 leries cross to 
 them from the 
 second stories 
 of the houses 
 which back 
 upon the al- 
 ley ; and over 
 these galleries 
 flutters, from 
 a labyrinth of 
 clothes - lines, 
 a variety of 
 bright-colored 
 garments of 
 all ages, sexes, 
 and c o n d i- 
 tions ; while 
 the footway 
 underneath 
 abounds in 
 gossiping women, smoking men, idle poultry, cats, 
 children, and large, indolent Newfoundland dogs. 
 
 " It was through this lane that Arnold's party 
 advanced almost to the foot of Mountain Street, 
 
KEXT MORNING. 169 
 
 where they were to be joined by Montgomery's 
 force in an attempt to surprise Prescott Gate," said 
 the colonel, with his unerring second-hand history. 
 
 " ■ You that will follow me to this attempt,' 
 
 ' Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, and 
 then fire low,' and so forth. By the way, do you 
 suppose anybody did that at Bunker Hill, Mr. Ar- 
 buton? Come, you're a Boston man. My expe- 
 rience is that recruits chivalrously fire into the air 
 without waiting to see the enemy at all, let alone 
 the whites of their eyes. Why ! aren't you com- 
 ing ? " he asked, seeing no movement to follow in 
 Kitty or Mr. Arbuton. 
 
 " It doesn't look very pleasant under foot, Dick," 
 suggested Eatty. 
 
 " Well, upon my word ! Is this your uncle's 
 niece ? I shaU never dare to report this panic at 
 Eriecreek." 
 
 " I can see the whole length of the alley, and 
 there's nothing in it but chickens and domestic ani- 
 mals." 
 
 " Very well, as Fanny says ; when Uncle Jack 
 — he's your uncle — asks you about every inch of 
 the ground that Arnold's men were demoralized 
 over, I hope you'U. know what to say." 
 
 Kitty laughed and said she should try a httle in- 
 vention, if her Uncle Jack came down to inches. 
 
 " All right, Kitty ; you can go along St. Paul 
 Street, there, and Mr. Arbuton and 1 will explore 
 
170 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 the Sault au Matelot, and come out upon you, cov- 
 ered with glory, at the other end." 
 
 " I hope it'll be glory," said Kitty, with a glance 
 at the lane, " but I think it's more likely to be 
 feathers and chopped straw> Good-by, Mr. Arbu- 
 ton." 
 
 " Not in the least," answered the young man ; 
 "I'm going with you." 
 
 The colonel feigned indignant surprise, and 
 marched briskly down the Sault au Matelot alone, 
 while the others took their way through St. Paul 
 Street in the same direction, amidst the bustle and 
 business of the port, past the banks and great com- 
 mercial houses, with the encounter of throngs of 
 seafaring faces of many nations, and, at the corner 
 of St. Peter Street, a glimpse of the national flag 
 thrown out from the American Consulate, which 
 intensified for untravelled Kitty her sense of re- 
 moteness from her native land. At length they 
 turned into the street now called Sault au Matelot, 
 into which opens the lane once bearing that name, 
 and strolled idly along in the cool shadow, silence, 
 and solitude of the street. She was strangely re- 
 leased from the constraint which Mr. Arbuton usu- 
 ally put upon her. A certain defiant ease filled 
 her heart ; she felt and thought whatever she liked, 
 for the first time in many days ; while he went puz- 
 zling himself with the problem of a young lady 
 who despised gentlemen, and yet remained charm- 
 ing to him. 
 
NEXT MORNING. 171 
 
 A mighty marme smell of oakum and salt-fish 
 was in the air, and " Oh," sighed Kitty, " doesn't 
 it make you long for distant seas ? Shouldn't you 
 like to be shipwrecked for half a day or so, Mr. 
 Arbuton ? " 
 
 " Yes ; yes, certainly," he replied absently, and 
 wondered what she laughed at. The silence of the 
 place was broken only by the noise of coopering 
 which seemed to be going on in every other house ; 
 the solitude relieved only by the Newfoundland 
 dogs that stretched themselves upon the thresholds 
 of the cooper-shops. The monotony of these shops 
 and dogs took Kitty's humor, and as they went 
 slowly by she made a jest of them, as she used to 
 do with things she saw. 
 
 " But here's a door without a dog ! " she said, 
 presently. " This can't be a genuine cooper-shop, 
 of course, without a dog. Oh, that accounts for it, 
 perhaps ! " she added, pausing before the threshold, 
 and glancing up at a sign — '■'■ AeadSmie commereiale 
 et litteraire " — set under an upper window. " What 
 a curious place for a seat of learning! What do 
 you suppose is the connection between cooper-shops 
 and an academical education, Mr. Arbuton ? " 
 
 She stood looking up at the sign that moved her 
 mirth, and swinging her shut parasol idly to and 
 fro, while a light of laughter played over her face. 
 
 Suddenly a shadow seemed to dart betwixt her 
 and the open doorway, Mr. Arbuton was hurled 
 violently against her, and, as she struggled to keep 
 
172 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, 
 
 her footing under the shock, she saw him bent over 
 a furious dog, that hung from the breast of his over- 
 coat, while he clutched its throat with both his 
 hands. 
 
 He met the terror of her face with a quick 
 glance. " I beg your pardon ; don't call out, please," 
 he said. But from within the shop came loud cries 
 and maledictions, " Oh nom de Dieu ! e'est le boule- 
 dogue du capitaine anglais ! " with appalling screams 
 for help ; and a wild, uncouth little figure of a man, 
 bareheaded, horror-eyed, came flying out of the 
 open door. He wore a cooper's apron, and he bore 
 in one hand a red-hot iron, which, with continuous 
 clamor, he dashed against the muzzle of the hide- 
 ous brute. Without a sound the dog loosed his 
 grip, and, dropping to the ground, fled into the ob- 
 scurity of the shop, as silently as he had launched 
 himself out of it, while Kitty yet stood spell-bound, 
 and before the crowd that the appeal of Mr. Arbu- 
 ton's rescuer had summoned could see what had 
 happened. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton lifted himself, and looked angrily 
 round upon the gaping spectators, who began, one 
 by one, to take in their heads from their windows 
 and to slink back to their thresholds as if they had 
 been guilty of something much worse than a desire 
 to succor a human being in peril. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Mr. Arbuton, " what an 
 abominable scene ! " His face was deadly pale, as 
 he turned from these insolent intruders to his de- 
 
NEXT MORNING. ITS' 
 
 liverer, whom he saluted, Avith a " Merci bien ! " 
 spoken in a cold, steady voice. Then he drew off 
 his overcoat, which had been torn by the dog's 
 teeth and irreparably dishonored in the encounter. 
 He looked at it shuddering, with a countenance of 
 intense disgust, and made a motion as if to hurl it 
 into the street. But his eye again fell upon the 
 cooper's squalid httle figure, as he stood twist- 
 ing his hands into his apron, and with voluble 
 eagerness protesting that it was not his dog, but 
 that of the English ship-captain, who had left it 
 with him, and whom he had many a time besought 
 to have the beast killed. Mr. Arbuton, who seemed 
 not to hear what he was saying, or to be so absorbed 
 in something else as not to consider whether he 
 was to blame or not, broke in upon him in French : 
 "You've done me the greatest service. I cannot 
 repay you, but you must take this," he said, as 
 he thrust a bank-note into the little man's grimy 
 hand. 
 
 " Oh, but it is too much ! But it is like a mon- 
 sieur so brave, so " — 
 
 " Hush ! It was nothing," interrupted Mr. Ar- 
 buton again. Then he threw his overcoat upon the 
 man's shoulder. " K you will do me the pleasure 
 to receive this also? Perhaps you can make use 
 of it." 
 
 " Monsieur heaps me with benefits ; — monsieur " 
 — began the bewildered cooper ; but Mr. Arbu- 
 ton turned abruptly away from him toward Kitty, 
 
174 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 who trembled at having shared the guilt of the 
 other spectators, and seizing her hand, he placed 
 it on his arm, where he held it close as he strode 
 away, leaving his deliverer planted in the middle 
 of the sidewalk and staring after him. She scarcely- 
 dared ask him if he were hurt, as she found herself 
 doing now with a faltering voice. 
 
 " No, I believe not," he said with a glance at the 
 frock-coat, which was buttoned across his chest and 
 was quite intact ; and still he strode on, with a 
 quick glance at every threshold- which did not 
 openly declare a Newfoundland dog. 
 
 It had all happened so suddenly, and in so brief 
 a time, that she might well have failed to under- 
 stand it, even if she had seen it all. It was barely 
 intelligible to Mr. Arbuton himself, who, as Kitty 
 had loitered mocking and laughing before the door 
 of the shop, chanced to see the dog crouched within, 
 and had only time to leap forward and receive the 
 cruel brute on his breast as it flung itself at her. 
 
 He had not thought of the danger to himself in 
 what he had done. He knew that he was unhurt, 
 but he did not care for that ; he cared only that 
 she was safe ; and as he pressed her hand tight 
 against his heart, there passed through it a thrill 
 of inexpressible tenderness, a quick, passionate sense 
 pf possession, a rapture as of having won her and 
 made her his own forever, by saving her from that 
 horrible risk. The maze in which he had but now 
 dwelt concerning her seemed an obso.lete frivolity 
 
NEXT MORNING. 175 
 
 of an alien past ; all the cold doubts and hindering 
 scruples which he had felt from the first were gone ; 
 gone all his care for his world. His world ? In 
 that supreme moment, there was no world but in the 
 tender eyes at which he looked down with a glance 
 which she knew not how to interpret. 
 
 She thought that his pride was deeply wounded 
 at the ignominy of his adventure, — for she was 
 sure he would care more for that than for the dan- 
 ger, — and that if she spoke of it she might add to 
 the angry pain he felt. As they hurried along she 
 waited for him to speak, but he did not; though 
 always, as he looked down at her with that strange 
 look, he seemed about to speak. 
 
 Presently she stopped, and, withdrawing her 
 hand from his arm, she cried, " Why, we've for- 
 gotten my cousin ! " 
 
 " Oh — yes ! " said Mr. Arbuton with a vacant 
 smile. 
 
 Looking back they saw the colonel standing on 
 the pavement near the end of the old Sault au 
 Matelot, with his hands in his pockets, and stead- 
 fastly staring at them. He did not relax the 
 severity of his gaze when they returned to join him, 
 and appeared to find little consolation in Kitty's 
 " Oh, Dick, I forgot all about you," given with a 
 sudden, inexplicable laugh, interrupted and renewed 
 as some ludicrous image seemed to come and go in 
 her mind. 
 
 " "Well, this may be very flattering, Kitty, but it 
 
176 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 isn't altogetlier comprehensible," said he, with a 
 keen glance at both their faces. " I don't know 
 what you'll say to Uncle Jack. It's not forgetting 
 me alone : it's forgetting the whole American ex- 
 pedition against Quebec." 
 
 The cblonel waited for some reply ; but Kittj 
 dared not attempt an explanation, and Mr. Arbu- 
 ton was not the man to seem to boast of his share 
 of the adventure by telling what had happened, 
 even i£ he had cared at that moment to do so. Her 
 very ignorance of what he had dared for her only 
 confirmed his new sense of possession ; and, if he 
 could, he would not have marred the pleasure he 
 felt by making her grateful yet, sweet as that might 
 be in its time. Now he liked to keep his knowl- 
 edge, to have had her unwitting compassion, to hear 
 her pour out her unwitting relief in this laugh, 
 while he superiorly permitted it. 
 
 " I don't understand this thing," said the colonel, 
 through whose dense, masculine intelligence some 
 suspicions of love-making were beginning to pierce. 
 But he dismissed them as absurd, and added, " How- 
 ever, I'm willing to forgive, and you've done the 
 forgetting ; and all that I ask now is the pleasure of 
 your company on the spot where Montgomery fell. 
 Fanny'U never believe I've found it unless you go 
 with me," he appealed, finally. 
 
 " Oh, we'U go, by all means," said Mr. Arbuton, 
 unconsciously speaking, as by authority, for both. 
 
 They came into busier streets of the Port again. 
 
NEXT MORNING. 
 
 177 
 
 and then passed through 
 the square of the Lower 
 Town Market, with the 
 market-house in the midst, 
 the shops and warehouses on either side, the long 
 row of tented booths with every kind of peasant- 
 wares to sell, and the wide stairway dropping to 
 the river which brought the abundance of the neigh- 
 boring country to the mart. The whole place was 
 aUve with country-folk in carts and citizens on foot. 
 At one point a gayly paiated wagon was drawn up 
 in the midst of a group of people to whom a quack- 
 ish-faced Yankee was hawking, in his own personal 
 French, an American patent-medicine, and making 
 his audience giggle. Because Kitty was amused at 
 this, Mr. Arbuton found it the drollest thing imagi- 
 
 12 
 
178 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 nable, but saw something yet droller when she made 
 the colonel look at a peasant, standing in one corner 
 beside a basket of fowls, which a woman, coming 
 up to buy, examined as if the provision were some 
 natural curiosity, while a crowd at once gathered 
 round. 
 
 " It requires a considerable population to make 
 a bargain, up here," remarked the colonel. " I sup- 
 pose they turn out the garrison when they sell a 
 beef." For both buyer and seller seemed to take 
 advice of the bystanders, who discussed and in- 
 spected the different fowls as if nothing so novel as 
 poultry had yet faUen in their way. 
 
 At last the peasant himself took up the fowls and 
 carefuUy scrutinized them. 
 
 " Those chickens, it seems, never happened to 
 catch his eye before," interpreted Kitty ; and Mr. 
 Arbuton, who was usually very restive during such 
 banter, smiled as if it were the most admirable fool- 
 ing, or the most precious wisdom, in the world. He 
 made them wait to see the bargain out, and could, 
 apparently, have lingered there forever. 
 
 But the colonel had a conscience about Mont- 
 gomery, and he hurried them away, on past the 
 Queen's Wharf, and down the Cove Road to that 
 point where the scarped and rugged breast of the 
 clifE bears the sign, "Here fell Montgomery," 
 though he really fell, not haK-way up the height, 
 but at the foot of it, where stood the battery that 
 forbade his juncture with Arnold at Prescott Gate. 
 
, NEXT MORNING. 179 
 
 A certain wildness yet possesses the spot : the 
 front of the crag, topped by the high citadel-wall, 
 is so grim, and the few tough evergreens that cling 
 to its clefts are torn and twisted by the winter 
 blasts, and the houses are decrepit with age, show- 
 ing here and there the scars of the frequent fires 
 that sweep the Lower Town. 
 
 It was quite useless : neither the memories of the 
 place nor their setting were sufficient to engage the 
 wayward thoughts of these curiously assorted pil- 
 grims ; and the colonel, after some attempts to 
 bring the matter home to himself and the others, 
 was obliged to abandon Mr. Arbuton to his tender 
 reveries of Kitty, and Kitty to her puzzling over 
 the change in Mr. Arbuton. His complaisance 
 made her uncomfortable and shy of him, it was so 
 strange ; it gave her a little shiver, as if he were 
 behaving undignifiedly. 
 
 " Well, Kitty," said the colonel, " I reckon Un- 
 cle Jack would have made more out of this than 
 we've done. He'd have had their geology out of 
 these rocks, any way." 
 
IX. 
 
 ME,. AEBUTON'S infatuation. 
 
 Kitty went as usual to Mrs. Ellison's room after 
 her walk, but she lapsed into a deep abstraction as 
 she sat down beside the sofa. 
 
 " What are you smiling at ? " asked Mrs. Elli- 
 son, after briefly supporting her abstraction. 
 
 " Was I smihng ? " asked Kitty, beginning to 
 laugh. » I didn't know it." 
 
 " What has happened so very funny ? " 
 
 " Why, I don't know whether it's so very funny 
 or not. I believe it isn't fimny at all." 
 
 " Then what makes you laugh ? " 
 
 " I dop't know. Was I " — 
 
 " Now donH ask me if you were laughing, Kitty. 
 It's a little too much. You can talk or not, as you 
 choose; but I don't like to be turned into ridi- 
 cule." 
 
 " Oh, Fanny, how can you ? I was thinking 
 about something very different. But I don't see 
 how I can tell you, without putting Mr. Arbuton 
 in a ludicrous light, and it isn't quite fair." 
 
 " You're very careful of him, all at once," said 
 Mrs. Ellison. " You didn't seem disposed to spare 
 him yesterday so much. I don't understand this 
 sudden conversion." 
 
ME. arbuton's infatuation. 181 
 
 Kitty responded with a fit of outrageous laugh- 
 ter. " Now I see I must tell you," she said, and 
 rapidly recounted Mr. Arbuton's adventure. 
 
 " Why, I never knew anything so cool and brave, 
 Fanny, and I admired him more than ever I did ; 
 but then I couldn't help seeing the other side of it, 
 you know." 
 
 " "What other side ? I don't know." 
 
 " Well, you'd have had to laugh yourself, if 
 you'd seen the lordly way he dismissed the poor 
 people who had come running out of their houses 
 to help him, and his stateliness in rewarding that 
 little cooper, and his heroic parting from his cher- 
 ished overcoat, — which of course he can't replace 
 in Quebec, — and his absent-minded politeness in 
 taking my hand under his arm, and marching off 
 with me so magnificently. But the worst thing, 
 Fanny," — and she bowed herself under a tempest 
 of long-pent mirth, — " the worst thing was, that 
 the iron you know, was the cooper's branding-iron, 
 and I had a vision of the dog carrying about on his 
 nose, as long as he lived, the monogram that marks 
 the cooper's casks as holding a certain number of 
 gallons " — 
 
 " Kitty, don't be — sacrilegious ! " cried Mrs. El- 
 lison. 
 
 " No, I'm not," she retorted, gasping and pant- 
 ing. " I never respected Mr. Arbuton so much, 
 and you say yourseK I haven't shown myseK so 
 careful of him before. But I never was so glad to 
 
182 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 see Dick in my life, and to have some excuse for 
 laughing. I didn't dare to speak to Mr. Arbuton 
 about it, for he couldn't, if he had tried, have let 
 me laugh it out and be done with it. I trudged 
 demurely along by his side, and neither of us men- 
 tioned the matter to Dick," she concluded breath- 
 lessly. Then, " I don't know why I should tell 
 you now ; it seems wicked and cruel," she said pen- 
 itently, almost pensively. 
 
 Mrs. Ellison had not been amused. She said, 
 " Well, Kitty, in some girls I should say it was 
 quite heartless to do as you've done." 
 
 " It's heartless in me, Fanny ; and you needn't 
 say such a thing. I'm sure I didn't utter a sylla- 
 ble to wound him, and just before that he'd been 
 very disagreeable, and I forgave him because I 
 thought he was mortified. And you needn't say 
 that I've no feeling ; " and thereupon she rose, 
 and, putting her hands into her cousin's, " Fanny," 
 she cried, vehemently, " I have been heartless. I'm 
 afraid I haven't shown any sympathy or considera- 
 tion. I'm afraid I must have seemed dreadfully 
 callous and hard. I oughtn't to have thought of 
 anything but the danger to him ; and it seems to 
 me now I scarcely thought of that at all. Oh, how 
 rude it was of me to see anything funny in it! 
 What can I do ? " 
 
 " Don't go crazy, at any rate, Kitty. He doesn't 
 know that you've been laughing about him. You 
 needn't do anything." 
 
MR. aebuton's infatuation. 183 
 
 " Oh yes, I need. He doesn't know that I've 
 been laughing about him to you ; but, don't you 
 see, I laughed when we met Dick ; and what can 
 he think of that ? " 
 
 " He just thinks you were nervous, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 "Oh, do you suppose he does, Fanny ? Oh, I 
 wish I could believe that 1 Oh, I'm so horribly 
 ashamed of myself ! And here yesterday I was 
 criticising him for being imfeeling, and now I've 
 been a thousand times worse than he has ever been, 
 or ever could be ! Oh dear, dear, dear ! " 
 
 " Kitty ! hush ! " exclaimed Mrs. EUison ; " you 
 run on like a wild thing, and you're driving me dis- 
 tracted, by not being like yourself." 
 
 " Oh, it's very well for you to be so calm ; but if 
 you didn't know what to do, you wouldn't." 
 
 " Yes, I would ; I don't, and I am." 
 
 " But what shall I do ? " And Kitty plucked 
 away the hands which Fanny had been holding and 
 wrung them. " I'll tell you what I can do," she 
 suddenly added, while a gleam of relief dawned 
 upon her face : " I can bear all his disagreeable 
 ways after this, as long as he stays, and not say 
 anything back. Yes, I'll put up with everything. 
 I'll be as meek ! He may patronize me and snub me 
 and put me in the wrong as much as he pleases. 
 And then he won't be approaching my behavior. 
 Oh, Fanny!" 
 
 Upon this, Mrs. Ellison said that she was going 
 
184 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 to give her a good scolding for her nonsense, and 
 pulled her down and kissed her, and said that she 
 had not done anything, and was, nevertheless, con- 
 soled at her resolve to expiate her offense by re- 
 specting thenceforward Mr. Arbuton's foibles and 
 prejudices. 
 
 It is not certain how far Kitty would have suc- 
 ceeded in her good purposes : these things, so easily 
 conceived, are not of such facile execution ; she 
 passed a sleepless night of good resolutions and 
 schemes of reparation ; but, fortunately for her, Mr. 
 Arbuton's foibles and prejudices seemed to have 
 fallen into a strange abeyance. The change that 
 had come upon him that day remained ; he was 
 still Mr. Arbuton, but with a difference. He could 
 not undo his whole inherited and educated being, 
 and perhaps no chance could deeply affect it with- 
 out destroying the man. He continued hopelessly 
 superior to Colonel and Mrs. Ellison ; but it is not 
 easy to love a woman and not seek, at least before 
 marriage, to please those dear to her. Mr. Arbu- 
 ton had contested his passion at every advance ; he 
 had firmly set his face against the fancy that, at 
 the beginning, invested this girl with a charm ; he 
 had only done the things afterwards that mere civ- 
 ilization required ; he had suffered torments of 
 doubt concerning her fitness for himself and his 
 place in society ; he was not sure yet that her un- 
 known relations were not horribly vulgar people ; 
 even yet, he was almost wholly ignorant of the cir- 
 
MR. arbuton's infatuation. 185 
 
 cumstances and conditions of her life. But now he 
 saw her only in the enrapturing light of his daring 
 for her sake, of a self-devotion that had seemed to 
 make her his own ; and he behaved toward her 
 with a lover's self-forgetfulness, — or something 
 like it : say a perfect tolerance, a tender patience, 
 in which it would have been hard to detect the 
 lurking shadow of condescension. 
 
 He was fairly domesticated with the family. 
 Mrs. Ellison's hurt, in spite of her many impru- 
 dences, was decidedly better, and sometimes she 
 made a ceremony of being helped down from her 
 room to dinner ; but she always had tea beside her 
 sofa, and he with the others drank it there. Few 
 hours of the day passed in which they did not meet 
 in that easy relation which establishes itself among 
 people sojourning in summer idleness under the 
 same roof. In the morning he saw the young girl 
 fresh and glad as any flower of the garden beneath 
 her window, while the sweet abstraction of her 
 maiden dreams yet hovered in her eyes. At night 
 he sat with her beside the lamp whose light, illum- 
 ing a Httle world within, shut out the great world 
 outside, and seemed to be the soft effulgence of her 
 presence, as she sewed, or knit, or read, — a heav- 
 enly spirit of home. Sometimes he heard her talk- 
 ing with her cousin, or lightly laughing after he 
 had said good night ; once, when he woke, she 
 seemed to be looking out of her window across the 
 moonlight in the Ursulines' Garden while she sang 
 
186 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 a fragment of song. To meet her on tlie stairs or 
 in the narrow entries ; or to encounter her at the 
 doors, and make way for her to pass with a jest and 
 blush and flutter ; to sit down at table with her 
 three times a day, — was a potent witchery. There 
 was a rapture in her shawl flung over the back of 
 her chair ; her gloves, lying light ag fallen leaves on 
 the table, and keeping the shape of her hands, were 
 full of winning character ; and all the more unac- 
 countably they touched his heart because they had 
 a certain careless, sweet shabbiness about the finger- 
 tips. 
 
 He found himself hanging upon her desultory 
 talk with Fanny about the set of things and the 
 agreement of colors. There was always more or 
 less of this talk going on, whatever the main topic 
 was, for continual question arose in the minds of one 
 or other lady concerning those adaptations of Mrs. 
 Ellison's finery to the exigencies of Kitty's daily 
 Hfe. They pleased their innocent hearts with the 
 secrecy of the affair, which, in the concealments it 
 required, the sudden difi&culties it presented, and 
 the guiltless equivocations it inspired, had the 
 excitement of intrigue. Nothing could have been 
 more to the mind of Mrs. Ellison than to deck 
 Kitty for this perpetual masquerade ; and, since 
 the things were very pretty, and Kitty was a girl 
 in every motion of her being, I do not see how any- 
 thing could have delighted her more than to wear 
 them. Their talk effervesced with the delicious 
 
ME. arbuton's infatcation. 187 
 
 consciousness that he could not dream of what was 
 going on, and bubbled over with mysterious jests 
 and laughter, which ^metimes he feared to be at 
 his expense, and so joined in, and made them 
 laugh the more at his misconception. He went 
 and came among them at will ; he had but to tap 
 at Mrs. Ellison's door, and some voice of unaffected 
 cordiality welcomed him in; he had but to ask, 
 and Kitty was frankly ready for any of those strolls, 
 about Quebec in which most of their waking hours 
 were dreamed away. 
 
 The gray Lady of the North cast her spell about 
 them, — the freshness of her mornings, the still 
 heat of her middays, the slant, pensive radiance 
 of her afternoons, and the pale splendor of her 
 auroral nights. Never was city so faithfully ex- 
 plored ; never did city so abound in objects of in- 
 terest ; for Kitty's love of the place was boundless, 
 and his love for her was inevitable friendship with 
 this adoptive patriotism. 
 
 " I didn't suppose you Western people cared for 
 these things," he once said ; " I thought your minds 
 were set on things new and square." 
 
 " But how could you think so ? " replied Kitty, 
 tolerantly. " It's because we have so many new 
 and square things that we like the old crooked 
 ones. I do believe I should enjoy Europe even 
 better than you. There's a forsaken farm-house 
 near Eriecreek, dropping to pieces amongst its wild- 
 grown sweet-briers and quince-bushes, that I used 
 
188 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 to think a wonder of antiquity because it was built 
 in 1815. Can't you imagine how I must feel in 
 a city like this, that was founded nearly three 
 centuries ago, and has suffered so many sieges and 
 captures, and looks like pictures of those beautiful 
 old towns I can never see ? " 
 
 " Oh, perhaps you will see them some day ! " he 
 said, touched by her fervor. 
 
 " I don't ask it at present : Quebec's enough. 
 I'm in love with the place. I wish I never had 
 to leave it. There isn't a crook, or a turn, or a tin- 
 roof, or a. dormer-window, or a gray stone in it that 
 isn't precious." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton laughed. " "Well, you shall be 
 sovereign lady of Quebec ' for me. Shall we have 
 the English garrison turned out ? " 
 
 *■' No ; not unless you can bring 
 back Montcalm's men to take their 
 places." 
 
 This might be as they sauntered 
 out of one of the city gates, and 
 strayed through the Lower Town 
 till they should chance upon some 
 poor, bare-interiored church, with 
 a few humble worshippers adoring 
 their Saint, with his lamps alight 
 before his picture ; or as they passed 
 some high convent-wall, and caught the strange, me- 
 tallic clang of the nuns' voices singing their hymns 
 within. Sometimes they whiled away the hours on 
 
MR. arbuton's infatuation. 189 
 
 the Esplanade, breathing its pensive sentiment of 
 neglect and incipient decay, and pacing up and 
 down over the turf athwart the slim shadows of the 
 poplars ; or, with comfortable indifference to the 
 local observances, sat in talk on the carriage of one 
 of the burly, uncared-for guns, while the spider wove 
 his web across the mortar's mouth, and the grass 
 nodded above the tumbled pyramids of shot, and 
 the children raced up and down, and the nursery- 
 maids were wooed of the dapper sergeants, and the 
 red-coated sentry loitered lazily to and fro before his 
 box. On the days of the music, they listened to 
 the band in the Governor's Garden, and watched 
 the fine world of the old capital in flirtation with 
 the blond- whiskered officers ; and on pleasant nights 
 they mingled with the citizen throng that filled the 
 Durham Terrace, while the river shaped itself in 
 the hghts of its shipping, and the Lower Town, 
 with its lamps, lay, like a nether firmament, two 
 hundred feet below them, and Point Levis glittered 
 and sparkled on the thither shore, and in the 
 northern sky the aurora throbbed in swift pulsa- 
 tions of violet and crimson. They liked to climb 
 the Break-Neck Steps at Prescott Gate, dropping 
 from the Upper to the Lower Town, which re- 
 minded Mr. Arbuton of Naples and Trieste, and 
 took Kitty with the unassociated picturesqueness 
 of their odd shops and taverns, and their lofty 
 windows green with house-plants. They would 
 stop and look up at the geraniums and fuchsias, 
 
190 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 and fall a-thinking of far different things, and the 
 friendly, unbusy people would come to their doors 
 and look up with them. They recognized the 
 handsome, blond young man, and the pretty, gray- 
 eyed girl ; for people in Quebec have time to note 
 strangers who linger there, and Kitty and Mr. Ar- 
 buton had come to be well-known figures, different 
 from the fleeting tourists on their rounds ; and, 
 indeed, as sojourners they themselves perceived 
 their poetic distinction from mere birdp of pas- 
 
 Indoors they resorted much to the little entry- 
 window looking out on the Ursulines' Garden. 
 Two chairs stood confronted there, and it was hard 
 for either of the young people to pass them with- 
 out sinking a moment into one of them, and this 
 appeared always to charm another presence into 
 the opposite chair. There they often lingered in 
 the soft forenoons, talking in desultory phrase of 
 things far and near, or watching, in long silences, 
 the nuns pacing up and down in the garden below, 
 and waiting for the pensive, slender nun, and the 
 stout, joUy nun whom Kitty had adopted, and 
 whom she had gayly interpreted to him as an alle- 
 gory of Life in their quaint inseparableness ; and 
 they played that the influence of one or other nun 
 was in the ascendant, according as their own talk 
 was gay or sad. In their relation, people are not 
 so different from children ; they like the same thing 
 over and over again ; they like it the better the less 
 it is in itseK. 
 
MB. ABBUTON'S infatuation. 
 
 191 
 
 At times Kitty would come with a book ia her 
 hand (one finger shut in to keep the place), — 
 some latest novel, or a pirated edition of Long- 
 fellow, recreantly purchased at a Quebec bookstore ; 
 and then Mr. Arbuton must ask to see it ; and he 
 read romance or poetry to- her by the hour. He 
 showed to as much advantage as most men do in 
 the serious follies of wooing; and an influence 
 which he could not defy, or would not, shaped him 
 to all the sweet, absurd de- 
 mands of the affair. From 
 time to time, recollecting 
 himself, and trying to look 
 consequences in the face, he 
 gently turned the talk upon 
 Eriecreek, and endeavored to 
 possess himself of some intel- 
 ligible image of the place, and 
 of Kitty's home and friends. 
 Even then, the present was 
 so fair and full of content, that his thoughts, when 
 they reverted to the future, no longer met the obsta- 
 cles that had made him recoil from it before. What- 
 ever her past had been, he could find some way to 
 weaken the ties that bound her to it ; a year or two 
 of Europe would leave no trace of Eriecreek ; with- 
 out effort of his, her life would adapt itself to his 
 own, and cease to be a part of the lives of those peo- 
 ple there ; again and again his amiable imaginations 
 — they were scarcely intents — accomplished them- 
 
192 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 selves in many a swift, fugitive reverie, while the 
 days went by, and the shadow of the ivy in the 
 window at which they sat fell, in moonlight and 
 sunlight, upon Kitty's cheeks, and the fuchsia kissed 
 her hair with its purple and crimson blossom. 
 
X. 
 
 ME. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 
 
 Mrs. Eilison was almost well ; she had already 
 been shopping twice in the Rue Fabrique, and her 
 recovery was now chiefly retarded by the dress- 
 maker's delays in making up a silk too pre- 
 cious to be risked in the piece with the customs 
 oflElcers, at the frontier. Moreover, although the 
 colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to 
 linger yet a few days for the sake of an affair to 
 which her suffering had been a willing sacrifice. In 
 return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kitty had 
 lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk 
 more and more from those confidences to which her 
 cousin's speeches covertly invited ; she openly re- 
 sisted open attempts upon her knowledge of facts. 
 If she was not prepared to confess everything to 
 Fanny, it was perhaps because it was all so very 
 little, or because a young girl has not, or ought not 
 to have, a mind in certain matters, or else knows it 
 not, till it is asked her by the one first authorized 
 to learn it. The dream in which she lived was flat- 
 tering and fair ; and it wholly contented her imag- 
 ination while it lulled her consciousness. It moved 
 from phase to phase without the harshness of real- 
 
 13 
 
194 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 ity, and was apparently allied neither to the future 
 nor to the past. She herself seemed to have no 
 more fixity or responsibihty in it than the heroine 
 of a romance. 
 
 As their last week in Quebec drew to its close, 
 only two or three things remained for them to do, 
 as tourists ; and chief among the few unvisited 
 shrines of sentiment was the site of the old Jesuit 
 mission at Sillery. 
 
 " It won't do not to see that, Kitty," said Mrs. 
 Ellison, who, as usual, had arranged the details of 
 the excursion, and now announced them. " It's 
 one of the principal things here, and your Uncle 
 Jack would never be satisfied if you missed it. 
 In fact, it's a shame to have left it so long. I 
 can't go with you, for I'm saving up my strength 
 for our picnic at Ch§,teau-Bigot to-morrow ; and I 
 want you, Kitty, to see that the colonel sees every- 
 thing. I've had trouble enough, goodness knows, 
 getting the facts together for him." This was as 
 Kitty and Mr. Arbuton sat waiting in Mrs. Elli- 
 son's parlor for the delinquent colonel, who had 
 just stepped round to the Hotel St. Louis and was 
 to be back presently. But the moment of his re- 
 turn passed ; a quarter-hour of grace ; a half-hour 
 of grim magnanimity, — and still no colonel. Mrs. 
 Ellison began by saying that it was perfectly abom- 
 inable, and left herself, in a greater extremity, with 
 nothing more forcible to add than that it was too 
 provoking. " It's getting so late now," she said at 
 
MR. iEBUTON SPEAKS. 195 
 
 last, "that it's no use watting any longer, if you 
 mean to go at all, to-day ; and to-day's the only 
 day you can go. There, you'd better drive on with- 
 out him. I can't bear to have you miss it." And, 
 thus adjured, the younger people rose and went. 
 
 When the high-born Noel Brulart de Sillery, 
 Knight of Malta and courtier of Marie de Medicis, 
 turned from the vanities of this world and became 
 a priest, Canada was the fashionable mission of the 
 day, and the noble neophyte signalized his self-re- 
 nunciation by giving of his great wealth for the 
 conversion of the Indian heathen. He supplied the 
 Jesuits with money to maintain a religious estab- 
 lishment near Quebec ; and the settlement of red 
 Christians took his musical name, which the region 
 still keeps. It became famous at once as the first 
 residence of the Jesuits and the nuns of the HQtel 
 Dieu, who wrought and suffered for religion there 
 amidst the terrors of pestilence, Iroquois, and win- 
 ter. It was the scene of miracles and martyrdoms, 
 and marvels of many kinds, and the centre of the 
 missionary efforts among the Indians. Indeed, few 
 events of the picturesque early history of Quebec 
 left it untouched ; and it is worthy to be seen, no 
 less for the wild beauty of the spot than for its he- 
 roical memories. About a league from the city, 
 where the irregular wall of rock on which Quebec 
 is built recedes from the river, and a grassy space 
 stretches between the tide and the foot of the woody 
 steep, the old mission and the Indian village once 
 
196 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 stood ; and to this day there yet stands the stalwart 
 frame of the first Jesuit Residence, modernized, of 
 course, and turned to secular uses, but firm as of 
 old, and good for a century to come. All around 
 is a world of lumber, and rafts of vast extent cover 
 the face of the waters in the ample cove, — one of 
 many that indent the shores of the St. Lawrence. 
 A careless village straggles along the roadside and 
 the river's margin ; huge lumber-ships are loading 
 for Europe in the stream ; a town shines out of the 
 woods on the opposite shore ; nothing but a friendly 
 climate is needed to make this one of the most 
 charming scenes the heart could imagine. 
 
 Kitty and Mr. Arbuton drove out towards Sil- 
 lery by the St. Louis Road, and already the jealous 
 foliage that hides the pretty villas and stately places 
 of that aristocratic suburb was tinged in here and 
 there a bough with autumnal crimson or yellow ; in 
 the meadows here and there a vine ran red along 
 the grass ; the loath choke- cherries were ripening in 
 the fence corners ; the air was full of the pensive 
 jargoning of the crickets and grasshoppers, and all 
 the subtle sentiment of the fading summer. Their 
 hearts were open to every dreamy influence of the 
 time ; their driver understood hardly any English, 
 and their talk might safely be made up of those 
 harmless egotisms which young people exchange, — 
 those strains of psychological autobiography which 
 mark advancing intimacy and in which they appear 
 to each other the most uncommon persons that ever 
 
MR. AKBUTON SPEAKS. 197 
 
 lived, and their experiences and emotions and ideas 
 are the more surprisingly unique because exactly 
 alike. 
 
 It seemed a very short league to Sillery when 
 they left the St. Louis Road, and the driver turned 
 his horses' heads towards the river, down the wind- 
 ing sylvan way that descended to the shore ; and 
 they had not so much desire, after all, to explore 
 the site of the old mission. Nevertheless, they got 
 out and visited the little space once occupied by the 
 Jesuit chapel, where its foundations may yet be 
 traced in the grass, and they read the inscription 
 on the monument lately raised by the parish to the 
 memory of the first Jesuit missionary to Canada, 
 who died at Sillery. Then there seemed nothing 
 more to do but admire the mighty rafts and piles of 
 lumber ; but their show of interest in the local ce- 
 lebrity had stirred the pride of Sillery, and a little 
 French boy entered the chapel-yard, and gave Kitty 
 a pamphlet history of the place, for which he would 
 not suffer himself to be paid ; and a sweet-faced 
 young Englishwoman came out of the house across 
 the way, and hesitatingly asked if they would not 
 like to see the Jesuit Residence. She led them in- 
 doors, and showed them how the ancient edifice had 
 been encased by the modern house, and bade them 
 note, from the deep shelving window-seats, that the 
 stone walls were three feet thick. The rooms were 
 low-ceiled and quaintly shaped, but they borrowed 
 a certain grandeur from this massiveness ; and it 
 
198 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, 
 
 was easy to figure the priests in black and the 
 nuns in gray in those dim chambers, which now a 
 life so different inhabited. Behind the house was 
 a plot of grass, and thence the wooded hill rose 
 steep. 
 
 "But come up-stairs," said the ardent little 
 hostess to Kitty, when her husband came in, and 
 had civilly welcomed the strangers, " and I'll show 
 you my own room, that's as old as any." 
 
 They left the two men below, and mounted to a 
 large room carpeted and furnished in modern taste, 
 " We had to take down the old staircase," she con- 
 tinued, " to get our bedstead up," — a magnificent 
 structure which she plainly thought well worth the 
 sacrifice ; and then she pointed out divers remnants 
 of the ancient building. " It's a queer place to 
 live in ; but we're only here for the summer ; " and 
 she went on to explain, with a pretty naivete, how 
 her husband's business brought him to Sillery from 
 Quebec in that season. They were descending the 
 stairs, Kitty foremost, as she added, " This is my 
 first housekeeping, you know, and of course it 
 would be strange anywhere ; but you can't think 
 how funny it is here. I suppose," she said, shyly, 
 but as if her confidences merited some return, while 
 Kitty stepped from the stairway face to face with 
 Mr. Arbuton, who was about to follow them, with 
 the lady's husband, — " I suppose this is your wed- 
 ding-journey." 
 
 A quick alarm flamed through the young girl, 
 
MK. AKBUTON SPEAKS. 199 
 
 and burned out of her glowing cheeks. This pleas- 
 ant masquerade of hers must look to others like 
 the most intentional love-making between her and 
 Mr. Arbuton, — no dreams either of them, nor fig- 
 ures in a play, nor characters in a romance ; nay, 
 on one spectator, at least, it had shed the soft lustre 
 of a honeymoon. How could it be otherwise ? 
 Here on this fatal line of wedding-travel, — so com- 
 mon that she remembered Mrs. March half apolo- 
 gized for making it her first tour after marriage, — 
 how could it happen but that two young people to- 
 gether as they were should be taken for bride and 
 bridegroom ? Moreover, and worst of all, he must 
 have heard that fatal speech ! 
 
 He was pale, if she was flushed, and looked grave, 
 as she fancied ; but he passed on up the stairs, and 
 she sat down to wait for his return. 
 
 " I used to notice so many couples from the 
 States when we lived in the city," continued the 
 hospitable mistress of the house, " but I don't think 
 they often came out to Sillery. In fact, you're the 
 only pair that's come this summer ; and so, when 
 you seemed interested about the mission, I thought 
 you wouldn't mind if I spoke to you, and asked you 
 in to see the house. Most of the Americans stay 
 long enough to visit the citadel, and the Plains of 
 Abraham, and the Falls at Montmorenci, and then 
 they go away. I should think they'd be tired al- 
 ways doing the same things. To be sure, they're 
 always different people." 
 
200 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 It was unfair to let her entertainer go on talking 
 for quantity in this way ; and Kitty said how glad 
 she was to see the old Residence, and that she 
 should always be grateful to her for asking them in. 
 She did not disabuse her of her error ; it cost less 
 to leave it alone ; and when Mr. Arbuton reap- 
 peared, she took leave of those kind people with a 
 sort of remote enjoyment of the wife's mistaken- 
 ness concerning herself. Yet, as the young matron 
 and her husband stood beside the carriage repeating 
 their adieux, she would fain have prolonged the part- 
 ing forever, so much she dreaded to be left alone 
 with Mr. Arbuton. But, left alone with him, her 
 spirits violently rose ; and as they drove along 
 under the shadow of the cliff, she descanted in her 
 liveliest strain upon the various interests of the 
 way; she dwelt on the beauty of the wide, still 
 river, with the ships at anchor in it ; she praised 
 the lovely sunset-light on the other shore ; she com- 
 mented lightly on the village, through which they 
 passed, with the open doors and the suppers frying 
 on the great stoves set into the partition-walls of 
 each cleanly home ; she made him look at the two 
 great stairways that climb the cliff from the lum- 
 ber-yards to the Plains of Abraham, and the army 
 of laborers, each with his empty dinner-pail in 
 hand, scaling the once difficult heights on their way 
 home to the suburb of St. Roch ; she did whatever 
 she could to keep the talk to herself and yet away 
 from herself. Part of the way the village was 
 
MB. AEBUTON SPEAKS. 201 
 
 French and neat and pleasant, then it groveled 
 with Irish people, and ceased to be a tolerable 
 theme for discourse ; and so at last the silence 
 against which she had battled fell upon them and 
 deepened Hke a spell that she could not break. 
 
 It would have been better for Mr. Arbuton's 
 success just then if he had not broken it. But 
 failure was not within his reckoning ; for he had so 
 long regarded this young girl de haut en has, to say 
 it brutally, that he could not imagine she should 
 feel any doubt in accepting him. Moreover, a 
 magnanimous sense of obligation mingled with his 
 confident love, for she must have -known that he had 
 overheard that speech at the Residence. Perhaps 
 he let this feeling color his manner, however faintly. 
 He lacked the last fine instinct ; he could not for- 
 bear ; and he spoke while all her nerves and flutter- 
 ing pulses cried him mercy. 
 
XI. 
 
 KITTY ANSWERS. 
 
 It was dimmest twilight when Kitty entered Mrs. 
 Ellison's room and sank down on the first chair in 
 silence. 
 
 " The colonel met a friend at the St. Louis, and 
 forgot about the expedition, Kitty," said Fanny, 
 " and he only came in half an hour ago. But it's 
 just as well ; I know you've had a splendid time. 
 Where's Mr. Arbuton ? " 
 
 Kitty burst into tears. 
 
 " Why, has anything happened to him ? " cried 
 Mrs. Ellison, springing towards her. 
 
 " To him ? No ! What should happen to Mm ? " 
 Kitty demanded with an indignant accent. 
 
 " Well, then, has anything happened to you ? " 
 
 " I don't know if you can call it happening. But 
 I suppose you'll be satisfied now, Fanny. He'a 
 offered himself to me." Kitty uttered the last 
 words with a sort of violence, as if since the fact 
 must be stated, she wished it to appear in the sharp- 
 est relief. 
 
 " Oh dear ! " said Mrs. Ellison, not so well satis- 
 fied as the successful match-maker ought to be. 
 So long as it was a marriage in the abstract, she 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 203 
 
 had never ceased to desire it ; but as tlie actual 
 union of Kitty and tliis Mr. Arbuton, of whom, 
 really, they knew so little, and of whom, if she 
 searched her heart, she had as little liking as 
 knowledge, it was another affair. Mrs. Ellison 
 trembled at her triumph, and began to think that 
 failure would have been easier to hear. Were they 
 in the least suited to each other ? Would she like 
 to see poor Kitty chained for life to that impassive 
 egotist, whose very merits were repellent, and whose 
 modesty even seemed to convict and snub you? 
 Mrs. Ellison was not able to put the matter to her- 
 self with moderation, either way ; doubtless she did 
 Mr. Arbuton injustice now. " Did you accept 
 him ? " she whispered, feebly. 
 
 " Accept him ? " repeated Kitty. " No ! " 
 
 " Oh dear ! " again sighed Mrs. Ellison, feeling 
 that this was scarcely better, and not daring to ask 
 further. 
 
 " I'm dreadfully perplexed, Fanny," said Kitty, 
 after waiting for the questions which did not come, 
 " and I wish you'd help me think." 
 
 " I will, darUng. But I don't know that I'll be 
 of much use. I begin to think I'm not very good 
 at thinking." 
 
 Kitty, who longed chiefly to get the situation 
 more distinctly before herself, gave no heed to this 
 confession, but went on to rehearse the whole affair. 
 The twilight lent her its veil ; and in the kindly 
 obscurity she gathered courage to face all the facts, 
 and even to find what was droll in them. 
 
204 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " It was very solemn, of course, and I was fright- 
 ened ; but I tried to keep my wits about me, and 
 not to say yes, simply because that was the easiest 
 thing. I told him that I didn't know, — and I 
 don't ; and that I must have time to think, . — and 
 I must. He was very ungenerous, and said he had 
 hoped I had already had time to think ; and he 
 couldn't seem to understand, or else I couldn't very 
 well explain, how it had been with me all along." 
 
 " He might certainly say you had encouraged 
 him," Mrs. Ellison remarked, thoughtfully. 
 
 " Encouraged him, Fanny ? How can you accuse 
 me of such indelicacy ? " 
 
 "Encouraging isn't indelicacy. The gentlemen 
 have to be encouraged, or of course they'd never 
 have any courage. They're so timid, naturally." 
 
 " I don't think Mr. Arbuton is very timid. He 
 seemed to think that he had only to ask as a mat- 
 ter of form, and I had no business to say anything. 
 What has he ever done for me ? And hasn't he 
 often been intensely disagreeable ? He oughtn't to 
 have spoken just after overhearing what he did. It 
 was horrid to do so. He was very obtuse, too, not to 
 see that girls can't always be so certain of them- 
 selves as men, or, if they are, don't know they are 
 as soon as they're asked." 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Mrs. Ellison, " that's the way 
 with girls. I do believe that most of them — when 
 they're young like you, Kitty — never think of mar- 
 riage as the end of their flirtations. They'd just 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 205 
 
 like the attentions and the romance to go on for- 
 ever, and never turn into anything more serious ; 
 and they're not to blame for that, though they do 
 ■get blamed for it." 
 
 " Certainly," assented Kitty, eagerly, " that's it ; 
 that's just what I was saying ; that's the very rea- 
 son why girls must have time to make up their 
 minds. Tou had, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, two minutes. Poor Dick was going back 
 to his regiment, and stood with his watch in his 
 hand. I said no, and called after him to correct 
 myself. But, Kitty, if the romance had happened 
 to stop without his saying anything, you wouldn't 
 have liked that either, would you ? " 
 
 " No," faltered Kitty, " I suppose not." 
 
 " Well, then, don't you see ? That's a great 
 point in his favor. How much time did you want, 
 or did he give you ? " 
 
 " I said I should answer before we left Quebec," 
 answered Kitty, with a heavy sigh. 
 
 " Don't you know what to say now? " 
 
 " I can't tell. That's what I want you to help 
 me think out." 
 
 Mrs. Ellison was silent for a moment before she 
 said, " Well, then, I suppose we shall have to go 
 back to the very beginning." 
 
 " Yes," assented Kitty, faintly. 
 
 " You did have a sort of fancy for him the first 
 time you saw him, didn't you ? " asked Mrs. Elli- 
 son, coaxingly, while forcing herself' to be system- 
 
206 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 atic and coherent, by a mental strain of which no 
 idea can be given. 
 
 "Yes," said Kitty, yet more faintly, iulJ-.i^j,', 
 " but I can't tell just what sort of a fancy it was. 
 I suppose I admired him for being handsome and 
 stylish, and for having such exquisite manners." 
 
 " Go on," said Mrs. Ellison. " And after you 
 got acquainted with-him ? " 
 
 " Why, you know we've talked that over once 
 already, Fanny." 
 
 " Yes, but we oughtn't to skip anything now," 
 replied Mrs. Ellison, in a tone of judicial accuracy 
 which made Kitty smile. 
 
 But she quickly became serious again, and said, 
 " Afterwards I couldn't tell whether to like him or 
 not, or whether he wanted me to, I think he acted 
 very strangely for a person in — love. I used to 
 feel so troubled and oppressed when I was with 
 him. He seemed always to be making himself 
 agreeable under protest." 
 
 " Perhaps that was just your imagination, Kitty." 
 
 " Perhaps it was ; but it troubled me just the 
 the same." 
 
 " Well, and then ? " 
 
 " Well, and then after that day of the Mont- 
 gomery expedition, he seemed to change altogether, 
 and to try always to be pleasant, and to do every- 
 thing he could to make me like him. I don't know 
 how to account for it. Ever since then he's been 
 extremely careful of me, and behaved — of course 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 207 
 
 without knowing it — as if I belonged to Kim al- 
 ready. Or may be I've imagined that too. It's 
 very hard to tell what has really happened the last 
 two weeks." 
 
 Kitty was silent, and Mrs. Ellison did not speak 
 at once. Presently she asked, " Was his acting as 
 if you belonged to him disagreeable ? " 
 
 " I can't tell. I think it was rather presuming. 
 I don't know why he did it." 
 
 " Do you respect him ? " demanded Mrs. Elli- 
 son. 
 
 " Why, Fanny, I've always told you that I did 
 respect some things in him." 
 
 Mrs. Ellison had the facts before her, and it 
 rested upon her to sum them up, and do something 
 with them. She rose to a sitting posture, and con- 
 fronted her task. 
 
 " Well, Kitty, I'U tell you : I don't really know 
 what to think. But I can say this : if you liked 
 him at first, and then didn't like him, and after- 
 wards he made himself more agreeable, and you 
 didn't mind his behaving as if you belonged to him, 
 and you respected him, but after all didia't think 
 him fascinating " — 
 
 " He is fascinating — in a kind' of way. He w^as, 
 from the beginning. In a story his cold, snubbing, 
 putting-down ways would have been perfectly fas- 
 cinating." 
 
 " Then why didn't you take him ? " 
 
 " Because," answered Kitty, between laughing 
 
208 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 and crying, " it isn't a story, and I don't know 
 whether I like him." 
 
 " But do you think you might get to like him ? " 
 
 " I don't know. His asking brings back all the 
 doubts I ever had of him, and that I've been for- 
 getting the past two weeks. I can't tell whether I 
 like him or not. If I did, shouldn't I trust him 
 more? " 
 
 " Well, whether you are in love or not, I'll tell 
 you what you are, Kitty," cried Mrs. Ellison, pro- 
 voked with her indecision, and yet relieved that the 
 worst, whatever it was, was postponed thereby for 
 a day or two. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " You're" — 
 
 But at this important juncture the colonel came 
 lounging in, and Kitty glided out of the room. 
 
 " Richard," said Mrs. Ellison, seriously, and in a 
 tone implying that it was the colonel's fault, as 
 usual, " you know what has happened, I suppose." 
 
 " No, my dear, I don't ; but no matter : I will 
 presently, I dare say." 
 
 " Oh, I wish for once you wouldn't be so flip- 
 pant. Mr. Arbuton has offered himself to Kitty." 
 
 Colonel Ellison gave a quick, sharp whistle of 
 amazement, but trusted himself to nothing more 
 articulate. 
 
 " Yes," said his wife, responding to the whistle, 
 '■ and it makes me perfectly wretched." 
 
 " Why, I thought you liked him." 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 209' 
 
 " I didn't like him ; but I thought it would be an 
 excellent thing for Kitty." 
 
 " And won't it ? " 
 
 " She doesn't know." 
 
 " Doesn't know ? " 
 
 « No." 
 
 The colonel was silent, while Mrs. Ellison stated 
 the case in full, and its pending uncertainty. Then 
 he exclaimed vehemently, as if his amazement had 
 been growing upon him, " This is the most aston- 
 ishing thing in the world ! Who would ever have 
 dreamt of that young iceberg being in love ? " 
 
 " Haven't I told you all along he was ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, certainly ; but that might be taken 
 either way, you know. You would discover the 
 tender passion in the eye of a potato." 
 
 " Colonel Ellison," said Fanny with sternness, 
 " why do you suppose he's been hanging about us 
 for the last four weeks ? Why should he have 
 stayed in Quebec? Do you think he pitied me, or 
 found you so very agreeable ? " 
 
 " Well, I thought he found us just tolerable, and 
 was interested in the place." 
 
 Mrs. Ellison made no direct reply to this pitiable 
 speech, but looked a scorn which, happily for the 
 colonel, the darkness hid. Presently she said that 
 bats did not express the blindness of men, for any 
 bat could have seen what was going on. 
 
 " Whj" remarked the colonel, " I did have a 
 momentary suspicion that day of the Montgomery 
 14 
 
210 . A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 business ; they both looked very confused, when I 
 saw them at the end of that street, and neither of 
 them had anything to say ; but that was accounted 
 for by what you told me afterwards about his ad- 
 venture. At the time I didn't pay much attention 
 to the matter. The idea of his being in love 
 seemed too ridiculous." 
 
 " Was it ridiculous for you to be in love with 
 me?" 
 
 " No ; and yet I can't praise my condition for its 
 wisdom, Fanny." 
 
 " Yes ! that's lihe men. As soon as one of them 
 is safely married, he thinks all the love-making in 
 the world has been done forever, and he can't con- 
 ceive of two young people taking a fancy to each 
 other." 
 
 " That's something so, Fanny. But granting — 
 for the sake of argument merely — that Boston has 
 been asking Kitty to marry him, and she doesn't 
 know whether she wants him, what are we to do 
 about it ? I don't like him well enough to plead 
 his cause ; do you ? When does Eatty think she'll 
 be able to make up her mind ? " 
 
 " She's to let him know before we leave." 
 
 The colonel laughed. " And so he's to hang 
 about here on uncertainties for two whole days ! 
 That is rather rough on him. Fanny, what made 
 you so eager for this business ? " 
 
 "Eager? I wasw'i eager." ' 
 
 " Well, then,. — reluctantly acquiescent ? " 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 211 
 
 " Why, she's so literary and that." 
 
 " And what ? " 
 
 " How insulting I — Intellectual, and so on ; and 
 I thought she would be just fit to live in a place 
 where everybody is literary and intellectual. That 
 is, I thought that, if I thought anything." 
 
 " Well," said the colonel, " you may have been 
 right on the whole, but I don't think Kitty is show- 
 ing any particular force of mind, just now, that 
 would fit her to live in Boston. My opinion is, that 
 it's ridiculous for her to keep him in suspense. 
 She might as well answer him first as last. She's 
 putting herseK under a kind of obligation 'by her 
 delay. I'R talk to her " — 
 
 " If you do, you'll kill her. You don't know 
 how she's wrought up about it." 
 
 " Oh well, I'll be careful of her seusibihties. 
 It's my duty to speak with her. I'm here in the 
 place of a parent. Besides, don't I know Kitty ? 
 I've almost brought her up." 
 
 " Maybe you're right. You're all.so queer that 
 perhaps you're right. Only, do be careful, Rich- 
 ard. You must approach the matter very deli- 
 cately, — indirectly, you know. Girls are different, 
 remember, from young men, and you mustn't 
 be blunt. Do manoeuvre a little, for once in your 
 life." 
 
 " All right, Fanny ; you needn't be afraid of my 
 doing anything awkward or sudden. I'll go to 
 her room pretty, soon, after she is quieted down. 
 
212 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 and have a good, calm old fatherly conversation 
 with her." 
 
 The colonel was spared this errand; for Kitty- 
 had left some of her things on Fanny's table, and 
 now came back for them with a lamp in her hand. 
 Her averted face showed the marks of weeping ; 
 the corners of her firm-set lips were downward 
 bent, as if some resolution which she had taken 
 were very painful. This the anxious Fanny saw ; 
 and she mside a gesture to the colonel which any 
 woman would have understood to enjoin silence, or, 
 at least, the utmost caution and tenderness of 
 speech.* The colonel summoned his finesse and said, 
 cheerily, " Well, Kitty, what's Boston been saying 
 to you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ellison fell back upon her sofa as if shot, 
 and placed her hand over her face. 
 
 Kitty seemed not to hear her cousin. Having 
 gathered up her things, she bent an unmoved face 
 and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided 
 from the room without a word. 
 
 " Well, upon my soul," cried the colonel, " this 
 is a pleasant, nightmarish, sleep-walking, Lady- 
 Macbethish little transaction. Confound it, Fanny ! 
 this comes of your wanting me to manoeuvre. If 
 you'd let me come straight at the subject, — like a 
 man" — 
 
 " Please, Richard, don't say anything more now," 
 pleaded Mrs. Ellison in a broken voice. "You 
 can't help it, I know ; and I must. do the best I can. 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 21 ^ 
 
 under the circumstaiices. Do go away for a little 
 while, darling ! Oh dear ! " 
 
 As for Kitty, when she had got out of the room 
 in that phantasmal fashion, she dimly recalled, 
 through the mists of her own trouble, the colonel's 
 dismay at her so glooming upon him, and began to 
 think that she had used poor Dick more tragically 
 than she need, and so began to laugh softly to her- 
 self ; but while she stood there at the entry window 
 a moment, laughing in the moonlight, that made 
 her lamp-flame thin, and painted her face with its 
 pale lustre, Mr. Arbuton came down the attic stair- 
 way. He was not a man of quick fancies ; but to 
 one of even slower imagination and of calmer mood, 
 she might very well have seemed unreal, the crea- 
 ture of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, 
 arch, not wholly without some touch of the malign. 
 In his heart he groaned over her beauty as if she 
 were lost to him forever in this elfish transfigura- 
 tion. 
 
 " Miss EUison ! " he scarcely more than whis- 
 pered. 
 
 " You ought not to speak to me now," she an- 
 swered, gravely. 
 
 " I know it ; but I could not help it. For heav- 
 en's sake, do not let it tell against me. I wished 
 to ask if I should not see you to-morrow ; to beg 
 that all might go on as had been planned, and as 
 if nothing had been said to-day." 
 
 " It'll be very strange," said Kitty. " My 
 
214 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 cousins know everything now. How can we meet 
 before them ? " 
 
 " I'm not going away without an answer, and we 
 can't remain herp without meeting. It will be less 
 strange if we let everything take its course." 
 
 " WeU." 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 He looked strangely humbled, but even more be- 
 wildered than humbled. 
 
 She listened while he descended the steps, un- 
 bolted the street door, and closed it behind him. 
 Then she passed out of the moonlight into her own 
 room, whose close-curtained space the lamp filled 
 with its ruddy glow, and revealed her again, no 
 malicious sprite, but a very puzzled, conscientious, 
 anxious young girl. 
 
 Of one thing, at least, she was clear. It had all 
 come about through misunderstanding, through his 
 taking her to be something that she was not ; for 
 she was certain that Mr. Arbuton was of too worldly 
 a spirit to choose, if he had known, a girl of such 
 origin and lot as she was only too proud to own. 
 The deception must have begun with dress ; and 
 she determined that her first stroke for truth and 
 sincerity should be most sublimely made in the re- 
 turn of Fanny's things, and a rigid fidelity to her 
 own dresses. " Besides," she could not help reflect- 
 ing, " my travelling-suit will be just the thing for 
 a picnic." And here, if the cynical reader of an- 
 other sex is disposed to sneer at the method of her 
 
KITTY ANSWERS. 215 
 
 self-devotion, I am sure tKat women, at least, will 
 allow it was most natural and highly proper that in 
 this great moment she should first think of dress, 
 upon which so great consequences hang in matters 
 of the heart. Who — to be honest for once, O 
 vain and conceited men ! — can deny thdt the cut, 
 the color, the texture, the stylish set of dresses, has 
 not had everything to do with the rapture of love's 
 young dream ? Are not certain bits of lace and 
 knots of ribbon as much a part of it as any smile 
 or sidelong glance of them all ? And hath not the 
 long experience of the fair taught them that artful 
 dress is half the virtue of their spells ? Full well 
 they know it ; and when Kitty resolved to profit no 
 longer by Fanny's wardrobe, she had won the hard- 
 est part of the battle in behalf of perfect truth to- 
 wards Mr. Arbuton. She did not, indeed, stop 
 with this, but lay awake, devising schemes by which 
 she should disabuse him of his errors about her, and 
 persuade him that she "was no wife for him. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Ellison, who had slipped into 
 Kitty's room, in the morning, to do her back hair 
 with some advantages of light which her own cham- 
 ber lacked, " it'll be no crazier than the rest of the 
 performance ; and if you and he can stand it, I'm 
 sure that we've no reason to complain." 
 
 " Why, I don't see how it's to be helped, Fanny. 
 He's asked it; and I'm rather glad he has, for I 
 should have hated to have the conventional head- 
 ache that keeps young ladies from being seen ; and 
 at any rate I don't understand how the day could 
 be passed more sensibly than just as we originally 
 planned to spend it. I can 'make up my mind a 
 great deal better with him than away from him. 
 But I think there never was a more ridiculous situ- 
 ation : now that the high tragedy has faded out of 
 it, and the serious part is coming, it makes me 
 laugh. Poor Mr. Arbuton will feel all day that he 
 is under my mercilessly critical eye, and that he 
 mustn't do this and he mustn't say that, for fear of 
 me ; and he can't run away, for he's promised to 
 wait patiently for my decision. It's a most inglorious 
 position for him, but I don't think of anything to do 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 217 
 
 about it. I could say no at once, but he'd rather 
 not." 
 
 " What have you got that dress on for ? " asked 
 Mrs. EUison, abruptly. 
 
 " Because I'm not going to wear your things any 
 more, Fanny. It's a case of conscience. I feel 
 like a guilty creature, being courted in another's 
 clothes ; and I don't know but it's for a Mnd of 
 punishment of my deceit that I can't realize this 
 affair as I ought, or my part in it. I keep feeling, 
 the whole time, as if it were somebody else, and 
 I have an absurd kind of other person's interest 
 m. It. 
 
 Mrs. Ellison essayed some reply, but was met by 
 Kitty's steadfast resolution, and in the end did not 
 prevail in so much as a ribbon for her hair. 
 
 It was not till well into the forenoon that the 
 preparations for the picnic were complete and the 
 four set off together in one carriage. In the strong 
 need that was on each of them to make the best of 
 the affair, the colonel's unconsciousness might have 
 been a little overdone, but Mrs. Ellison's demeanor 
 was sublimely successful. The situation gave full 
 play to her peculiar genius, and you could not have 
 said that any act of hers failed to contribute to the 
 perfection of her design, that any tone or speech 
 was too highly colored. Mr. Arbuton, of whom 
 she took possession, and who knew that she knew 
 all, felt that he had never done justice to her, and 
 seconded her efforts with something like cordial ad- 
 
218 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 miration ; while Kitty, with certain grateful looks 
 and aversions of the face, paid an ardent homage to 
 her strokes of tact, and after a few miserable mo- 
 ments, in which her nightlong trouble gnawed at 
 her heart, began, in spite of herself, to enjoy the 
 humor of the situation. ' 
 
 It is a lovely road out to Ch§,teau-Bigot. First 
 you drive through the ancient suburbs of the Lower 
 
 Town, and then you mount the smooth, hard high- 
 way, between pretty country-houses, towards the 
 village of Charlesbourg, while Quebec shows, to 
 your casual backward-glance, Jike a wondrous 
 painted scene, with the spires and lofty roofs of the 
 Upper Town, and the long, irregular wall wander- 
 ing on the verge of the cliff ; then the thronging 
 gables and chimneys of St. Roch, and again many 
 spires and convent walls ; lastly the shipping in the 
 St. Charles, which, in one direction, runs, a narrow- 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 219 
 
 ing gleam, up into its valley, and in the other 
 widens into .the broad light of the St. Lawrence. 
 Quiet, elmy spaces of meadow land stretch between 
 the suburban mansions and the village of Charles- 
 bourg, where the driver reassured himself as to his 
 route from the group of idlers on the platform be- 
 fore the church. Then he struck off on a country 
 road, and presently turned from this again into a 
 lane that grew rougher and rougher, tiU at last it 
 lapsed to a mere cart-track among the woods, where 
 the rich, strong odors of the pine, and of the wild 
 herbs bruised under the wheels, filled the air. A 
 peasant and his black-eyed, open-mouthed boy were 
 cutting withes to bind hay at the side of the track, 
 and the latter consented to show the strangers to 
 the chateau from a point beyond which they could 
 not go with the carriage. There the small habi- 
 tant and the driver took up the picnic-baskets, and 
 led the way through pathless growths of under- 
 brush to a stream, so swift that it is said never to 
 freeze, so deeply sprung that the summer never 
 drinks it dry. A screen of water-growths bordered 
 it; and when this was passed, a wide open space 
 revealed itself, with the ruin of the chiteau in the 
 midst. 
 
 The pathos of long neglect lay upon the scene ; 
 for here were evidences of gardens and bowery 
 aisles in other times, and now, for many a year, 
 desolation and the slow return of the wilderness. 
 The mountain rising behind the ch&teau grounds 
 
220 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 showed the dying flush of the deciduous leaves 
 among the dark green of the pines that clothed it 
 to the crest ; a cry of innumerable crickets filled 
 the ear of the dreaming noon. 
 
 The ruin itseH is not of impressive size, and it is 
 a chateau by grace of the popular fancy rather than 
 through any right of its own ; for it was, in truth, 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 221 
 
 never more than the hunting-lodge of the king's. 
 Intendant, Bigot, a man whose sins claim for him a 
 lordly consideration in the history of Quebec. He 
 was the last Intendant before the British conquest, 
 and in that time of general distress he grew rich by 
 oppression of the citizens, and by peculation from 
 the soldiers. He built this pleasure-house here in 
 the woods, and hither he rode out from Quebec to 
 eDJoy himself in the chase and the carouses that 
 succeed the chase. Here, too, it is said, dwelt in 
 secret the Huron girl who loved him, and who sur- 
 vives in the memory of the peasants as the mur- 
 dered sauvagesse; and, indeed, there is as much 
 proof that she was murdered as that she ever lived. 
 When the wicked Bigot was arrested and sent to 
 France, where he was tried with great result of 
 documentary record, his ch&teau fell into other 
 hands ; at last a party of Arnold's men wintered 
 there in 1775, and it is to our own countrymen that 
 we owe the conflagration and the ruin of Ch&teau- 
 Bigot. It stands, as I said, in the middle of that 
 open place, with the two gable walls and the stone 
 partition- wall still almost entire, and that day show- 
 ing very effectively against the tender northern sky. 
 On the most weatherward gable the iron in the 
 stone had shed a dark red stain under the lash of 
 many vnnter storms, and some tough lichens had 
 incrusted patches of the surface ; but, for the rest, 
 the walls rose in the univied nakedness of all ruins 
 in our climate, which has no clinging evergreens 
 
222 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCK. 
 
 wherewith to pity and soften the forlornness of de- 
 cay. Out of the rubbish at the foot of the walls 
 there sprang a wilding growth of syringas and 
 lilacs ; and the interior was choked with flourishing 
 weeds, and with the briers of the raspberry, on 
 which a few berries hung. The heavy beams, left 
 where they fell a hundred years ago, proclaimed the 
 honest solidity with which the chateau had been 
 built, and there was proof in the cut stone of the 
 hearths and chimney-places that it had once had at 
 least the ambition of luxury. 
 
 While its visitors stood amidst the ruin, a harm- 
 less garden-snake slipped out of one crevice into an- 
 other ; from her nest in some hidden corner over- 
 head a silent bird flew away. For the moment, — 
 so slight is the capacity of any mood, so deeply is 
 the heart responsive to a little impulse, — the pal- 
 ace of the Csesars could not have imparted a keener 
 sense of loss and desolation. They eagerly sought 
 such particulars of the ruin as agreed with the de- 
 scriptions they had read of it, and were as well con- 
 tented vnth a bit of cellar-way outside as if they 
 had really found the secret passage to the sub- 
 terranean chamber of the chateau, or the hoard of 
 silver which the little habitant said was buried un- 
 der it. Then they dispersed about the grounds to 
 trace out the borders of the garden, and Mr. Arbu- 
 ton won the common praise by discovering the foun- 
 dations of the stable of the ch&teau. 
 
 Then there was no more to do but to prepare for 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 223 
 
 the picnic. They chose a grassy plot in the shadow 
 of a half-dismantled bark-lodge, — a relic of the 
 Indians, who resort to the place every summer. In 
 the ashes of that sylvan hearth they kindled their 
 fire, Mr. Arbuton gathering the sticks, and the 
 colonel showing a peculiar genius in adapting the 
 savage flames to the limitations of the civiHzed 
 coffee-pot borrowed of Mrs. Gray. Mrs. Ellison 
 laid the cloth, much meditating the arrangement of 
 the viands, and reversing again and again the rela- 
 tive positions of the sliced tongue and the sardines 
 that flanked the cold roast -chicken, and doubting 
 dreadfuUywhether to put down the cake and the 
 canned peaches at once, or reserve them for a sec- 
 ond course ; the stuffed olives drove her to despair, 
 being in a bottle, and refusing to be balanced by 
 anything less monumental in shape. Some wild 
 asters and red leaves and green and yellowing sprays 
 of fern which Kitty arranged in a tumbler were 
 hailed with rapture, but presently flung far away 
 with fierce disdain because they had ants on them. 
 Kitty witnessed this outburst with her usual com- 
 placency, and then went on making the coffee. 
 With such blissful pain as none but lovers know, 
 Mr. Arbuton saw her break the egg upon the edge 
 of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and then, 
 with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. 
 It was a picture of domestic suggestion, a subtle 
 insinuation of home, the unconscious appeal of in- 
 herent housewifery to inherent husbandhood. At 
 
22-4 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 the crash of the egg-shell he trembled ; the swift 
 agitation of the coffee and the egg within the pot 
 made him dizzy. 
 
 " Sha'n't I stir that for you, Miss Ellison ? " he 
 said, awkwardly. 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! " she answered in surprise at a 
 man's presuming to stir coffee ; " but you may go 
 get me some water at the creek, if you please." 
 
 She gave him a pitcher, and he went off to the 
 brook, which was but a minute's distance away. 
 This minute, however, left her alone, for the first 
 time that day, with both Dick and Fanny, and a 
 silence fell upon all three at once. They could not 
 help looking at one another ; and then the colonel, 
 to show that he was not thinking of anything, be- 
 gan to whistle, and Mrs. Ellison rebuked him for 
 whistling. 
 
 " Why not ? " he asked. " It isn't a funeral, is 
 it?" 
 
 " Of course it isn't," said Mrs. Ellison ; and 
 Kitty, who had been blushing to the verge of tears, 
 laughed instead, and then was consumed with vexa- 
 tion when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he 
 must suspect himself the motive of her ill-timed 
 mirth. " The champagne ought to be Cooled, I 
 suppose," observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee 
 had been finally stirred and set to boil on the coals. 
 
 " I'm best acquainted with the brook," said Mr. 
 Arbuton, " and I know just the eddy in it where 
 the champagne will cool the soonest." 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 225 
 
 " Then you shall take it there," answered the 
 governess of the feast ; and Mr. Arbuton duteously 
 set off with the bottle in his hand. 
 
 The pitcher of water which he had already 
 brought stood in the grass ; by a sudden movement 
 of the skirt, Kitty knocked it over. The colonel 
 made a start forward ; Mrs. EUison an-ested him 
 with a touch, while she bent a look of ineffable ad- 
 miration upon Kitty. 
 
 " Now, I'll teach myself," said Kitty, " that 1 
 can't be so clumsy with impunity. I'll go and fill 
 that pitcher again myself." She hurried after Mr. 
 Arbuton ; they scarcely spoke going or coming ; 
 but the constraint that Kitty felt was nothing to 
 that she had dreaded in seeking to escape from the 
 tacit raillery of the colonel and the championship 
 of Fanny. Yet she trembled to realize that already 
 her life had become so far entangled with this 
 stranger's, that she found refuge with him from her 
 own kindred. They could do nothing to help her 
 in this ; the trouble was solely hers and his, and 
 they two must get out of it one way or other them- 
 selves ; the case scarcely admitted even of sym- 
 pathy, and if it had not been hers, it would have 
 been one to amuse her rather than appeal to her 
 compassion. Even as it was, she sometimes caught 
 herself smUing at the predicament of a young girl 
 who had passed a month in every appearance of 
 love-making, and who, being asked her heart, was 
 holding her lover in suspense whilst she searched it, 
 
 15 
 
226 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 and meantime was picnicking with him upon the 
 terms of casual flirtation. Of all the heroines in 
 her books, she knew none in such a strait as this. 
 
 But her perplexities did not impair the appetite 
 which she brought to the' sylvan feast. In her 
 whole simple life she had never tasted champagne 
 before, and she said innocently, as she put the frisk- 
 ing fluid from her lips after the first taste, " Why, 
 I thought you had to learn to like champagne." 
 
 " No," remarked the colonel, " it's like reading 
 and Avriting ; it comes by nature. I suppose that 
 even one of the lower animals would like cham- 
 pagne. The refined instinct of young ladies makes 
 them recognize its merits instantly. Some of the 
 Confederate cellars," added the colonel, thought- 
 fully, " had very good champagne in them. Green 
 seal was the favorite of our erring brethren. It 
 wasn't one of their errors. I prefer it myself to 
 our own native cider, whether made of apples or 
 grapes. Yes, it's better even than the water from 
 the old chain-pump in the back yard at Eriecreek, 
 though it hasn't so fine a flavor of lubricating oil in 
 it." 
 
 The faint chill that touched Mr. Arbuton at the 
 mention of Eriecreek and its petrolic associations 
 was transient. He was very light of heart, since 
 the advance that Kitty seemed to have made him ; 
 and in his temporary abandon he talked well, and 
 promoted the pleasure of the time without critical 
 reserves. When the colonel, with the reluctance 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 227 
 
 of our soldiers to speak of their warlike experiences 
 before civilians, had suffered himself to tell a story 
 that his wife begged of him about his last battle, 
 Mr. Arbuton listened with a deference that flattered 
 poor Mrs. Ellison, and made her marvel at Kitty's 
 doubt concerning him ; and then he spoke enter- 
 tainingly of some travel experiences of his own, 
 which he politely excused as quite unworthy to 
 come after the colonel's story. He excused them a 
 little too much, and just gave the modest soldier a 
 faint, uneasy fear of having boasted. But no one 
 else felt this result of his delicacy, and the feast 
 was merry enough. When it was ended, Mrs. 
 Ellison, being stiU. a little infirm of foot, remained 
 in the shadow of the bark-lodge, and the colonel lit 
 his cigar, and loyally stretched himself upon the 
 grass before her. 
 
 There was nothing else for Kitty and Mr. Arbu- 
 ton but to stroll off together, and she preferred to 
 do this. 
 
 They sauntered up to the chateau in silence, and 
 peered somewhat languidly about the ruin. On a 
 bit of smooth surface in a sheltered place many 
 names of former visitors were written, and Mr. 
 Arbuton said he supposed -they might as well add 
 those of their own party. 
 
 " Oh yes," answered Kitty, with a half-sigh, seat- 
 ing herself upon a fallen stone, and letting her 
 hands fall into each other in her lap as her wont 
 was, "you write them." A curious pensiveness 
 passed from one to the other and possessed them both. 
 
228 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton began to write.^ Suddenly, " Miss 
 Ellison," said he, with a smile, " I've blundered in 
 your name ; I neglected to put the Miss before it ; 
 and now there isn't room on the plastering." 
 
 " Oh, never mind," replied Kitty, " I dare say it 
 won't be missed ! " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton neither perceived nor heeded the 
 pun. He was looking in a sort of rapture at the 
 name which his own hand had written now for 
 the first time, and he felt an indecorous desire to 
 kiss it. 
 
 " If I could speak it as I've written it " — 
 
 " I don't see what harm there would be in that," 
 said the owner of the name, " or what object," she 
 added more discreetly. 
 
 — "I should feel that I had made a great gain." 
 
 " I never told you," answered Kitty, evasively, 
 "how much I admire your first name, Mr. Ar- 
 buton." 
 
 " How did you know it ? " 
 
 " It was on the card you gave my cousin," said 
 Kitty, frankly, but thinking he now must know she 
 had been keeping his card. 
 
 " It's an old family name, — a sort of heirloom 
 from the first of us who came to the country ; and 
 in every generation since, some Arbuton has had to 
 wear it." 
 
 "It's superb!" cried Kitty, "Miles! 'Miles 
 Standish, the Puritan captain,' ' Miles Standish, the 
 Captain of Plymouth.' I should be very proud of 
 such a name." 
 
" Miss Ellison, I 've blundered in yowr name." — Page 228. 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 229 
 
 " You have only to take it," he said, gravely. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't mean that," she said with a blush, 
 and then added, " Yours is a very old family, then, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, it's pretty well," answered Mr. Arbuton, 
 " but it's not such a rare thing in the East, you 
 know." 
 
 " I suppose not. The Ellisons are not an old 
 family. If we went back of my uncle, we should 
 only come to backwoodsmen and Indian fighters. 
 Perhaps that's the reason we don't care much for 
 old families. You think a great deal of them in 
 Boston, don't you?" 
 
 " We do, and we don't. It's a long story, and 
 I'm afraid I couldn't make you understand, unless 
 you had seen something of Boston society." 
 
 " Mr. Arbuton," said Kitty, abruptly plunging 
 to the bottom of the subject on which they had 
 been hovering, " I'm dreadfully afraid that what 
 you said to me — what you asked of me, yesterday 
 — was all through a misunderstanding. I'm afraid 
 that you've somehow mistaken me and my circum- 
 stances, and that somehow I've innocently helped 
 on your mistake." 
 
 " There is no mistake," he answered, eagerly, 
 " about my loving you ! " 
 
 Kitty did not look up, nor answer this outburst, 
 
 • which flattered while it pained her. She said, 
 
 " I've been so much mistaken myself, and I've been 
 
 so long finding it out, that I should feel anxious to 
 
230 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 have you know just what kind of girl you'd asked 
 to be your wife, before I " — 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Nothing. But I should want you to know that 
 in many things my life has been very, very different 
 from yours. The first thing I can remember — 
 you'U think I'm more autobiographical than our 
 driver at Ha-Ha Bay, even, but I must tell you all 
 this — is about Kansas, where we had removed from 
 Illinois, and of our having hardly enough to eat or 
 wear, and of my mother grieving over our priva- 
 tions. At last, when my father was killed," she 
 said, dropping her voice, "in front of our own 
 door " — 
 
 Mr. Arbuton gave a start. " Killed ? " 
 
 "Yes; didn't you know? Or no: how could 
 you ? He was shot by the Missourians." 
 
 Whether it was not hopelessly out of taste to 
 have a father-in-law who had been shot by the 
 Missourians? Whether he could persuade Kitty 
 to suppress that part of her history ? That she 
 looked very pretty, sitting there, with her earnest 
 eyes lifted towards his. These things flashed will- 
 fully through Mr. Arbuton 's mind. 
 
 "My father was a Free-State man," continued 
 Kitty, in a tone of pride. " He wasn't when he 
 first went to Kansas," she added simply; while 
 Mr. Arbuton groped among his recollections of that 
 forgotten struggle for some association with these 
 names, keenly feeling the squalor of it all, and 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 231 
 
 thinking still how very pretty she was. " He 
 went out there to publish a proslavery paper. But 
 when he found out what the Border Ruffians really 
 were, he turned against them. He used to be very 
 bitter about my uncle's having become an Aboli- 
 tionist ; they had had a quarrel about it ; but father 
 wrote to him from Kansas, and they made it up ; 
 and before father died he was able to tell mother 
 that we were to go to uncle's. But mother was sick 
 then, and she only lived a month after father ; and 
 when my cousin came out to get us, just before she 
 died, there was scarcely a crust of cornbread in our 
 cabin. It seemed like heaven to get to Eriecreek ; 
 but even at Eriecreek we live in a way that I aia 
 afraid you wouldn't respect. My uncle has just 
 enough, and we are very plain people indeed. I 
 suppose," continued the young girl meekly, " that 
 I haven't had at all what you'd call an education. 
 Uncle told me what to read, at first, and after that 
 I helped myself. It seemed to come naturally ; but 
 don't you see that it wasn't an education ? " 
 
 " I beg pardon," said Mr. Arbuton, with a blush ; 
 for he had just then lost the sense of what she said 
 in the music of her voice, as it hesitated over these 
 particulars of her history. 
 
 " I mean," explained Kitty, " that I'm afraid I 
 must be very one-sided. I'm dreadfully ignorant 
 of a great many things. I haven't any accomplish- 
 ments, only the little bit of singing and playing 
 that you've heard ; I couldn't tell a good picture 
 
232 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 from a bad one; I've never been to the opera; I 
 don't know anything about society. Now just im- 
 agine," cried Kitty, with sublime impartiality, 
 " such a girl as that in Boston ! " 
 
 Even Mr. Arbuton could not help smiling at this 
 comic earnestness, while she' resumed: " At home 
 my cousins and I do all kinds of things that the 
 ladies whom you know have done for them. We do 
 our own work, for one thing," she continued, with 
 a sudden treacherous misgiving that what she was 
 saying might be silly and not heroic, but bravely 
 stifling her doubt. " My cousin Virginia is house- 
 keeper, and Rachel does the sewing, and I'm a kind 
 of maid-of -all- work." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton listened respectfully, vainly striv- 
 ing for some likeness of Miss Ellison in the figure 
 of the different second-girls who, during life, had 
 taken his card, or shown him into drawing-rooms, 
 or waited on him at table ; failing in this, he tried 
 her in the character of daughter of that kind of 
 farm-house where they take summer boarders and 
 do their own work ; but evidently the Ellisons were 
 not of that sort either ; and he gave it up and was 
 silent, not knowing what to say, while Kitty, a lit- 
 tle piqued by his silence, went on : " We're not 
 ashamed, you understand, of our ways ; there's 
 such a thing as being proud of not being proud ; 
 and that's what we are, or what I am ; for the rest, 
 are not mean enough ever to think about it, and 
 once I wasn't, either. But that's the kind of life 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 233 
 
 I'm used to ; and thougli I've read of other kinds 
 of life a great deal, I've not been brought up to 
 anything different, don't you understand ? And 
 maybe — I don't know — I mightn't like or respect 
 your kind of people any more than they did me. 
 My uncle taught us ideas that are quite different 
 fi-om yours ; and what if I shouldn't be able to give 
 them up ? " 
 
 " There is only one thing I know or see : I love 
 you ! " he said, passionately, and drew nearer by a 
 step ; but she put out her hand and repelled him 
 with a gesture. 
 
 " Sometimes you might be ashamed of me before 
 those you knew to be my inferiors, — really com- 
 mon and coarse-minded people, but regularly edu- 
 cated, and used to money and fashion. I should 
 cower before them, and I never could forgive 
 you." 
 
 " I've one answer to all this : I love you ! " 
 
 Kitty flushed in generous admiration of his 
 magnanimity, and said, with more of tenderness 
 than she had yet felt towards him, " I'm sorry 
 that I can't answer you now, as you wish, Mr. Ar- 
 buton." 
 
 " But you will, to-morrow ? " 
 
 She shook her head. " I don't know ; oh, I 
 don't know ! I've been thinking of something. 
 That Mrs; March asked me to visit her in Boston ; 
 but we had given up doing so. |^ause of the long 
 delay here. If I asked my cousmsj^ey'd still go 
 
234 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 home that way. It's too bad to put you off again ; 
 but you must see me in Boston, if only for a day 
 or two, and after you've got back into your old as- 
 sociations there, before I answer you. I'm in great 
 trouble. You must wait, or I must say no." 
 
 " I'll wait," said Mr. Arbuton. 
 
 " Oh, thank you," sighed Kitty, grateful for this 
 patience, and -not for the chance of still winning 
 him ; " you are very forbearing, I'm sure." 
 
 She again put forth her hand, but not now to 
 repel him. He clasped it, and kept it in his, then 
 impulsively pressed it against his lips. 
 
 Colonel and Mrs. Ellison had been watching the 
 whole pantomime, forgotten. 
 
 " Well," said the colonel, " I suppose that's the 
 end of the play, isn't it ? I don't like it, Fanny ; 
 I don't like it." 
 
 " Hush ! " whispered Mrs. Ellison. 
 
 They were both puzzled when Kitty and Mr. 
 Arbutoii came towards them with anxious faces. 
 Kitty was painfully revolving in her mind what 
 she had just said, and thinking she had said not so 
 much as she meant and yet so much more, and tor- 
 menting herself with the fear that she had been at 
 once too bold and too meek in her demand for 
 longer delay. Did it not give him further claim 
 upon her ? Must it not have seemed a very auda- 
 cious thing? What right had she to make it, and 
 how could she n^;^^ finally say no ? Then the mat- 
 ter of her explanation |o him : was it in the least 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 235 
 
 what she meant to say ? Must it not give him an 
 idea of intellectual and spiritual poverty in her life 
 which she knew had not been in it? "Would he 
 not believe, in spite of her boasts, that she was 
 humiliated before him by a feehng of essential in- 
 feriority ? Oh, had she boasted ? What she meant 
 to do was just to make him understand clearly 
 what she was ; but, had she ? Could he be made 
 to understand this with what seemed his narrow 
 conception of things outside of his own experience ? 
 Was it worth while to try ? Did she care enough 
 for him to make the effort desirable ? Had she 
 made it for his sake, or in the interest of truth, 
 merely, or ia self-defense ? 
 
 These and a thousand other like questions beset 
 her the whole way home to Quebec, amid the fre- 
 quent pauses of the talk, and underneath whatever 
 she was saying. Half the time she answered yes 
 or no to them, and not to what Dick, or Fanny, or 
 Mr. Arbuton had asked her ; she was distraught 
 with their recurrence, as they teased about her like 
 angry bees, and one now and then settled, and 
 stung and stung. Through the whole night, too, 
 they pursued her in dreams with pitiless iteration 
 and fantastic change ; and at dawn she was awak- 
 ened by voices calling up to her from the Ursulines' 
 Garden, — the slim, pale nun crying out, in a lam- 
 entable acceitt, that all men were false and there 
 was no shelter save the convent,£r the grave, and 
 the comfortable sister bemoaning herself that on 
 
236 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 meagre days Madame de la Peltrie ate nothing but 
 choke-cherries from ChS,teau- Bigot. 
 
 Kitty rose and dressed herself, and sat at the 
 window, and watched the morning come into the 
 garden below : first, a tremulous flush of the heav- 
 ens ; then a rosy light on the silvery roofs and ga- 
 bles ; then little golden aisles among the lilacs and 
 hollyhocks. The tiny flower-beds just under her 
 window were left, with their snap-dragons and lark- 
 spurs, in dew and shadow ; the small dog stood on 
 the threshold, and barked uneasily when the bell 
 rang in the Ursulines' Chapel, where the nuns were 
 at matins. 
 
 It was Sunday, and a soft tranquillity blest the 
 cool air in which the young girl bathed her troubled 
 spirit. A faint anticipative homesickness mingled 
 now with her nightlong anxiety, — a pity for her- 
 seK that on the morrow she must leave these pretty 
 sights, which had become so dear to her that she 
 could not but feel herself native among them. She 
 must go back to Eriecreek, which was not a walled 
 city, and had not a stone building, much less a ca- 
 thedral or convent, within its borders ; and though 
 she dearly loved those under her uncle's roof there, 
 yet she had to own that, beyond that shelter, there 
 was little in Eriecreek to touch the heart or take 
 the fancy ; that the village was ugly, and the vil- 
 lage people mortally dull, narrow, and uncongenial. 
 Why was not her lot cast somewhere else ? Why 
 should she not see more of the world that she had 
 
THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 2S7 
 
 found so fair, and which all her aspirations had 
 fitted her to enjoy? Quebec had been to her a 
 rapture of beautiful antiquity; but Europe, but 
 London, Venice, Rome, those infinitely older and 
 more storied cities of which she had lately talked 
 so much with Mr. Arbuton, — why should she not 
 see them ? 
 
 Here, for the guilty space of a heat-lightning 
 flash, Kitty wickedly entertained the thought of 
 marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridal trip 
 to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things 
 and the incompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek 
 traditions take care of themselves. But then she 
 blushed for her meanness, and tried to atone for it 
 as she could by meditating the praise of Mr. Arbu- 
 ton. She felt remorse for having, as he had proved 
 yesterday, undervalued and misunderstood him ; 
 and she was willing now to think him even more 
 magnanimous than his generous words and conduct 
 showed him. It would be a base return for his 
 patience to accept him from a worldly ambition ; 
 a man of his noble spirit merited the best that love 
 could give. But she respected him ; at last she 
 respected|him fully and entirely, and she could tell 
 him thi,t at any rate. 
 
 The words in which he had yesterday protested 
 his love r^ her repeated themselves constantly in 
 her reverie. If he should speak them again after 
 he had seen her in Boston, in the light by which 
 she was anxious to be tested, — she did not know 
 what she should say. 
 
XIII. 
 
 ORDEAL. 
 
 They had not planned to go anywhere that day ; 
 but after church they found themselves with the 
 loveliest afternoon of their stay at Quebec to be 
 passed somehow, and it was a pity to pass it imloors, 
 the colonel said at their early dinner. They can- 
 vassed the attractions of the diiferent drives out of 
 town, and they decided upon that to Lorette. The 
 Ellisons had already been there, but Mr. Arbuton 
 had not, and it was from a dim motive of politeness 
 towards him that Mrs. Ellison chose the excursion ; 
 though this did not prevent her from wondering 
 aloud afterwards, from time to time, why she had 
 chosen it. He was restless and absent, and an- 
 swered at random when points of the debate were 
 referred to him, but he eagerly assented to the con- 
 clusion, and was in haste to set out. ' % 
 
 The road to Lorette is through St. John's Gate, 
 down into the outlying meadows and rye-fields, 
 where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles, 
 it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the 
 citadel. It is a lonelier road than that to Mont- 
 morenci, and the scattering cottages upon it have 
 not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, of 
 
ORDEAL. 
 
 239 
 
 stone-built Beauport. But they are charming, 
 nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter 
 from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple 
 gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of 
 the year before last, now and then appeared to our 
 acquaintance ; near one ancient cottage an old man, 
 in the true habitant's red woollen cap with a long fall, 
 leaned over the 
 bars of his gate 
 and smoked a 
 short pipe. 
 
 By and by 
 they • came to 
 Jeune -Lorette, 
 an almost 
 ideally pretty 
 hamlet, border- 
 ing the road on 
 either hand 
 with gaUeried 
 
 • and balconied Httle houses, from which the people 
 bowed to them as they passed, and piously enclosing 
 in its midst the village church and churchyard. 
 They soon after reached Lorette itself, which they 
 might easily have known for an Indian town by its 
 unkempt air, and the irregular attitudes in which 
 the shabby cabins lounged along the lanes that wan- 
 dered through it, even if the EUisons had not known 
 it already, or if they had not been welcomed by a 
 pomp of Indian boys and girls of all shades of dark- 
 
240 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 ness. The girls had bead- wrought moccasins and 
 work-bags to sell, and the boys bore bows and 
 arrows, and burst into loud cries of " Shoot ! shoot ! 
 grand shoot ! Put-up-pennies ! shoot-the-pennies ! 
 Grand shoot ! " When they recognized the colonel, 
 as they did after the party had dismounted in front 
 of the church, they renewed these cries with greater 
 vehemence. 
 
 " Now, Richard," implored his wife, " you're 7iot 
 going to let those little pests go through all that 
 shooting performance again ? " 
 
 " I must. It is expected of me whenever I come 
 to Lorette ; and I would never be the man to- neg- 
 lect an ancient observance of this kind." The 
 colonel stuck a copper into the hard sand as he 
 spoke, and a small storm of arrows hurtled around 
 it. Presently it flew into the air, and a fair-faced, 
 blue-eyed boy picked it up : he won most of the 
 succeeding coins. 
 
 •' There's an aborigine of pure blood," remarked 
 the colonel ; " his ancestors came from Normandy 
 two hundred years ago. That's the reason he uses 
 the bow so much better than these coffee-colored 
 impostors." 
 
 They went into the chapel, which stands on the 
 site of the ancient church burnt not long ago. It 
 is small, and it is bare and rude inside, with only 
 the commonest ornamentation abput the altar, on 
 one side of which was the painted wooden statue of 
 a nun, on the other that of a priest, — slight enough 
 
ORDEAL. 
 
 241 
 
 commemoration of those who had suffered so much 
 for the hopeless race that hngers and wastes at 
 Lorette in incurable squalor and wildness. They 
 are Christians after their fashion, this poor remnant 
 of the mighty Huron nation converted by the Jes- 
 uits and crushed by the Iroquois in the far-western 
 wilderness ; but whatever they are at heart, they 
 are still savage in countenance, and these boys had 
 faces of wolves and foxes. They followed their visitors 
 into the church, where 
 there was only an old 
 woman praying to a pic- 
 ture, beneath which hung 
 a votive hand and foot, 
 and a few young Huron 
 suppliants with very sleek 
 hair, Avhose wandering 
 devotions seemed directed 
 now at the strangers, and 
 now at the wooden effigy 
 of the House of St. Ann 
 gl»orne by two gilt angels above the high-altar. 
 There was no service, and the visitors soon quitted 
 the chapel amid the clamors of the boys outside. 
 Some young girls, in the dress of our period, were 
 promenading up and down the road with their arms 
 about each other and their eyes alert for the effect 
 upon spectators. 
 
 From one of the village lanes came swaggering 
 towards the visitors a figure of aggressive fashion, 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 — a very buckish young fellow, with a heavy black 
 mustache and black eyes, who wore a jaunty round 
 hat, blue checked trousers, a white vest, and a 
 morning-coat of blue diagonals; in his hand he 
 swung a light cane. 
 
 " That is the son of the 
 chief, Paul Picot," whispered 
 the driver. 
 
 " Excuse me," said the 
 colonel, instantly ; and the 
 young gentleman nodded. 
 " Can you tell me if we could 
 see the chief to-day ? " 
 
 "Oh yes ! " answered the 
 notary in English, " my 
 father is chief. You can see 
 him ; " and passed on with a 
 somewhat supercihous air. 
 
 The colonel, in his first 
 hours at Quebec, had bought 
 at a bazaar of Indian wares 
 the photograph of an India's! 
 warrior in a splendor of fac- 
 titious savage panoply. It 
 was called " The Last of the 
 Hurons," and the colonel now avenged himself for 
 the curtness of M. Picot, by styling him " The 
 Next to the Last of the Hurons." 
 
 " Well," said Fanny, who had a wife's willing- 
 ness to see her husband occasionally snubbed, " I 
 
ORDEAL. 
 
 243 
 
 don't know why you asked him. I'm sure nobody 
 wants to see that old chief and his wretched bead 
 trumpery again." 
 
 " My dear," answered the 
 colonel, "wherever Americans 
 go, they like to be presented 
 at court. Mr. Arbuton, here, 
 I've no doubt, has been intro- 
 duced to the crowned heads 
 of the Old World, and longs 
 to pay his respects to the sov- 
 ereign of Lorette. Besides, I 
 always call upon the reign- 
 ing prince when I come to 
 Lorette. The coldness of the 
 heir apparent shall not repel 
 me." 
 
 The colonel led the way up 
 the principal lane of the vil- 
 lage. Some of the cabins 
 were ineffectually white- 
 irashed, but none of them 
 were so uncleanly within as 
 the outside prophesied. At 
 the doors and windows sat women and young girls 
 working moccasins ; here and there stood a well-fed 
 mother of a family with an infant Huron in her 
 arms. They all showed the traces of white blood, 
 as did the little ones who trooped after the strangers 
 and demanded charity as clamorously as so many 
 
 --'siav^-?^^ 
 
244 
 
 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Italians ; only a few faces were of a clear dark, as if 
 stained by walnut-juice, and it was plain that the 
 Hurons were fading, if not dying out. They re- 
 sponded with a queer mixture of French liveliness 
 and savage stolidity to the colonel's jocose advances. 
 •Great lean dogs lounged about the thresholds ; they 
 and the women and children 
 were alone visible ; there were 
 no men. None of the houses 
 were fenced, save the chief's ; 
 this stood behind a neat grass 
 plot, across which, at the mo- 
 ment our travellers came up, 
 two youngish women were 
 ^ :;^ ^ trailing in long morning- 
 J gowns and eye-glasses. The 
 chief's house was a handsome 
 cottage, papered and carpeted, 
 with a huge stove in the par- 
 lor, where also stood a table 
 exposing the bead trumpery 
 of Mrs. Ellison's scorn. A 
 full-bodied elderly man with 
 quick, black eyes and a tran- 
 quil, dark face stood near it ; he wore a half-military 
 coat with brass buttons, and was the chief Picot. 
 At sight of the colonel he smiled slightly and gave 
 his hand in welcome. Then he sold such of his 
 wares as the colonel wanted, rather discouraging 
 Mian inviting purchase. He talked, upon some 
 urgency, of his people, who, he said, numbered three 
 
OEDEAL. 245 
 
 hundred, and were a few of tliem farmers, but were 
 mostly hunters, and, in the service of the officers of 
 the garrison, spent the -winter in the cliase. He 
 spoke fair English, but reluctantly, and he seemed 
 glad to have his guests go, who were indeed willing 
 enough to leave him. 
 
 !Mr. Arbuton especially was Trailing, for he had 
 been longing to find himself alone with Kitty, of 
 which he saw no hope while the idling about the 
 village lasted. 
 
 The colonel bought an insane watch-pocket for 
 ime dolleur from a pretty little girl as they returned 
 through the village ; but he forbade the boys any 
 more archery at his expense, with " Pas de grand 
 shoot, now, mes enfans ! — Friends," he added to 
 his own party, " we have the Falls of Lorette and 
 the better part of the afternoon still before us ; how 
 shall we employ them? " 
 
 Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and ]\Ir. 
 Arbuton did not know, as they sauntered down past 
 the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds its industry 
 from the beauty of the fall. The cascade, with two 
 or three successive leaps above the road, plunges 
 headlong down a steep crescent-shaped slope, and 
 hides its foamy whiteness in the dark-foliaged ravine 
 below. It is a wonder of graceful motion, of irides- 
 cent lights and delicious shadows ; a shape of love- 
 liness that seems instinct with a conscious life. Its 
 beauty, hke that of all natural marvels on our con- 
 tinent, is on a generous scale ; and now the specta- 
 
246 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 tors, after viewing it from the mill, passed for a 
 different prospect of it to the other shore, and there 
 the colonel and Fanny wandered a little farther 
 down the glen, leaving Kitty with Mr. Arbuton. 
 The affair between them was in such a puzzling 
 phase, that there was as much reason for as against 
 this ; nobody could do anything, not even openly 
 recognize it. Besides, it was somehow very inter- 
 esting, to Kitty to be there alone with him, and she 
 thought that if all were well, and he and she were 
 really engaged, the sense of recent betrothal could 
 be nowhere else half so sweet as in that wild and 
 lovely place. She began to imagine a bliss so 
 divine, that it would have been strange if she had 
 not begun to desire it, and it was with a half-reluc- 
 tant, half-acquiescent thrill that she suffered him to 
 touch upon what was first in both their minds. 
 
 " I thought you had agreed not to talk of that 
 again for the present," she feebly protested. 
 
 " No ; I was not forbidden to tell you I loved 
 you ; I only consented to wait for my answer ; but 
 now I shall break my promise. I cannot wait. I 
 think the conditions you make dishonor me," said 
 Mr. Arbuton, with an impetuosity that fascinated 
 her. 
 
 "Oh, how can you say such a thing as that ? " 
 she asked, liking him for his resentment of condi- 
 tions that he found humiliating, while her heart 
 leaped remorseful to her. lips for having imposed 
 them. " You know very well why I wanted to de- 
 
OEDEAL. 247 
 
 lay ; and you know that — that — if — I had done 
 anything to wound you, I never could forgive my- 
 self." 
 
 " But you doubted me, all the same," he rejoined. 
 
 " Did I ? I thought it was myself that I doubted."^ 
 
 She was stricken with sudden misgiving as to what 
 
 had seemed so well ; her words tended rapidly she 
 
 could not tell whither. 
 
 " But why do you doubt yourself ? " 
 "I — I don't know." 
 
 " No," he said bitterly, " for it really is I whom 
 you doubt. I can't understand what you have seen, 
 in me that makes you believe anything could change 
 me towards you," he added with a kind of humble- 
 ness that touched her. "I could have borne tO' 
 think that I was not worthy of you." 
 
 " Not worthy of me ! I never dreamed of such a 
 thing." 
 
 " But to have you suspect me of such mean- 
 ness " — 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arbuton ! " 
 
 — " As you hinted yesterday, is a disgrace that 
 I ought not to bear. I have thought of it all night ; 
 and I must have my answer now, whatever it is." 
 
 She did not speak ; for every word that she had 
 uttered had only served to close escape behind her. 
 She did not know what to do ; she looked up at him 
 for help. He said with an accent of meekness pa- 
 thetic from him, " Why must you stiU doubt me? " 
 " I don't," she scarcely more than breathed. 
 
248 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " Then you are mine, now, without waiting, and 
 forever," he cried ; and caught her to him in a swift 
 embrace. 
 
 She only said, " Oh ! " in a tone of gentle re- 
 proach, yet clung to him a helpless moment as for 
 rescue from himself. She looked at him in blank 
 pallor, striving to realize the tender violence in 
 which his pulses wildly exulted ; then a burning 
 flush dyed her face, and tears came into her eyes. 
 " I hope you'll never be sorry," she said ; and then, 
 " Do let us go," for she had no distinct desire save 
 for movement, for escape from that place. 
 
 Her heart had been surprised, she hardly knew 
 how ; but at his kiss a novel tenderness had leaped 
 to life in it. She suffered him to put her hand upon 
 his arm, and then she began to feel a strange pride 
 in his being tall aiid handsome, and hers. But she 
 kept thinking as they walked, " I hope he'll never 
 be sorry," and she said it again, half in jest. He 
 pressed her hand against his heart, and met her look 
 with one of protest and reassurance, that presently 
 melted into something sweeter yet. • He said, 
 " What beautiful eyes you have ! I noticed the long 
 lashes when I saw you on the Saguenay boat, and I 
 couldn't get away from them." 
 
 " Please, don't speak of that dreadful time ! " 
 cried Kitty. 
 
 "No? Why not?" 
 
 " Oh, because ! I think it was such a bold kind 
 of accident my taking your arm by mistake ; and 
 
ORDEAL. 249 
 
 the whole next day has always been a perfect horror 
 to me." 
 
 He looked at her in questioning amaze. 
 
 " I think I was very pert with you all day, — and 
 I don't think I'm pert naturally, — taking you up 
 about the landscape, and twitting j'^ou about the 
 Saguenay scenery and legends, you know. But I 
 thought you were trying to put me down, — you 
 are rather down-putting at times, — and I admired 
 you, and I couldn't bear it." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Arbuton. He dimly recollected, 
 as if it had been in some former state of existence, 
 that there were things he had not approved in Kitty 
 that day, but now he met her penitence with a smile 
 and another pressure of the hand. " Well, then," 
 he said, " if you don't like to recall that time, let's 
 go back of it to the day I met you on Goat Island 
 Bridge at Niagara." 
 
 " Oh, did you see me there ? I thought you 
 didn't ; but I saw i/ou. You had on a blue cravat," 
 she answered ; and he returned with as much the 
 air of coherency as if really continuing the same 
 train of thought, " You won't think it necessary to 
 visit Boston, now, I suppose," and he smiled tri- 
 umphantly upon her. " I fancy that I have now a 
 better right to introduce you there than your South 
 End friends." 
 
 Kitty smiled, too. " I'm wilhng to wait. But 
 don't you think you ought to see Eriecreek before 
 you promise too solemnly ? I can't allow that 
 
250 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 there's anything serious, till you've seen me at 
 home." 
 
 They had been going, for no reason that they 
 knew, back to the country inn near which you pur- 
 chase admittance to a certain view of the falls, and 
 now they sat down on the piazza, somewhat apart 
 from other people who were there, as Mr. Arbuton 
 said, " I shall visit Eriecreek soon enough. But 
 I shall not come to put myself or you to the proof. 
 I don't ask to see you at home before claiming you 
 forever." 
 
 Kitty murmured, " Ah I you are more generous 
 than I was." 
 
 " I doubt it." 
 
 " Oh yes, you are. But I wonder if you'll be 
 able to find Eriecreek." 
 
 " Is it on the map? " 
 
 " It's on the county map ; and so is Uncle Jack's 
 lot on it, and a picture of his house, for that matter. 
 They'll all be standing on the piazza — something 
 like this one — when you come up. You'll know 
 Uncle Jack by his big gray beard, and his bushy 
 eyebrows, and his boots, which he won't have 
 blacked, and his Leghorn hat, which we can't get 
 him to change. The girls will be there with him, 
 — Virginia all red and heated with having got sup- 
 per for you, and Rachel with the family mending in 
 her hand, — and they'll both come running down 
 the walk to welcome you. How wiU you like it ? " 
 
 Mr. Arbuton suspected the gross caricature of 
 
ORDEAL. 251 
 
 this picture, and smiled securely at it. "I shall 
 like it well enough," he said, " if you run down 
 ■with them. Where shall 'you be ? " 
 
 " I forgot. I shall be up-stairs in my room, peep- 
 ing through the window-blinds, to see how you take 
 it. Then I shall come down, and receive you with. 
 dignity in the parlor, but after supper you'll hare 
 to excuse me while I help with the dishes. Uncle 
 Jack will talk to you. He'll talk to you about Bos- 
 ton. He's much fonder of Boston than you are, 
 even." And here Eatty broke off with a laugh, 
 thinking what a very different Boston her Uncle 
 Jack's was from Mr.' Arbuton's, and maliciously 
 diverted with what she conceived of their mutual 
 bewilderment in trying to get some common stand- 
 point. He had risen from his chair, and was now 
 standing a few paces from her, looking towards the 
 fall, as if by looking he might delay the coming of 
 the colonel and Fanny. 
 
 She. checked her merriment a moment to take 
 note of two ladies who were coming up the path 
 towards the porch where she was sitting. Mr. Ar- 
 buton did not see them. The ladies mounted the 
 steps, and turned slowly and languidly to survey 
 the company. But at sight of Mr. Arbuton, one of 
 them advanced directly towards him, with exclama- 
 tions of surprise and pleasure, and he with a stupe- 
 fied face and a mechanical movement turned to meet 
 her. 
 
 She was a lady of more than middle age, dressed 
 
252 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 with certain personal audacities of color and shape, 
 rather than overdressed, and she thrust forward, in 
 expression of her amazement, a very small hand, 
 wonderfully well gloved ; her manner was full of 
 the anxiety of a woman who had fought hard for a 
 high place in society, and yet suggested a latent 
 hatred of people who, in yielding to her, had made 
 success bitter and humiliating. 
 
 Her companion was a young and very handsome 
 girl, exquisitely dressed, and just so far within the 
 fashion as to show her already a mistress of style. 
 But it was not the vivid New York stylishness. A 
 peculiar restraint of line, an effect of lady-like con- 
 cession to the ruling mode, a temperance of orna- 
 ment, marked the whole array, and stamped it with 
 the unmistakable character of Boston. Her clear 
 tints of lip and cheek and eye were incomparable ; 
 her blond hair gave weight to the poise of her deli- 
 cate head by its rich and decent masses. She had 
 a look of independent innocence, an angelic expres- 
 sion of extremely nice young fellow blending with a 
 subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surprise 
 at seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point of her 
 sun-umbrella somewhat nervously upon the floor, 
 and blushing a very little. Then she gave him her 
 hand with friendly frankness, and smiled dazzlingly 
 upon him, while the elder hailed him with effusive 
 assertion of familiar acquaintance, heaping him with 
 greetings and flatteries and cries of pleasure. 
 
 " Oh dear ! " sighed Kitty, " these are old friends 
 
ORDEAL. 253 
 
 of his ; and mil I have to know them ? Perhaps 
 it's best to begin at once, though," she thought. 
 
 But he made no movement towards her where she 
 sat. The ladies began to walk up and down, and 
 he with them. As they passed her, he did not seem 
 to see her. 
 
 The ladies said they were waiting for their car- 
 riage, which they had left at a certain point when 
 they went to look at the fall, and had ordered to 
 take them up at the inn. They talked about people 
 and things that Kitty had never heard of. 
 
 " Have you seen the Trailings since you left New- 
 port ? " asked the elder woman. 
 
 " No," said Mr. Arbuton. 
 
 " Perhaps you'll be surprised then — or perhaps 
 you won't — to hear that we parted with them on 
 the top of Mount Washington, Thursday. And the 
 Mayflowers are at the Glen House. The mountains 
 are horribly full. But what are you to do ! Now 
 the Continent " — she spoke as if the English Chan- 
 nel divided it from us — "is so common, you can't 
 run over there any more." 
 
 Whenever they walked towards Kitty, this 
 woman, whose quick eye had detected Mr. Arbuton 
 at her side as she came up to the inn, bent upon the 
 young girl's face a stare of insolent curiosity, yet 
 with a front of such impassive coldness that to 
 another she might not have seemed aware of her 
 presence. Kitty shuddered at the thought of being 
 made acquainted with her ; then she remembered, 
 
254 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " Why, how stupid I am I Of course a gentleman 
 can't introduce ladies ; and the only thing for him 
 to do is to excuse himself to them as soon as he can 
 without rudeness, and come back to me." But none 
 the less she felt helpless and deserted. Though or- 
 dinarily so brave, she was so beaten down by that 
 look, that for a glance of not unkindly interest that 
 the young lady gave her she was abjectly grateful. 
 She admired her, and fancied that she could easily 
 be friends with such a girl as that, if they met 
 fairly. She wondered that she should be there with 
 that other, not knowing that society cannot really 
 make distinctions between fine and coars'e, and 
 could not have given her a reason for their associa- 
 tion. 
 
 StUl the three walked up and down before Batty, 
 and still she made his peace with herself, thinking, 
 " He is embarrassed ; he can't come to me at once ; 
 but he will, of course." 
 
 The elder of his companions talked on in her 
 loud voice of this thing and that, of her summer, 
 and of the people she had met, and of their places 
 and yachts and horses, and all the splendors of their 
 keeping, — talk which Kitty's aching sense some- 
 times caught by fragments, and sometimes in full. 
 The lady used a slang of deprecation and apology 
 for having come to such a queer resort as Quebec, 
 and raised her brows when Mr. Arbuton reluctantly 
 owned how long he had been there. 
 
 " Ah, ah ! " she said briskly, bringing the group 
 
ORDEAL. 255 
 
 to a stand-still wliile she spoke, " one doesn't stay 
 in a slow Canadian city a whole month for love of 
 the place. Come, Mr. Arbuton, is she English or 
 French?" 
 
 Kitty's heart beat thickly, and she whispered 
 to herself, "Oh, now I — now surely he must do 
 something." 
 
 " Or perhaps," continued his tormentor, " she's 
 some fair fellow-wanderer in these Canadian wilds, 
 — some pretty companion of voyage." 
 
 Mr. Arbuton gave a kind of start at this, like 
 one thrilled for an instant with a sublime impulse. 
 He cast a quick, stealthy look at Kitty, and then 
 as suddenly withdrew his glance. What had hap- 
 pened to her who was usually dressed so prettily ? 
 Alas ! true to her resolution, Kitty had again re- 
 fused Fanny's dresses that morning, and had faith- 
 fully put on her own travelHng-suit, — the suit 
 which Rachel had made her, and which had seemed 
 so very well at Eriecreek that they had called 
 Uncle Jack in to admire it when it was tried on. 
 Now she knew that it looked countrified, and its 
 unstylishness struck in upon her, and made her feel 
 countrified in soul. " Yes," she owned, as she met 
 Mr. Arbuton's glance, " I'm nothing but an awk- 
 ward milkmaid beside that young lady." -This was 
 unjust to herself; but truly it was never in her 
 present figure that he had intended to show her to 
 his world, which he had been sincere enough in 
 contemning for her sake while away from it. Con- 
 
256 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 fronted with good society in these ladies, its dele- 
 gates, he doubtless felt, as never before, the vastness 
 of his self-sacrifice, the difficulty of his enterprise, 
 and it would not have been so strange if just then 
 she should have appeared to him through the hard 
 cold vision of the best people instead of that which 
 love had illumined. She saw whatever purpose 
 towards herself was in his eyes, flicker and die out 
 as they fell from hers. Then she sat alone while 
 they three walked up and down, up and down, and 
 the skirts of the ladies brushed her garments in 
 passing. 
 
 " Oh, where can Dick and Fanny be ? " she 
 silently bemoaned herself, " and why don't they 
 come and save me from these dreadful people ? " 
 
 She sat in a stony quiet while they talked on, 
 she thought, forever. Their voices sounded in her 
 ears like voices heard in a dream, their laughter 
 had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to 
 be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined not 
 meanly to condemn him ; she confessed to herseK, 
 with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her 
 dress must be an ordeal of peculiar anguish to him, 
 and she half blamed herself for her conscientious- 
 ness in wearing it. If she had conceived of any 
 such chance as this, she would perhaps, she thought, 
 have worn Fanny's grenadine. 
 
 She glanced again at the group which wa^ now 
 receding from her. " Ah ! " the elder of the ladies 
 said, again halting the others midway of the piazza's 
 
ORDEAL. 257 
 
 length, " there's the carriage at last ! But what is 
 that stupid animal stopping for ? Oh, I suppose he 
 didn't understand, and expects to take us up at the 
 bridge ! Provoking ! But it's no use ; we may as 
 well go to him at once ; it's plain he isn't coming 
 to us. Mr. Arbuton, will you see us on board ? " 
 
 "Who — I? Yes, certainly," he answered ab- 
 sently, and for the second time he cast a furtive 
 look at Kitty, who had half started to her feet in 
 expectation of his coming to her before he went, 
 — a look of appeal, or deprecation, or reassurance, 
 as she chose to interpret it, but after all a look 
 only. 
 
 She sank back in blank rejection of his look, and 
 so remained motionless as he led the way from the 
 porch with a quick and anxious step. Since those 
 people came he had not openly recognized her pres- 
 ence, and now he had left her without a word. 
 She could not believe what she could not but divine, 
 and she was powerless to stir as the three moved 
 down the road towards the carriage. Then she felt 
 the tears spring to her eyes ; she flung down her 
 veil, and, swept on by a storm of grief and pride 
 and pain, she hurried, ran, towards the grounds 
 aboiit the falls. She thrust aside the boy who took 
 money at the gate. " I have no money," she said 
 fiercely ; " I'm going to look for my friends ; they're 
 in h§re." 
 
 But Dick and Fanny were not to be seen. In- 
 stead, as she fluttered wildly about in search of 
 
 17 
 
258 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 them, she beheld Mr. Arbuton, who had missed her 
 on his return to the inn, coming with a frightened 
 face to look for her. She had hoped somehow 
 never to see him again in the world ; but since it 
 was to be, she stood still and waited his approach 
 in a strange composure ; while he drew nearer, 
 thinking how yesterday he had silenced her pro- 
 phetic doubt of him : " I have one answer to aU 
 this ; I love you." Her faltering words, verified so 
 fatally soon, recalled themselves to him with intol- 
 erable accusation. And what should he say now ? 
 If possibly, — if by some miracle, — she might not 
 have seen what he feared she must ! One glance 
 that he dared give her taught him better ; and 
 while she waited for him to speak, he could not lure 
 any of the phrases, of which the air seemed full, to 
 serve him. 
 
 " I wonder you came back to me," she said after 
 an eternal moment. 
 
 " Came back ? " he echoed, vacantly. 
 
 " You seemed to have forgotten my existence ! " 
 
 Of course the whole wrong, if any wrong had 
 been done to her, was tacit, and much might be 
 said to prove that she felt needlessly aggrieved, 
 and that he could not have acted otherwise than 
 as he did ; she herself had owned that it must be 
 an embarrassing position to him. 
 
 " Why, what have I done," he began, " what 
 makes you think .... For heaven's sake listen to 
 me ! " he cried ; and then, while she turned a mute 
 
OEBEAL. 259 
 
 attentive face to him, he stood silent as before, like 
 one who has lost his thought, .and strives to recall 
 what he was going to say. " What sense, — what 
 use," he resumed at last, as if continuing the course 
 of some previous argument, " would there have 
 been in making a display of our acquaintance be- 
 fore them? I did not suppose at first that they 
 saw us together." . . . .But here he broke off, 
 and, indeed, his explanation had but a mean effect 
 when put into words. " I did not expect them to 
 stay. I thought they would go away everj'- mo- 
 ment ; and then at last it was too late to manage 
 the affair without seeming to force it." This was 
 better ; and he paused again, for some sign of ac- 
 quiescence from Kitty, and caught her eye fixed on 
 his face in what seemed contemptuous wonder. His 
 own eyes fell, and ran uneasily over her dress before 
 he lifted them and began once more, as if freshly 
 inspired : " I could have wished you to be known 
 to my friends with every advantage on your side," 
 and this had such a magnanimous sound that he 
 took courage ; " and you ought to have had faith 
 enough in me to believe that I never could have 
 meant you a slight. If you had known more of 
 the world, — if your social experience had been 
 greater, you would have seen .... Oh ! " he 
 cried, desperately, "is there nothing you have to 
 say to me ? " 
 
 "No," said Kitty, simply, but with a languid 
 quiet, and shrinking from speech as from an added 
 
260 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 pang. " You have been telling me that you were 
 ashamed of me in this dress before those people. 
 But I knew that already. What do you want me 
 to do ? " 
 
 " If you give me time, I can make everything 
 clear to you." 
 
 " But now you don't deny it." 
 
 " Deny what ? I " — 
 
 But here the whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton's de- 
 fense toppled to the ground. He was a man of 
 scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceive himself 
 or others. He had been ashamed of her, he could 
 not deny it, not to keep the love that was now 
 dearer to'him than life. He saw it with paralyzing 
 clearness ; and, as an inexorable fact that con- 
 founded quite as much as it dismayed him, he per- 
 ceived that throughout that ignoble scene she had 
 been the gentle person and he the vulgar one. 
 How could it have happened with a man like him ! 
 As he looked back upon it, he seemed to have been 
 only the helpless sport of a sinister chance. 
 
 But now he must act ; it could not go so, it was 
 too horrible a thing to let stand confessed. A hun- 
 dred protests thronged to his lips, but he refused 
 utterance to them all as worse even than silence ; 
 and so, still meaning to speak, he could not speak. 
 He could only stand and wait while it -wrung his 
 heart to see her trembling, grieving lips. 
 
 His own aspect was so lamentable, that she half 
 pitied him, half respected him for his truth's sake. 
 
ORDEAL. 261 
 
 "You were rigiit; I think it won't be necessary 
 for .me to go to Boston," she said with a dim smile. 
 " Good-by. It's all been a dreadful, dreadful mis- 
 take." 
 
 It was like him, even in that humiliation, not to 
 have thought of losing her, not to have dreamed 
 but that he could somehow repair his error, and she 
 would yet willingly be his. " Oh, no, no, no," he 
 cried, starting forward, " don't say that ! It can't 
 be, it mustn't be ! You are angry now, but I 
 know you'll see it differently. Don't be so quick 
 with me, with yourself. I will do anything, say 
 anything, you like." 
 
 The tears stood in her eyes ; but they were cruel 
 drops. " You can't say anything that wouldn't 
 make it worse. You can't undo what's been done, 
 and that's only a little part of what couldn't be 
 undone. The best way is for us to part ; it's the 
 only way." 
 
 " No, there are all the ways in the world besides ! 
 Wait " — think ! — I implore you not to be so — pre- 
 cipitate." 
 
 The unfortunate word incensed her the more ; 
 it intimated that she was ignorantly throwing too 
 much away. " I am not rash now, but I was very 
 rash half an hour ago. I shall not change my 
 mind again. Oh," she cried, giving way, " it isn't 
 what you've done, but what you are and what / 
 am, that's the great trouble ! I could easily for- 
 give what's happened, — if you asked it; but I 
 
262 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 couldn't alter both our whole lives, or make myself 
 over again, and you couldn't change yourself. Per- 
 haps you would try, and I know that I would, but 
 it would be a wretched failure and disappointment 
 as long as we lived. I've learnt a great deal since 
 I first saw those people." And in truth he felt as 
 if the young girl whom he had been meaning to lift 
 to a higher level than her own at his side had some- 
 how suddenly grown beyond him ; and his heart 
 sank. " It's foolish to try to argue such a thing, 
 but it's true ; and you must let me go." 
 
 " I carCt let you go," he said, in such a way that 
 she longed at least to part kindly with him. 
 
 " You can make it hard for me," she answered, 
 " but the end will be the same." 
 
 "I won't make it hard for you, then," he re- 
 turned, after a pause, in which he grew paler, and 
 she stood with a wan face plucking the red leaves 
 from a low bough that stretched itself towards her. 
 
 He turned and walked away some steps ; then he 
 came suddenly back. " I wish to express 'my re- 
 gret," he began formally, and with his old air of 
 doing what was required of him as a gentleman, 
 " that I should have unintentionally done anything 
 to wound " — 
 
 " Oh, better not speak of that" interrupted Kitty 
 with bitterness, "it's all over now." And the 
 final tinge of superiority in his manner made her 
 give him a little stab of dismissal. " Good-by. I 
 see my cousins coming." 
 

 She stood and watched him walk away, — Page 263. 
 
ORDEAL. 263 
 
 She stood and watched him walk away, the sun- 
 light playing on his figure through the mantling 
 leaves, till he passed out of the grove. 
 
 The cataract roared with a seven-fold tumult in 
 her ears, and danced before her eyes. All things 
 swam together, as in her blurred sight her cousins 
 came wavering towards her. 
 
 " "Where is Mr. Arbuton ? " asked Mrs. EUisom 
 
 Kitty threw her arms about the neck of that 
 foolish woman, whose loving heart she could not 
 doubt, and clung sobbing to her. " Gone," she 
 said ; and Mrs. Ellison, wise for once, asked no 
 more.' 
 
 She had the whole story that evening, without 
 asking ; and whilst she raged, she approved of 
 Kitty, and covered her with praises and condo- 
 lences, 
 
 " Why, of course, Fanny, I didn't care for know- 
 ing those people. What should I want to know 
 them for ? But what hurt me was that he should 
 so postpone me to them, and ignore me before them^ 
 and leave me without a word, then, when I ought 
 to have been everything in the world to him and 
 first of all. I believe things came to me while I 
 sat there, as they do to drowning people, all at 
 once, and I saw the whole affair more distinctly 
 than ever I did. We were too far apart in what 
 we had been and what we believed in and respected, 
 ever to grow really together. And if he gave me 
 the highest position in the world, I' should have 
 
264 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 only that. He never could like the people who had 
 been good to me, and whom I loved so dearly, and 
 he only could like me as far as he could estrange 
 me from them. If he could coolly put me aside 
 .now, how would it be afterwards with the rest, and 
 -with me too ? That's what flashed through me, 
 ;and I don't believe that getting splendidly married 
 is as good as being true to the love, that came long 
 before, and honestly living your own life out, with- 
 out fear or trembling, whatever it is. So perhaps," 
 said Kitty, with a fresh burst of tears, " you needn't 
 condole with me so much, Fanny. Perhaps if you 
 had seen him, you would have thought he was the' 
 one to be pitied. / pitied him, though he was so 
 cruel. When he first turned to meet them, you'd 
 have thought he was a man sentenced to death, or 
 under some dreadful spell or other ; and .while he 
 was walking up and down listening to that horrible 
 comical old woman, — the young lady didn't talk 
 much, — and trying to make straight answers to 
 her, and to look as if I didn't exist, it was the most 
 ridiculous thing in the world." 
 
 " How queer you are, Kitty ! " 
 
 " Yes ; but you needn't think I didn't feel it. I 
 seemed to be like two persons sitting there, one in 
 agony, and one just coolly watching it. But oh," 
 she broke out again while Fanny held her closer in 
 iher arms, " how could he have done it, how could 
 he have acted so towards me ; and just after I had 
 begun to think him so generous and noble ! It 
 
ORDEAL. 265 
 
 seems too dreadful to be true." And with this 
 Kitty kissed her cousin and they had a little cry to- 
 gether over the trust so done to death ; and Kitty 
 dried her eyes, and bade Fanny a brave good night, 
 and went off to weep again, upon her pillow. 
 
 But before that, she called Fanny to her door, 
 and with a smile breaking through the trouble of 
 her face, she asked, " How do you suppose he got 
 back ? I never thought of it before." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Mrs. Ellison with profound disgust, 
 "I hope he had to walk back. But I'm afraid 
 there were only too many chances for him to ride. 
 I dare say he could get a calash at the hotel 
 there." 
 
 Kitty had not spoken a word of reproach to 
 Fanny for her part in promoting this hapless 
 affair; and when the latter, returning to her own 
 room, found the colonel there, she told him the 
 story, and then began to discern that she was not 
 without credit for Kitty's fortunate escape, as she 
 called it. 
 
 " Yes," said the colonel, " under exactly similar 
 circumstances she'll know just what to expect an- 
 other time, if that's any comfort." 
 
 " It's a great comfort," retorted Mrs. Ellison ; 
 " you can't find out what the world is, too soon, I 
 can tell you ; and if I hadn't manoeuvred a little to 
 bring them together, Kitty might have gone off 
 with some lingering fancy for him ; and think what 
 a misfortune that would have been ! " 
 
266 • A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " Horrible." 
 
 " And now, she'll not have a single regret for 
 him." 
 
 " I should think not," said the colonel ; and he 
 spoke in a tone of such dejection, that it went to 
 his wife's heart more than any reproach of Kitty's 
 could have done. " You're all right, and nobody 
 blames you, Fanny ; but if you think it's well for 
 such a girl as Kitty to find out that a man who 
 has had the best that the world can give, and has 
 really some fine qualities of his own, can be such a 
 poor devil, after all, then /don't. She may be the 
 wiser for it, but you know she won't be the hap- 
 pier." 
 
 " Oh doTbt^ Dick, don't speak seriously ! It's so 
 dreadful from you. If you feel so about it, why 
 don't you do something ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, there's a fine opening. "We know, be- 
 cause we know ever so much more, how the case 
 really is ; but the way it seems to stand is, that 
 Kitty couldn't bear to have him show civility to his 
 friends, and ran away, and then wouldn't give him 
 a chance to explain. Besides, what could I do un- 
 der any circumstances ? " 
 
 " Well, Dick, of course you're right, and I wish 
 I could see things as clearly as you do. But I really 
 believe Kitty's glad to be out of it." 
 
 " What ? " thundered the colonel. 
 
 " I think Kitty's secretly relieved to have it all 
 over. But you needn't stun me." 
 
ORDEAL. 267 
 
 " You do ? " The colonel paused as if to gain 
 force enough for a reply. But after waiting, noth- 
 ing whatever came to him, and he wound up his 
 watch. 
 
 " To be sure," added Mrs. Ellison thoughtfully, 
 after a pause, "she's giving up a great deal; and 
 she'll probably never have such another chance as 
 long as she lives." 
 
 " I hope she won't," said the colonel. 
 
 " Oh, you needn't pretend that a high position 
 and the social advantages he could have given her 
 are to be despised." 
 
 "No, you heartless worldling; and neither are 
 peace of mind, and self-respect, and whole feelings, 
 and your little joke." 
 
 " Oh, you — you sickly sentimentalist ! " 
 
 "That's what they used to call us in the good 
 old abolition days," laughed the colonel ; and the 
 two being quite alone, they made their peace with 
 a kiss, and were as happy for the moment as if 
 they had thereby assuaged Kitty's grief and morti- 
 fication. 
 
 " Besides, Fanny," continued the colonel, " though 
 I'm not much on religion, I believe these things are 
 ordered." 
 
 " Don't be blasphemous, Colonel Ellison I " cried 
 his wife, who represented the church if not religion 
 in her family. " As if Providence had anything to 
 do with love-affairs ! " 
 
 " Well, L won't ; but I will say that if Kitty 
 
268 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 .turned her back on Mr. Arbuton and the social ad- 
 vantages he could offer her, it's a sign she wasn't 
 fit for them. And, poor thing, if she doesn't know- 
 how much she's lost, why she has the less to grieve 
 over. If she thinks she couldn't be happy with a 
 husband who would keep her snubbed and fright- 
 ened after he lifted her from her lowly sphere, and 
 would tremble whenever she met any of his own 
 sort, of course it may be a sad mistake, but it can't 
 be helped. She must go back to Eriecreek, and 
 try to worry along without him. Perhaps she'll 
 work out her destiny some other way." 
 
XIV. 
 
 AITEEWAEDS. 
 
 MeS. EliUSON 
 had Kitty's whole 
 story, and so has 
 the reader, but for 
 a little thing that 
 happened next 
 day, and which is 
 perhaps scarcely 
 worthy of being 
 set down. 
 
 Mr. Arbuton's 
 valise was sent for 
 at night from the 
 Hotel St. Louis, 
 and they did not 
 see him again. 
 When Kitty woke next morning, a fine cold rain was 
 falling upon the drooping hollyhocks in the Ursu- 
 lines' Garden, which seemed stricken through every 
 leaf and flower with sudden autumn.' All the fore- 
 noon the garden-paths remained empty, but under 
 the porch by the poplars sat the slender nun and the 
 stout nun side by side, and held each other's hands. 
 They did not move, they did not appedit to speak. 
 
270 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 The fine cold rain was still falling as Kitty and 
 Fanny drove down Mountain Street towards the 
 Railway Station, whither Dick and the baggage 
 had. preceded them, for they were going away from 
 Quebec. Midway, their carriage was stopped by a 
 mass of ascending vehicles, and their driver drew, 
 rein till the press was over. At the same time 
 Kitty saw advancing up the sidewalk a • figure gro- 
 tesquely resembling Mr. Arbuton. It was he, but 
 shorter, and smaller, and meaner. -Then it was not 
 he, but only a light overcoat like his covering a 
 very common little man about whom it hung 
 loosely, — a burlesque of Mr. Arbuton's self -re- 
 spectful overcoat, or the garment itseK in a state of 
 miserable yet comical collapse. 
 
 " What is that ridiculous little wretch staring at 
 you for, Kitty ? " asked Fanny. 
 
 " I don't know," answered Kitty, absently. 
 
 The man was now smiling and gesturing vio- 
 lently. Kitty remembered having seen him before, 
 and then recognized the cooper who had released 
 Mr. Arbuton from the dog in the Sault au Mate- 
 lot, and to whom he had given his lacerated over- 
 coat. 
 
 The Uttle creature awkwardly unbuttoned the 
 garment, and took from the breast-pocket a few let- 
 ters, which he handed to Kitty, talking eagerly in 
 French all the time. 
 
 " What is he doing, Kitty ? " 
 
 " What is he saying, Fanny ? " 
 
 " Somethiiig about a ferocious dog that was going 
 
AFTERWARDS. 271 
 
 to spring upon you, and the young gentleman being 
 brave as a lion and rushing forward, and saving 
 your life." Mrs. ElUson was not a woman to let 
 her translation lack color, even though the original 
 wanted it. 
 
 " Make him tell it again." 
 
 When the man had done so, " Yes," sighed Kitty, 
 " it all happened that day of the Montgomery ex- 
 pedition ; but I never knew, before, of what he had 
 done for me. Fanny," she cried, with a great sob, 
 " maybe I'm the one who has been cruel ? But 
 what happened yesterday makes his having saved 
 my Hfe seem such a very little matter." 
 
 " Nothing at all ! " answered Fanny, " less than 
 nothing ! " But her heart failed her. 
 
 The little cooper had bowed himself away, and 
 was climbing the hiU, Mr. Arbuton's coat-skiri;3 
 striking his heels as he walked. 
 
 "What letters are those ? " asked Fanny. 
 
 " Oh, old letters to Mr. Arbuton, which he found 
 in the pocket. I suppose he thought I would give 
 them to him." 
 
 " But how are you going to do it ? " 
 
 » I ought to send them to him," answered Kitty. 
 Then, after a silence that lasted till they reached 
 the boat, she handed the letters to Fanny. " Dick 
 may send them," she said. 
 
 THE END. 
 
R^i!--^