The summer had not been a very gay one.  The heat was so intense as to throw languour on the garden and croquet-parties, which replaced the winter balls and sleigh drives.  Thunder was in the air, and growled and muttered around; but the joyfully-hailed clouds floated away without affording a drop of rain; or if one black flying monster poured itself like a water-spout on the parched city, laying the flowers with its violence, the thirsty earth licked it up, scarce leaving a trace.  Summer lightning quaked in long sheets over the horizon; the geese were lying dead on the common from drought; and the restless night was haunted by the tramp of straying horses on the wooden side-walks.

“Round trips” were advertised in all the papers, and brackish bathing-places on the St. Lawrence were already crowded.  The Saguenay and Marguerite rivers had carried off their fishing votaries, the black fly worked its wicked will at Tadousac, where the “property” whale of the ——­ hotel had already been seen spouting, according to the waiter, as he attended at the matitudinal table-d’hote.  At any rate, seals might be seen with the naked eye, and shot, too, by a wary seal-slayer in a boat.  Two such trophies were already in the hotel, affording unlimited excitement to the visitors, who, indeed, were somewhat in need of extraneous amusement, for the only resource the place could boast was pulling a boat against the strong tide of the two rivers meeting, with the alternative of a garment-rending scramble in the woods, a prey to the nipping fly, and coming sometimes in undesired proximity to a wild cat.

Twice a week the Quebec boats, with Saguenay trippers, chiefly Americans, halted at the hotel for an hour or two, and turned in their freight, who invariably commenced dancing to the more amiable than tuneful strains of an amateur performer in the public drawing-room.

This pleasure was partaken of quite as “sadly” as if they were our own unfrisky compatriots; but it passed the time, and the males still further diversified it by “smiling” at the bar.

The Rollestons, vacillating between Tadousac, the Falls, a trip in the “Algoma,” and a journey to Boston, their large party being an objection to each and all, were finally attracted by an advertisement of a fishing-lodge to be let or sold on Rice Lake.

This would be a pied a terre for disposing of the impedimenta of the family—­governess and children—­during the hot months, leaving the others at liberty for flying excursions.  The price was so ridiculous that Colonel Rolleston bought it outright, jestingly saying to Lola that it should be her marriage portion.