“Not precisely,” said Isabel; “we have a coop in the fifth story, right under the roof.”

Mrs. Ellison turned energetically upon her husband and cried in tones of reproach, “Richard, Mrs. March has a room!”

“A coop, she said,” retorted that amiable Colonel, “and we’re too good for that.  The clerk is keeping us in suspense about a room, because he means to surprise us with something palatial at the end.  It ’s his joking way.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Ellison.  “Have you seen him since dinner?”

“I have made life a burden to him for the last half-hour,” returned the Colonel, with the kindliest smile.

“O Richard,” cried his wife, in despair of his amendment, “you wouldn’t make life a burden to a mouse!” And having nothing else for it, she laughed, half in sorrow, half in fondness.

“Well, Fanny,” the Colonel irrelevantly answered, “put on your hat and things, and let’s all go up to Durham Terrace for a promenade.  I know our friends want to go.  It’s something worth seeing; and by the time we get back, the clerk will have us a perfectly sumptuous apartment.”

Nothing, I think, more enforces the illusion of Southern Europe in Quebec than the Sunday-night promenading on Durham Terrace.  This is the ample space on the brow of the cliff to the left of the citadel, the noblest and most commanding position in the whole city, which was formerly occupied by the old castle of Saint Louis, where dwelt the brave Count Frontenac and his splendid successors of the French regime.  The castle went the way of Quebec by fire some forty years ago, and Lord Durham leveled the site and made it a public promenade.  A stately arcade of solid masonry supports it on the brink of the rock, and an iron parapet incloses it; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and some idle old guns for the children to clamber over and play with.  A soft twilight had followed the day, and there was just enough obscurity to hide from a willing eye the Northern and New World facts of the scene, and to bring into more romantic relief the citadel dark against the mellow evening, and the people gossiping from window to window across the narrow streets of the Lower Town.  The Terrace itself was densely thronged, and there was a constant coming and going of the promenaders, who each formally paced back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly home, giving place to the new arrivals.  They were nearly all French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few young fellows and now and then a redfaced old gentleman with an Indian scarf trailing from his hat.  There were some fair American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially Quebecian.  The young girls walking in pairs, or with their lovers, had the true touch of provincial unstylishness, the young men the ineffectual excess of the second-rate