g. 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,
however 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 Hotel Dieu; he was sketching something, and evoking
the curious life of the neighborhood. Two schoolboys in the uniform of
the Seminary 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 window about him to some one within; a young lady
opened her casement and gazed furtively at him; a door was set quietly
ajar, and an old grandam peeped out, shading her eyes 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 he was drawing; a man
lingered 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 with 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 Oriental-shaped pavilion
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-sill, 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 s