is very
much what it is in Boston or New York, I imagine, except that the clerks
have a more honeyed sweetness of manners towards the ladies of our
nation, and are surprisingly generous constructionists of our revenue
laws. Isabel had profited by every word that she had heard in the
ladies' parlor, and she would not venture upon unsafe ground; but her
tender eyes looked her unutterable longing to believe in the charming
possibilities that the clerks suggested. She bemoaned herself before the
corded silks, which there was no time to have made up; the piece-velvets
and the linens smote her to the heart. But they also stimulated her
invention, and she bought and bought of the made-up wares in real or
fancied needs, till Basil represented that neither their purses nor
their trunks could stand any more. "O, don't be troubled about the
trunks, dearest," she cried, with that gayety which nothing but shopping
can kindle in a woman's heart; while he faltered on from counter to
counter, wondering at which he should finally swoon from fatigue. At
last, after she had declared repeatedly, "There, now, I am done," she
briskly led the way back to the hotel to pack up her purchases.

Basil parted with her at the door. He was a man of high principle
himself, and that scene in the smugglers' den, and his wife's
preparation for transgression, were revelations for which nothing
could have consoled him but a paragon umbrella for five dollars, and an
excellent business suit of Scotch goods for twenty.

When some hours later he sat with Isabel on the forward promenade of the
steamboat for Quebec, and summed up the profits of their shopping, they
were both in the kindliest mood towards the poor Canadians, who had
built the admirable city before them.

For miles the water front of Montreal is superbly faced with quays and
locks of solid stone masonry, and thus she is clean and beautiful to
the very feet. Stately piles of architecture, instead of the foul old
tumble-down warehouses that dishonor the waterside in most cities, rise
from the broad wharves; behind these spring the twin towers of Notre
Dame, and the steeples of the other churches above the city roofs.

"It's noble, yes, it's noble, after the best that Europe can show,"
said Isabel, with enthusiasm; "and what a pleasant day we've had here!
Doesn't even our quarrel show 'couleur de rose' in this light?"

"One side of it," answered Basil, dreamily, "but all the rest is black."

"W