patriotic voice at
Isabel's elbow, and continued to find fault with the narrow irregular
streets, the huddling gables, the quaint roofs, through which and under
which they drove on to the hotel.

As they dashed into a broad open square, "Here is the French Cathedral;
there is the Upper Town Market; yonder are the Jesuit Barracks!" cried
Basil; and they had a passing glimpse of gray stone towers at one side
of the square, and a low, massive yellow building at the other, and,
between the two, long ranks of carts, and fruit and vegetable stands,
protected by canvas awnings and broad umbrellas. Then they dashed round
the corner of a street, and drew up before the hotel door. The
low ceilings, the thick walls, the clumsy wood-work, the wandering
corridors, gave the hotel all the desired character of age, and its
slovenly state bestowed an additional charm. In another place they might
have demanded neatness, but in Quebec they would almost have resented
it. By a chance they had the best room in the house, but they held it
only till certain people who had engaged it by telegraph should arrive
in the hourly expected steamer from Liverpool; and, moreover, the best
room at Hotel Musty was consolingly bad. The house was very full, and
the Ellisons (who had come on with them from Montreal) were bestowed in
less state only on like conditions.

The travellers all met at breakfast, which was admirably cooked, and
well served, with the attendance of those swarms of flies which infest
Quebec, and especially infested the old Musty House, in summer. It had,
of course, the attraction of broiled salmon, upon which the traveller
breakfasts every day as long as he remains in Lower Canada; and it
represented the abundance of wild berries in the Quebec market; and it
was otherwise a breakfast worthy of the appetites that honored it.

There were not many other Americans besides themselves at this hotel,
which seemed, indeed, to be kept open to oblige such travellers as had
been there before, and could not persuade themselves to try the new
Hotel St. Louis, whither the vastly greater number resorted. Most of the
faces our tourists saw were English or English-Canadian, and the young
people from Omaha; who had got here by some chance, were scarcely in
harmony with the place. They appeared to be a bridal party, but which of
the two sisters, in buff linen 'clad from head to foot' was the bride,
never became known. Both were equally free with the h