For the instant, the Lady questioned the stability of Barth’s own head.
“I really can’t see how that enters into the question at all. Even a gentleman is liable to be hit on the head, when he is playing lacrosse.”
“Lacrosse?”
“Yes. M. St. Jacques spent yesterday at Three Rivers with the lacrosse team from Laval.”
“Oh.” In his mortification at his own blunder, Barth’s oh was more dissyllabic even than usual. “I didn’t understand. I thought it was only the result of the banquet.”
The Lady looked at him with a steady, kindly smile.
“Mr. Barth,” she said; “I really think that idea was not quite worthy of you.”
And Barth shut his lips in plucky acceptance of the rebuke.
The haunt of tourists and the prey of every artist, be his tools brushes or mere words, Sous-le-Cap remains the crowning joy of ancient Quebec. The inconsequent bends in its course, the wood flooring of its roadway, the criss-cross network of galleries and verandas which join the two rows of houses and throw the street into a shadow still deeper than that cast by the overhanging cape, the wall of naked rock that juts out here and there between the houses piled helter-skelter against the base of the cliff: these details have endured for generations, and succeeding generations well may pray for their continued endurance. Quebec could far better afford to lose the whole ornate length of the Grand Allée than even one half the flying galleries and fluttering clothes-lines of little Sous-le-Cap.
“And yet,” St. Jacques said thoughtfully; “this hardly makes me proud of my countrymen.”