“Oh, grandma, for heaven’s sake!” said Ethel.
“And yet it’s not bad here,” continued grandma. “The people are so gay! the soldiers’ trousers are too short, and the gardener has wooden shoes; but they look gay; why, I wonder?”
At the beginning they did not venture into the Latin Quarter without some emotion. On the strength of what they had read and seen at the theater they expected moss-grown houses with flowers in the windows, and streets resounding with song, where students and grisettes danced the cancan. Grandma soon got over her mistake, after a narrow escape from being crushed by a tram-car in a thoroughfare which was for all the world like State Street.
“It’s not so bad as I thought,” she said enthusiastically. “It reminds me of Chicago.”
In their visits they went up and down an endless number of stairways. Often grandma stayed below, leaving Ethel to visit the apartments.
“Houses without elevators!” said grandma; “Ethel must be crazy!”
She waited for Ethel in deep courtyards or sat in concierges’ lodges, near stoves where cabbage-soup was bubbling. More than once, while she was alone in the lodge, some one would come and ask information from her, taking her for the concierge. Once a butcher’s boy, with his basket of meat on his arm, opened the door.
“B’jour, m’am; what will M’am Gibbon have to-day—culotte de veau?”
But he ran away in a fright at the sight of Mrs. Rowrer staring at him without answering. Such incidents helped grandma to pass the time.
It was while crossing the Rue Servandoni that they at last found their apartment. An atmosphere of peace seemed to issue forth from the old façade with its immense windows. By the open door they could see a wide stone staircase with a railing of wrought iron. A great tree shaded the silent courtyard. The placard was out: “Apartment to Let.” So they entered. The apartment was at once magnificent and simple, all in white, with lines of gold, and carved doors surmounted by painted panels.