A Chance Acquaintance by William Dean Howells

They had not planned to go anywhere that day; but after church they found themselves with the loveliest afternoon of their stay at Quebec to be passed somehow, and it was a pity to pass it indoors, the colonel said at their early dinner. They canvassed the attractions of the different drives out of town, and they decided upon that to Lorette. The Ellisons had already been there, but Mr. Arbuton had not, and it was from a dim motive of politeness towards him that Mrs. Ellison chose the excursion; though this did not prevent her from wondering aloud afterward, from time to time, why she had chosen it. He was restless and absent, and answered at random when points of the debate were referred to him, but he eagerly assented to the conclusion, and was in haste to set out.

The road to Lorette is through St. John's Gate, down into the outlying meadows and rye-fields, where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles, it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the citadel. It is a lonelier road than that to Montmorenci, and the scattering cottages upon it have not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, of stone-built Beauport. But they are charming, nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of the year before last, now and then appeared to our acquaintance; near one ancient cottage an old man, in the true habitant's red woollen cap with a long fall, leaned over the bars of his gate and smoked a short pipe.