our children had been the Bennetts, who lived in the adjoining street.
Mr. Bennett was a French-Canadian, with (as usual) a large family,
and was in comfortable circumstances, having a large retail grocery
on Notre Dame street. One evening, shortly after the arrival of
Mr. Hill and his wife, the former drew me aside and asked me if I
knew a family in Montreal named Bennett. I told him that I knew them
intimately, that they lived close at hand, and taking him to the
window (it was late in the spring) I showed him the children walking
opposite hand in hand with our own. He then intimated that he had
something to tell me, and, taking me aside into the adjoining room,
he told me something which astonished me as much as it will doubtless
astonish the reader of these pages.

It seems that Mr. Bennett's father was an American, who, in early
life, being settled in Montreal, became enamoured of a Canadian girl
named Beauchamp. Miss Beauchamp was young, pretty, and a Catholic.
The first two of these qualifications rather suited Mr. Bennett, and
the third did not in any way annoy him, he being (although a
Protestant) a liberal-minded man, and having the idea that thoughts
and opinions could not be forced, like sheep, to go in a particular
track, but that every one should be free to hold what convictions
his reason dictated, untrammelled by conventionality or creed of any
kind. Miss Beauchamp professed to be of a like mind, and agreed to
allow him to educate the boys (if any), while she would look after
the female issue of their marriage. With this ridiculous
understanding they got married, and for a time things went
pleasantly along, Mrs. Bennett attending L'Eglise St. Jacques
regularly, not only without opposition from her husband but
sometimes even accompanied by him. He did not believe in the
efficacy of the service to save his soul, but he had sufficient