She no sooner saw the long line of the Champs Elysees than she declared that there, and nowhere else, their rooms must be found.
"In the city, mamma," she said, "you could not breathe; and as for sleeping, you know what it was last night; and if we went further out, we should see nothing." Mrs.Costello was too pleased to see her daughter looking and speaking with something of her old liveliness to be inclined to oppose her fancies, only she said with a smile, "The Champs Elysees is expensive--remember that, Lucia--and I am going to make you keeper of the purse." "Very well, mamma, if it is too dear, of course there is no more to be said; but you don't object to our trying to get something here, do you ?" "Decidedly not.

Let us try by all means." They found apartments readily enough; but to find any suited to their means was, as Mrs.Costello anticipated, anything but an easy matter.
Lucia began, before the morning was over, to realize the fact that their L400 a year, which had been a perfectly comfortable income in Canada, would require very careful management to afford them at all a suitable living in Paris.
"It is only for a little while, though," she consoled herself.

"In summer we shall be able to go into the country and find something much cheaper." So they continued their search, and at last found just what they wanted; though to do so, they had to mount so many stairs that Lucia was afraid her mother would be exhausted.
"I do not think this will do, mamma," she said.

"I should never dare to ask you to go out, because when you came in tired, you would have all this fatigue." But the rooms were comfortable and airy, and the difficulties of living "au cinquieme" were considered on the whole to be surmountable; so the affair was settled.

Then came the minor considerations of a new housekeeping, and Margery was heartily regretted; though what the good woman would have been able to do where she could neither understand nor make herself understood, would not have been easy to say.