However, they were still in St. Ouen. Since Cameron recovered himself out of his first flutter of shy extravagance and fear lest he should be thought “mean,” they had adopted an economical method of living when they staid long in any one place. Instead of living at the inn, they had taken rooms for themselves, a proceeding which Cameron flattered himself made them acquainted with the natives. On this principle they acted at St. Ouen. Their rooms were, two on the _premier étage_ for Cameron and his pupil, and one _au troisième_ for Cosmo. Cosmo’s was a little room in a corner, opening by a slim, ill-hung door upon the common stair-case--where rapid French voices, and French feet, not very light, went up the echoing flight above to the _mansarde_, and made jokes, which Cosmo did not understand, upon the young Englishman’s boots, standing in forlorn trustfulness outside his door, to be cleaned. Though Cosmo had lived in a close in the High Street, he was quite unused to the public traffic of this stair-case, and sometimes suddenly extinguished his candle with a boy’s painful modesty, at the sudden fancy of some one looking through his keyhole, or got up in terror with the idea that a band of late revelers might pour in and find him in bed, in spite of the slender defense of lock and key. The room itself was very small, and had scarcely a feature in it, save the little clock on the mantel-piece, which always struck in direct and independent opposition to the great bell of St. Ouen. The window was in a corner, overshadowed by the deep projection of the next house, which struck off from Cosmo’s wall in a right angle, and kept him obstinately out of the sunshine. Up in the corner, _au troisième_, with the next door neighbor’s blank gable edging all his light away from him, you would not have thought there was any thing very attractive in Cosmo’s window--yet it so happened that there was.