The Pension Beaurepas | Page 7

whereupon my neighbour threw back his head and stretched his legs a
while. "Well, sir, that's one view of the matter certainly. There's
something to be said for that. These things should be looked at all
round. That's the ground my wife took. That's the ground," he added in
a moment, "that a lady would naturally take;" and he gave a little dry
laugh.
"You think it's slightly illogical," I remarked.
"Well, sir, the ground I took was, that the worse a man's business is, the
more it requires looking after. I shouldn't want to go out to take a
walk--not even to go to church--if my house was on fire. My firm is not
doing the business it was; it's like a sick child, it requires nursing. What
I wanted the doctors to do was to fix me up, so that I could go on at
home. I'd have taken anything they'd have given me, and as many times
a day. I wanted to be right there; I had my reasons; I have them still.
But I came off all the same," said my friend, with a melancholy smile.
I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so simple
and communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire to fraternise,
and so exempt from any theory of human differences, that I quite forgot
his seniority, and found myself offering him paternal I advice. "Don't
think about all that," said I. "Simply enjoy yourself, amuse yourself, get
well. Travel about and see Europe. At the end of a year, by the time
you are ready to go home, things will have improved over there, and
you will be quite well and happy."
My friend laid his hand on my knee; he looked at me for some
moments, and I thought he was going to say, "You are very young!"
But he said presently, "YOU have got used to Europe any way!"

CHAPTER III.

At breakfast I encountered his ladies--his wife and daughter. They were
placed, however, at a distance from me, and it was not until the
pensionnaires had dispersed, and some of them, according to custom,
had come out into the garden, that he had an opportunity of making me
acquainted with them.
"Will you allow me to introduce you to my daughter?" he said, moved
apparently by a paternal inclination to provide this young lady with
social diversion. She was standing with her mother, in one of the paths,
looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at the homely
characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near,
hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence
of a pretext. "Mrs. Ruck--Miss Sophy Ruck," said my friend, leading
me up.
Mrs. Ruck was a large, plump, light-coloured person, with a smooth
fair face, a somnolent eye, and an elaborate coiffure. Miss Sophy was a
girl of one-and-twenty, very small and very pretty--what I suppose
would have been called a lively brunette. Both of these ladies were
attired in black silk dresses, very much trimmed; they had an air of the
highest elegance.
"Do you think highly of this pension?" inquired Mrs. Ruck, after a few
preliminaries.
"It's a little rough, but it seems to me comfortable," I answered.
"Does it take a high rank in Geneva?" Mrs. Ruck pursued.
"I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame," I said, smiling.
"I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house,"
said Mrs. Ruck.
"It's quite a different style," her daughter observed.
Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she was holding her elbows with a pair
of white little hands, and she was tapping the ground with a pretty little
foot.
"We hardly expected to come to a pension," said Mrs. Ruck. "But we
thought we would try; we had heard so much about Swiss pensions. I
was saying to Mr. Ruck that I wondered whether this was a favourable
specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake."

"We knew some people who had been here; they thought everything of
Madame Beaurepas," said Miss Sophy. "They said she was a real
friend."
"Mr. and Mrs. Parker--perhaps you have heard her speak of them," Mrs.
Ruck pursued.
"Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she is very fond
of Americans," I replied.
"Well, I must say I should think she would be, if she compares them
with some others."
"Mother is always comparing," observed Miss Ruck.
"Of course I am always comparing," rejoined the elder lady. "I never
had a chance till now; I never knew my privileges. Give me an
American!" And Mrs. Ruck indulged in a little laugh.
"Well, I must say there are some things I like over here," said Miss
Sophy,