“Do you think highly of this pension?” asked Mrs. Ruck after a few preliminaries.
“It’s a little rough,” I made answer, “but it seems to me comfortable.”
“Does it take a high rank in Geneva?”
“I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame.”
“I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house,” Mrs. Ruck pursued.
“It’s quite in a different style,” her daughter observed. Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she held her elbows with a pair of small white hands and tapped the ground with a pretty little foot.
“We hardly expected to come to a pension,” said Mrs. Ruck, who looked considerably over my head and seemed to confide the truth in question, as with an odd austerity or chastity, a marked remoteness, to the general air. “But we thought we’d try; we had heard so much about Swiss pensions. I was saying to Mr. Ruck that I wondered if this is a favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake.”
“Well, we know some people who have been here; they think everything of Madame Beaurepas,” said Miss Sophy. “They say she’s a real friend.”
Mrs. Ruck, at this, drew down a little. “Mr. and Mrs. Parker—perhaps you’ve heard her speak of them.”
“Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she’s very fond of Americans,” I replied.