Chapter 3

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.