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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 went into the salon with the design of possessing myself of the day's Galignani before one of the little English old maids should have removed it to her virginal bower a privilege to which Madame Beaurepas frequently alluded as one of the attractions of the establishment. In the salon I found a new-comer, a tall gentleman in a high black hat, whom I immediately recognised as a compatriot.

When obliged, for reasons which he never specified, to bring his residence in Paris to a close, he had fallen back on Geneva; he had broken his fall at the Pension Beaurepas. Geneva was, after all, more like Paris, and at a Genevese boarding-house there was sure to be plenty of Americans with whom one could talk about the French metropolis.

This communication was made me by Madame Beaurepas a couple of days later. "And she has asked for a new tapis de lit, and she has requested me to provide Celestine with a pair of light shoes. I told her that, as a general thing, cooks are not shod with satin. That poor Celestine!" "Mrs. Church may be exacting," I said, "but she is a clever little woman."

You enjoyed, from the doorstep, a perpetual back-view of Celestine and of her large, loose, woollen ankles, as she craned, from the waist, over into the fountain and dabbled in her various utensils. This sounds as if life went on in a very make-shift fashion at the Pension Beaurepas as if the tone of the establishment were sordid. But such was not at all the case.

Besides, she liked to converse, and she apparently did me the honour to believe that of all the members of the Pension Beaurepas I had the most cultivated understanding. I found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the incident I have just narrated, and I approached her with a view of making my peace with her, if this should prove necessary. But Mrs.

For myself, I thought the Pension Beaurepas picturesque, and this, with me, at that time was a great word. I was young and ingenuous: I had just come from America. I wished to perfect myself in the French tongue, and I innocently believed that it flourished by Lake Leman. I used to go to lectures at the Academy, and come home with a violent appetite.

Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; then he transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. "Does she own a hotel over there?" he asked. "Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?" The next day Madame Beaurepas handed me, with her own elderly fingers, a missive, which proved to be a telegram.

I thought her a charming girl, and I felt very sorry for her; but, as I looked at her, the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous young creature, was looking out for a preserver.

"A lady who pays but five francs and a half shouldn't be too clever. C'est deplace. I don't like the type." "What type do you call Mrs. Church's?" "Mon Dieu," said Madame Beaurepas, "c'est une de ces mamans comme vous en avez, qui promenent leur fille." "She is trying to marry her daughter? I don't think she's of that sort." But Madame Beaurepas shrewdly held to her idea.