Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“Or else she’s going to find some school. He ought to learn some more.
He’s only nine. He’s going to college.” And in this way Miss Miller
continued to converse upon the affairs of her family and upon other
topics. She sat there with her extremely pretty hands, ornamented with
very brilliant rings, folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now
resting upon those of Winterbourne, now wandering over the garden, the
people who passed by, and the beautiful view. She talked to Winterbourne
as if she had known him a long time. He found it very pleasant. It was
many years since he had heard a young girl talk so much. It might have
been said of this unknown young lady, who had come and sat down beside
him upon a bench, that she chattered. She was very quiet; she sat in a
charming, tranquil attitude; but her lips and her eyes were constantly
moving. She had a soft, slender, agreeable voice, and her tone was
decidedly sociable. She gave Winterbourne a history of her movements
and intentions and those of her mother and brother, in Europe, and
enumerated, in particular, the various hotels at which they had stopped.
“That English lady in the cars,” she said--“Miss Featherstone--asked me
if we didn’t all live in hotels in America. I told her I had never been
in so many hotels in my life as since I came to Europe. I have never
seen so many--it’s nothing but hotels.” But Miss Miller did not make
this remark with a querulous accent; she appeared to be in the best
humor with everything. She declared that the hotels were very good, when
once you got used to their ways, and that Europe was perfectly sweet.
She was not disappointed--not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had
heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends
that had been there ever so many times. And then she had had ever so
many dresses and things from Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress
she felt as if she were in Europe.
“It was a kind of a wishing cap,” said Winterbourne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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