"
Miss Garland looked for a moment at the ground; and then, with sudden
earnestness, "I beg you to come with us!" she said.
It need hardly be added that after this Rowland went with them.
CHAPTER XII. The Princess Casamassima
Rowland had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn, accessible
with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once spent a blissful
ten days. He had at that time been trudging, knapsack on back, over half
Switzerland, and not being, on his legs, a particularly light weight,
it was no shame to him to confess that he was mortally tired. The inn
of which I speak presented striking analogies with a cow-stable; but
in spite of this circumstance, it was crowded with hungry tourists.
It stood in a high, shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine meadows
sloping down to it from the base of certain rugged rocks whose outlines
were grotesque against the evening sky. Rowland had seen grander places
in Switzerland that pleased him less, and whenever afterwards he wished
to think of Alpine opportunities at their best, he recalled this grassy
concave among the mountain-tops, and the August days he spent there,
resting deliciously, at his length, in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder,
with the light cool air stirring about his temples, the wafted odors of
the pines in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells in his ears,
the vast progression of the mountain shadows before his eyes, and a
volume of Wordsworth in his pocket.
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