He lowered his pitch
and answered, simply, "Because I wanted to do something for you."
"Suppose you had fallen," said Miss Garland.
"I believed I would not fall. And you believed it, I think."
"I believed nothing. I simply trusted you, as you asked me."
"Quod erat demonstrandum!" cried Rowland. "I think you know Latin."
When our four friends were established in what I have called their
grassy valley, there was a good deal of scrambling over slopes both
grassy and stony, a good deal of flower-plucking on narrow ledges, a
great many long walks, and, thanks to the lucid mountain air, not a
little exhilaration. Mrs. Hudson was obliged to intermit her suspicions
of the deleterious atmosphere of the old world, and to acknowledge the
edifying purity of the breezes of Engelthal. She was certainly more
placid than she had been in Italy; having always lived in the country,
she had missed in Rome and Florence that social solitude mitigated by
bushes and rocks which is so dear to the true New England temperament.
The little unpainted inn at Engelthal, with its plank partitions, its
milk-pans standing in the sun, its "help," in the form of angular young
women of the country-side, reminded her of places of summer sojourn
in her native land; and the beautiful historic chambers of the Villa
Pandolfini passed from her memory without a regret, and without having
in the least modified her ideal of domiciliary grace.
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