Free The Portable Henry James by Henry James

“She’s always blowing at me.”
    “I imagine that is your fault, not hers,” said Winterbourne. The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. She was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. “How pretty they are!” thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.
    The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, which overlooked the lake. The little boy had now converted his alpenstock into a vaulting-pole, by the aid of which he was springing about in the gravel, and kicking it up not a little.
    “Randolph,” said the young lady, “what are you doing?”
    “I’m going up the Alps,” replied Randolph. “This is the way!” And he gave another little jump, scattering the pebbles about Winterbourne’s ears.
    “That’s the way they come down,” said Winterbourne.
    “He’s an American man!” cried Randolph, in his little hard voice.
    The young lady gave no heed to this announcement, but looked straight at her brother. “Well, I guess you had better be quiet,” she simply observed.
    It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He got up and stepped slowly towards the young girl, throwing away his cigarette. “This little boy and I have made acquaintance,” he said, with great civility. In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man was not at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely-occurring conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?—a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden. This pretty American girl, however, on hearing Winterbourne’s observation, simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet, at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone too far; but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat. While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned to the little boy again.
    “I should like to know where you got that pole,” she said.
    “I bought it!” responded Randolph.
    “You don’t mean to say you’re going to take it to Italy?”
    “Yes, I am going to take it to Italy!” the child declared.
    The young girl glanced over the front of her dress, and smoothed out a knot or two of ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again. “Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere,” she said, after a moment.
    “Are you going to Italy?” Winterbourne inquired, in a tone of great respect.
    The young lady glanced at him again.
    “Yes, sir,” she replied. And she said nothing more.
    “Are you—a—going over the Simplon?” Winterbourne pursued, a little embarrassed.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s some mountain. Randolph, what mountain are we going over?”
    “Going where?” the child demanded.
    “To Italy,” Winterbourne explained.
    “I don’t know,” said Randolph. “I don’t want to go to Italy. I want to go to America.”
    “Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!” rejoined the young man.
    “Can you get candy there?” Randolph loudly inquired.
    “I hope not,” said his sister. “I guess you have had enough candy, and mother thinks so too.”
    “I haven’t had any for ever so long—for a hundred weeks!” cried the boy, still jumping about.
    The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. There had not been the slightest alteration in her charming complexion; she was evidently neither offended nor fluttered. If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not