Thorpe had seen many mountains in many lands. They did not interest him very much. He thought, however, that he could see now why people who had no mountains of their own should get excited about Switzerland. He understood a number of these sentimental things now, for that matter, which had been Greek to him three months before. Unreceptive as his philistinism may have seemed to these delightful youngsters, it was apparent enough to him that they had taught him a great deal. If he could not hope to share their ever-bubbling raptures and enthusiasms, at least he had come to comprehend them after a fashion, and even to discern sometimes what it was that stirred them.
He watched his nephew now--having first assured himself by a comprehensive downward glance that no other windows of the hotel-front were open. The young man seemed tremendously moved, far too much so to talk. Thorpe ventured once some remarks about the Mexican mountains, which were ever so much bigger, as he remembered them, but Alfred paid no heed. He continued to gaze across the lake, watching in rapt silence one facet after another catch the light, and stand out from the murky gloom, radiantly white, till at last the whole horizon was a mass of shining minarets and domes, and the sun fell full on his face. Then, with a long-drawn sigh, he turned, re-entered the room, and threw himself into a chair.
“It's too good!” he declared, with a half-groan. “I didn't know it would be like that.”
“Why nothing's too good for us, man,” his uncle told him.
“THAT is,” said the boy, simply, and Thorpe, after staring for a moment, smiled and rang the bell for breakfast.
When Julia made her appearance, a few minutes later, the table was already laid, and the waiter was coming in with the coffee.
“I thought we'd hurry up breakfast,” her uncle explained, after she had kissed him and thanked him for the sunrise he had so successfully predicted--“because I knew you'd both be crazy to get out.”
He had not over-estimated their eagerness, which was so great, indeed, that they failed to note the excessive tranquility of his own demeanour. He ate with such unusual deliberation, on this exciting morning, that they found themselves at the end of their repast when, apparently, he had but made a beginning.