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Page 12
"Are you sure it is your mother? Can you distinguish her in this
thick dusk?" Winterbourne asked.
"Well!" cried Miss Daisy Miller with a laugh; "I guess I know my own mother.
And when she has got on my shawl, too! She is always wearing my things."
The lady in question, ceasing to advance, hovered vaguely about the spot
at which she had checked her steps.
"I am afraid your mother doesn't see you," said Winterbourne.
"Or perhaps," he added, thinking, with Miss Miller, the joke
permissible--"perhaps she feels guilty about your shawl."
"Oh, it's a fearful old thing!" the young girl replied serenely.
"I told her she could wear it. She won't come here because she sees you."
"Ah, then," said Winterbourne, "I had better leave you."
"Oh, no; come on!" urged Miss Daisy Miller.
"I'm afraid your mother doesn't approve of my walking with you."
Miss Miller gave him a serious glance. "It isn't for me;
it's for you--that is, it's for HER. Well, I don't know who
it's for! But mother doesn't like any of my gentlemen friends.
She's right down timid. She always makes a fuss if I introduce
a gentleman. But I DO introduce them--almost always.
If I didn't introduce my gentlemen friends to Mother,"
the young girl added in her little soft, flat monotone,
"I shouldn't think I was natural."
"To introduce me," said Winterbourne, "you must know my name."
And he proceeded to pronounce it.
"Oh, dear, I can't say all that!" said his companion with a laugh.
But by this time they had come up to Mrs. Miller, who, as they
drew near, walked to the parapet of the garden and leaned upon it,
looking intently at the lake and turning her back to them.
"Mother!" said the young girl in a tone of decision.
Upon this the elder lady turned round. "Mr. Winterbourne," said Miss
Daisy Miller, introducing the young man very frankly and prettily.
"Common," she was, as Mrs. Costello had pronounced her;
yet it was a wonder to Winterbourne that, with her commonness,
she had a singularly delicate grace.
Her mother was a small, spare, light person, with a
wandering eye, a very exiguous nose, and a large forehead,
decorated with a certain amount of thin, much frizzled hair.
Like her daughter, Mrs. Miller was dressed with extreme elegance;
she had enormous diamonds in her ears. So far as Winterbourne
could observe, she gave him no greeting--she certainly was not
looking at him. Daisy was near her, pulling her shawl straight.
"What are you doing, poking round here?" this young lady inquired,
but by no means with that harshness of accent which her choice
of words may imply.
"I don't know," said her mother, turning toward the lake again.
"I shouldn't think you'd want that shawl!" Daisy exclaimed.
"Well I do!" her mother answered with a little laugh.
"Did you get Randolph to go to bed?" asked the young girl.
"No; I couldn't induce him," said Mrs. Miller very gently.
"He wants to talk to the waiter. He likes to talk to that waiter."
"I was telling Mr. Winterbourne," the young girl went on;
and to the young man's ear her tone might have indicated
that she had been uttering his name all her life.
"Oh, yes!" said Winterbourne; "I have the pleasure of knowing your son."
Randolph's mamma was silent; she turned her attention to the lake.
But at last she spoke. "Well, I don't see how he lives!"
"Anyhow, it isn't so bad as it was at Dover," said Daisy Miller.
"And what occurred at Dover?" Winterbourne asked.
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