Jean Webster

Jerry Junior Jean Webster

Even with the beauties of Valedolmo, Italy surrounding him, Jermyn Hilliard Jr. is bored. He has nothing to do, no one to talk to but his hotel's head waiter, and nothing to read in English but a four-day-old newspaper. It will be days before the rest of his family joins him to continue their grand tour. He has seen all there is to see of Valedolmo. The only other Americans nearby are the father and daughter Wilders, and Constance Wilder has no use for Jerry at all. When Jerry learns that his countrymen are planning a climbing trip into the mountains, he decides to use Constance's fondness for Italians in authentic peasant dress both to relieve his boredom and catch her attention at last. The courtyard of the Hotel du Lac, furnished with half a dozen tables and chairs, a red and green parrot chained to a perch, and a shady little arbor covered with vines, is a pleasant enough place for morning coffee, but decidedly too sunny for afternoon tea. It was close upon four of a July day, when Gustavo, his inseparable napkin floating from his arm, emerged from the cool dark doorway of the house and scanned the burning vista of tables and chairs.