Velvet Ear-Pads by Edith Wharton

After his first twenty-four hours in the hills the Professor was ready / to swear that this final refuge was all he had hoped for. The situation / (though he had hardly looked out on it) seemed high yet sheltered; he / had a vague impression of sunshine in his room; and when he went down on / the first morning, after a deep and curative sleep, he at once found / himself in a congenial atmosphere. No effusive compatriots; no bowing / and scraping French; only four or five English people, as much in dread / of being spoken to as he was of their speaking to him. He consumed the / necessary number of square inches of proteins and carbohydrates and / withdrew to his room, as stubbornly ignored as if the other guests had / all thought he was trying to catch their eyes. An hour later he was lost / in his work.

If only life could ever remain on an even keel! But something had made / him suspect it from the first: _there was a baby in the house_. Of / course everybody denied it: the cook said the bowl of pap left by / accident on the stairs was for the cat; the landlady said she had been a / widow twenty years, and did he suppose-? And the _bonne_ denied that / there was a smell of paregoric on the landing, and said that was the way / the scent of mimosa sometimes affected people.