that are now well known through _An Inland Voyage_.

[Footnote 6: Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, cousin of
Robert Louis.]

One evening in the summer of 1876 the little party of guests at the
old inn sat at dinner about the long table in the centre of the
_salle-a-manger_ with the painted panels--handiwork of artists who had
stopped there at various times. It was a soft, sweet evening, and the
doors and windows were open; dusk drew near, and the lamps had just
been lit. Suddenly a young man approached from the outside. It was
Robert Louis Stevenson, who afterwards admitted that he had fallen in
love with his wife at first sight when he saw her in the lamplight
through the open window.

The autumn months passed swiftly by after this meeting in an ideal
existence of work and play. Mrs. Osbourne worked industriously at her
painting, and as she sat at her easel the acquaintance between her and
the young Scotchman rapidly flowered into a full and sympathetic
understanding. Everything about this American family, speaking as it
did of a land of new and strange customs and habits of thought,
appealed strongly to the ardent young man. He was a devoted admirer of
Walt Whitman, and thought he knew America. The daughter, Isobel,
described by one of the members of the colony[7] at Grez as "a
bewitching young girl of seventeen, with eyes so large as to be out of
drawing," amazed and delighted him by the piquancy of the contrast
between her and the young women he had previously known. In a girlish
description given in one of her letters home, written at the time, she
says:

[Footnote 7: Mr. Birge Harrison, in the _Century
Magazine_, December, 1916.]

"There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr. Stevenson, who looks at me as
though I were a natural curiosity. He never saw a real American girl
before, and he says I act and talk as though I came out of a book--I
mean an American book. He says that when he first met Bloomer[8] he
came up to him and said in his western way: 'These parts don't seem
much settled, hey?' He laughed for an hour at the idea of such an old
place not being much settled. He is such a nice looking ugly man, and
I would rather listen to him talk than read the most interesting book
I ever saw. We sit in the little green arbor after dinner drinking
coffee and talking till late at night. Mama is ever so much better and
is getting prettier every day."