“You may depend upon it he knows his business,” responded Wentworth. “But you do as he tells you and keep your hoof up, old man, or you may be pinned up in this lively chamber for a month.”
“I suppose you’ve been doing some big climbs?” said Philip, wistfully.
“Not yet. Been taking it easy. I started to do the Deut Blanche the day after I came here, but the weather worked up bad and we had to turn back. I say, Orlebar, you’d better look sharp and get right. There was a deuced pretty girl at table d’hôte. Her mother fainted in the passage directly after, and there was a devil of an uproar. I believe Fordham made faces at her and scared her into a fit. He was the only person there at the time—”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Philip. “Scowled at her ‘like a devil,’ as Peter would say. Eh, Fordham?”
But the latter, who was lighting a cigar, made no reply.
“By the way, Orlebar,” said Wentworth. “Seen anything more of that girl you were so gone on at Les Avants, Miss—Miss—”
The speaker broke off with a start that was comical, for Fordham, while endeavouring to convey a mild and warning kick unseen of the third party—a thing which nobody ever succeeded in doing yet, and in all probability never will—had brought his hoof in contact with a corn, imparting to poor Wentworth the sensation as of a red-hot needle suddenly driven into his toe. In a measure it served him right, for his blundering had touched poor Philip on a very sore place. Lying there all the morning—with the prospect of a good many mornings and afternoons too, destined to be similarly spent—the poor fellow had found ample time for thought.
“What a chap you are, Wentworth!” he retorted, irritably. “Here is a poor devil tied by the leg in an infernal room for Heaven knows how long, and you can find nothing better to liven him up with than a lot of feeble and second-hand chaff. Let’s have something a little more amusing. Tell us some mountaineering lies for instance.”
And Wentworth spent the best part of the afternoon telling him some.