“Think we are like each other, General?” he said.
“N-no! Don’t know though. There is a likeness. You’re the finer built fellow of the two—taller and broader. Bless my soul, though, but the world is a small one. To think of Frank Orlebar’s son turning up in this way?”
“I hope I’m not interrupting, General Wyatt,” said a feminine and tentative voice. “Your niece was saying last night she was a perfect stranger here, and we thought she might like to go with us. We are going to the Cubly. It isn’t far, and we shall be back to lunch. We hope you will come too.”
The speaker was one of the two girls who had passed our friends in the Gorge du Chauderon. Phil had already made a little conversation with her the evening before. So now she turned and extended the invitation to him. He gladly accepted, while the General answered for Alma and himself that nothing would give them greater pleasure. And at that moment Alma reappeared and they started. The Miss Ottleys were pleasant well-bred girls of artistic tastes and plenty of conversation, and the walk promised to be a success.
We shall not, however, follow the party to the pine-crowned height sheering up from the vine-clad slopes immediately behind Montreux, nor share in the magnificent panorama which it affords. Sufficient to say that at the end of three hours they returned, in the highest spirits and on the best of terms with themselves and each other. In such free and easy fashion are acquaintanceships formed and often consolidated into friendships, amid the pleasant unconventionally of life in mountain hotels.
Chapter Five.
Fordham Philosophises.
“I say, Fordham. We’re getting up an expedition for to-morrow, and you’ve got to come,” cried Phil, bursting into his friend’s room just before dinner one evening.