“I believe we are all here now,” remarked Fordham, ironically, sending a significant glance round the little group assembled on the débarcadère at Montreux.
“Better count and make sure,” responded Scott, the parson, with an asinine guffaw.
The first remark was evoked by the recollection that, even as they now stood watching the swift, shearing approach of the Mont Blanc sweeping up to the jetty, so had they arrived on that spot some three hours earlier, just in time to gaze after the steamer preceding, as she disappeared round the promontory previous to standing in for Territet. And for having missed their boat, and lost three hours of the day, they had to thank the Miss Ottleys, or rather the maternal parent of those young ladies, who, with the usual feminine lack of a sense of the eternal fitness of things, had instructed them to combine business with pleasure, and execute sundry commissions for her in Montreux, on the way to the steamer. Wherefore they—and the parson—had arrived at the pier in time to find the residue of the party gazing discontentedly after the receding boat.
But no one would fall in with Fordham’s suggestion to return. If they had lost three hours’ the days were long and the evenings moonlight. All agreed that they would wait for the next boat.
“En route!” shouted the skipper, with his lips to the speaking-tube. The gangway was withdrawn with a bang—the great paddle-wheels churned the blue water into creamy foam, and the fine vessel, panting and snorting like a courser impatient of the momentary restraint, plunged forward as she swung round obedient to the hand of the helmsman.
“What a disagreeable chap that man Fordham is,” remarked Scott to the Miss Ottleys, with whom he had withdrawn to a comfortable corner of the deck.
“He can be about as rude as any man I ever knew,” returned the younger of the two girls, who had a hazy sort of idea that any man ought to think it rather an honour than otherwise to have all his arrangements thrown out by her dilatoriness.
“I don’t think we can blame him this time,” objected the elder. “It must have been very provoking to the dear old General as well.”
“Ah, he’s different,” said Scott. “But that fellow Fordham just thinks the world was made to suit his convenience. By the bye, who asked him to come to-day?”
“Well, you see, it was Mr Orlebar who suggested the trip, and it isn’t likely he’d leave his friend out.”