“Tenez, François,” went on Fordham, at the conclusion of the string of hearty inquiries with which the man had greeted him, for they were old acquaintances. “Vous allez nous emballer ces colis là sur la poste des Avants. Faut qu’ils nous réjoignent demain. Sans faute, mon brave, n’est ce pas?”
“Mais oui, Monsieur Fordhamme. Restez seulment tranquille. Vous pouvez y compter. Ah, vous allez monter par le Chauderon? Et bien—belle promenade, messieurs, et je vous remercie bien. Au revoir, messieurs!”
“That seems a good sort of chap,” began Philip Orlebar, dubiously, as they turned away. “But, hang it all, is it safe—don’t cher know?”
“What? The luggage? Rather. You may trust François to see a matter of this kind through. He is a good chap—most of these fellows are. They have a name among the British for being keen on pourboires—in a word, grasping. But show me the true-born Briton of the same class who in a race for gratuities couldn’t give them long odds, and beat them at that. It’s not to be done, I tell you. And now, Phil, we’ve plenty of time. First a cool lager at yonder café, then for our stroll up the Chauderon. And that said stroll on an afternoon like this is enough to make a man feel the pleasure of living, if anything is.”
Chapter Two.
Two Unlikes.
In his eulogy of the beauties of that fairy glen, the Gorge du Chauderon, Fordham was not exaggerating one whit; and while our two friends are pursuing their way along its winding path, under the cool shelter of a wealth of luxuriant greenery meeting overhead, and the roar and rush of the mountain stream leaping through a succession of black, rock-girt caldrons in their ears, we will take the opportunity of improving their acquaintance.
Philip Orlebar was a tall, fair, well-built young fellow of six and twenty, who had devoted the four years which had elapsed since he left college to sowing his wild oats; though, in justice to him, we must say that his crop was of the most moderate dimensions, in spite of his opportunities, for a sunny lightheadedness of manner, combined with a more than ordinarily prepossessing exterior, rendered him popular with everybody. This especially held good as regarded the other sex, and was bad both for it and for himself; in fact, his susceptibility in that line was a source of chronic misgiving to his friends, who never knew into what sort of entanglement it might plunge him.