Alma’s wish was destined to be fulfilled, for the morning broke clear and cloudless. Starting in the highest spirits, a couple of hours’ easy walking brought the party to the foot of the steep and grassy slope which leads right up to the left arête of the Cape au Moine.
Though the morning was yet young it was uncomfortably warm. The mighty grass slopes of the Rochers des Verreaux, of which the Cape au Moine is the principal summit, stood forth with the distinctness of a steel engraving, so clear was the air. A suspicious clearness which, taken in conjunction with certain light cloud streamers flecking the sky, and the unwonted heat of that early hour, betokened to the practised eye an impending change of weather.
“Wet jackets,” remarked Wentworth, laconically, with a glance at these signs.
“Likely enough,” assented Fordham. “Hallo! what’s the row down there? They seem to be beginning already.”
These two were leading the way up the steep, slippery path, and were a little distance ahead of the rest. The above remarks referred to a sudden halt at the tail of the party, caused by one of the Miss Ottleys finding her heart fail her: for the path at that point skirts the very brink of a precipice.
“Only what I expected,” sneered Fordham. “Look at that, Wentworth. What sort of figure will all these women cut when we get them up on the arête yonder, if they can’t stand an easy, beaten track up a grass slope? We shall have them squalling and hystericking and fainting, and perhaps taking a header over. Eh?”
Wentworth merely shrugged his shoulders. “Who is that new specimen they’ve caught?” he said, as, the difficulty apparently overcome, the group behind was seen to resume its way.
“That?” said Fordham, glancing at the person indicated, a tallish, loosely-hung youth in knickerbockers, who seemed to be dividing his time between squiring the Miss Ottleys and arguing with Scott, the parson. “Don’t know who he is—and don’t want to. Confound the fellow!—began ‘Fordham-ing’ me after barely a quarter of an hour’s talk. Name’s Gedge, I believe. I suppose some of the women cut him into this trip.”
“Most probably,” replied Wentworth. “I haven’t exchanged any remarks with him myself. But he sits near me at table and talks nineteen to the dozen. It’s like having a full-sized cow-bell swinging in your ear just the time you are within his proximity.”
“They say everything has its use,” returned Fordham, meditatively. “I own to having discovered a use for friend Gedge—viz, to demonstrate that there can actually exist a more thoroughly self-sufficient and aggressive bore than even that fellow Scott.”