“Well, it’s pretty steamy just here. Let’s call a halt under that big rock and poke a smipe. What d’you say?”
“Just as you like,” was the tranquil reply. They had reached that part of the gorge where two great perpendicular cliffs, their black surface thickly grown with ferns and trailers, form a huge natural portal, narrowing the way to the road itself and the brawling, leaping mountain torrent which skirts it. A delightfully cool resting-place—almost too cool—for the whirl of the spray reached them even there. Soon the blue curl from a brace of pipes mingled fragrantly with the scent of pine resin and damp fern.
Hardly were they seated than a sound of approaching voices was heard, and two girls appeared in sight round the bend in the path. One carried a basket filled with wild flowers, eke a large handful of the same; the other a bag of sketching materials. Both shot a rapid glance at the two smokers as they walked swiftly by.
“Rather good-looking, eh?” said Phil, as soon as they were out of sight. “English, of course?”
“No mistake. The whole lake-side from Lausanne eastwards simply grows Britishers. I predict we shall soon be for annexing it.”
“They’re bound in the same direction as ourselves,” went on Philip. “At least there’s no other place than Les Avants up this way, is there?”
The other’s mouth drew down at the corners in a faint sneer.
“Don’t be alarmed, Phil. They’re bound there all right—in fact they’re quartered there. They’ve just been down into the gorge; one to pick a lot of daisies and buttercups, over which she and a pet parson will enjoy a not altogether scientific tête-à-tête this evening—the other to execute a hideous libel on the existing scenery.”
“Now how the deuce do you know all this, Fordham?”
“Oh, I know all their little ways. I know something more, viz, that in forty-eight hours’ time you will be the chosen and privileged bearer of the truss of hay and the daubing bag—I mean the wild flowers and the sketching gear.”