“Of course. But where I blame myself, Orlebar, is in not starting to come down sooner. And I fancy that is the line Miss Wyatt’s advocacy will take when she finds herself laid up with a bad cold after getting wet through up there.”
“It will take nothing of the kind, Mr Wentworth,” replied Alma, “for I am not going to be laid up with any cold at all. The walk down here almost dried my things, and this splendid fire has done the rest.”
Luncheon over pipes were produced, indeed the suggestion to that effect originated with the representatives of the softer sex there present, who preferred the, at other times much-decried, narcotic to the somewhat rancid odour emanating from sundry tubs used in cheese-making, which stood in the corner of the room. The rain beat hard upon the roof without, but nothing could have been more snug than the interior of the châlet in its semi-darkness, the firelight dancing upon the beams and quaint appointments of this rough but picturesque habitation.
“Now, Gedge, you’re by way of being a logician,” said Wentworth, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Can you tell us why a man can’t keep his head just as well over a drop of a thousand feet as over one of six?”
“Do you mean when the wind is blowing,” answered Gedge, suspecting a “catch.”
“No. I mean when there’s no apparent reason why he shouldn’t.”
“Because he gets confoundedly dizzy, I suppose.”
“But why should he? He has the same foothold. Take that arête up there. If the drop on each side were only six feet, no fellow would hesitate to run along it like a cat along a wall.”
“Not even Scott,” muttered Fordham, in a tone just audible to Alma, who at the picture thus conjured up of the unfortunate chaplain straddling the arête, and screaming to be taken off, could hardly restrain herself from breaking forth into a peal of laughter.
“It’s a clear case of the triumph of mind over matter, I take it,” answered Gedge. “What do you say, Scott?”