"The mule isn't a bad scheme," I replied. "A dirty man is an independent animal, but a clean man, or one whose aim is to be clean, is more or less helpless. If he has a weakness for a sponge bag, a clean shirt or two, and evening things to change into after a long tramp, he must go hampered by a caravan of beasts."
"One beast would do," said Molly practically, "unless you count the muleteer, and that depends upon his disposition."
"I suppose muleteers have dispositions," I reflected aloud.
"Mules have. I've met them in America. But if you think my idea a bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne. There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man."
"'A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,'" I quoted dreamily. "Well, if you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse. But the difficulty is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two––"
"We're starting on the first," said Jack.
"What! No Cowes?"
"We wouldn't give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes."
And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme court beyond which there is no appeal. But man can do no more than propose; and woman—even American woman—cannot invariably "dispose" to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according to her whim.
