"About one thousand three hundred dollars. I can't stop to calculate it for you in pounds or francs. I'm too excited. Oh, how wet you are, poor Man! And all for me! But wasn't it splendid! And I just know that baby'll be better to-morrow. You see if she isn't."
She was. The news was brought to us early in the morning by a poor man half out of his wits with joy and gratitude.
The Little Game of Flirtation
"To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you
leave them behind you."
—Walt Whitman.
The Contessa had to be pacified, but she adored romance, and she was pleased to say that the story of the bag, lost and found, which I—not the Boy—told her, came under that category. She was in the best of tempers for a day of travelling, and saw us off, before her friends were dressed and ready to begin their drive to Chamounix.
"They are taking as long as they can, on purpose," she whispered to me, with the air of a naughty child planning mischief behind the backs of its elders. "Anything to keep me to themselves and away from you! But you are walking, and the way is uphill for a very long time, so the hotel people say. We shall catch you up, and just to spite the Di Nivolis, if nothing more, I shall beg first one of you, then the other, to let me give you a lift. Neither of you must refuse, or I shall cry, and no man has ever made me cry yet."
"I'm sure no man ever will," I answered promptly.
"And no boy?" she asked, with a long-lashed glance at my companion, who had given no answer save a smile.