At the hôtel in Locarno where they went for baths and breakfast—he had planned originally to show her the beautiful walk from there along the side of the lake to Cannobio, but now beyond baths and breakfast he had no plan—a person in shirt sleeves and a green apron who inadequately represented the hall-porter, for it was not yet seven and the hall-porter was still in bed, unintelligently and unfortunately spoke to Ingeborg of Ingram in his hearing as Monsieur votre père.
This strangely annoyed Ingram. "It's your short skirt," he said, with suppressed sulphur. "You positively must get some clothes. Dressed like that you suggest perambulators."
"But this is my best dress," she protested. "It's quite new. I mean, I've never had it on before since it was made."
And with the easy tactlessness of one who has not yet learned to be afraid, she looked at him and laughed.
"Why," she said, "this morning I'm perambulators and only last night, quite late last night, I was the peace of God."
To this, however, he did not trust himself to reply, but vanished with a kind of pounce into his bathroom.
He came to breakfast clean, but in a mood that could bear nothing, least of all good temper. Ingeborg was by nature good tempered. She sat there pleased and refreshed—after all, he remembered resentfully, she had had five hours' sleep in the train while he had not had a wink—gaily making the best of things. She pointed out the strength of the coffee and the crispness of the rolls. She asked him if he did not think it a nice hôtel. She did not agree when he alluded to the waiter as blighted. She predicted a break in the weather at eleven, and said that it had always come true what her old nurse used to tell her, that rain at seven meant fine at eleven.
He hated her old nurse.
Until he had had some sleep, a long steady sleep, he would, he knew, be nothing but jarred nerves. When then after breakfast she inquired, with a cheerful air of being ready for anything, what they were going to do next, he briefly announced that he was going to sleep.
"Oh? Shall I have to go, too?" she asked, her face falling.