“He thought that you climbed with your legs, and not with your head.”
And now, after this long digression, necessary to explain how a middle-aged couple of slight pedestrian ability, and loaded with a heavy knapsack and basket, should have started out on a rough walk and climb, fourteen miles in all, we will return to ourselves, standing on the little bluff and gazing out upon the sunset view. When the sky began to fade a little we turned from it and prepared to go back to the town.
“Where is the basket?” I said.
“I left it right here,” answered my wife. “I unscrewed the machine and it lay perfectly flat.”
“Did you afterward take out the bottles?” I asked, seeing them lying on the grass.
“Yes, I believe I did. I had to take out yours in order to get at mine.”
“Then,” said I, after looking all about the grassy patch on which we stood, “I am afraid you did not entirely unscrew the instrument, and that when the weight of the bottles was removed the basket gently rose into the air.”
“It may be so,” she said, lugubriously. “The basket was behind me as I drank my wine.”
“I believe that is just what has happened,” I said. “Look up there! I vow that is our basket!”
I pulled out my field-glass and directed it at a little speck high above our heads. It was the basket floating high in the air. I gave the glass to my wife to look, but she did not want to use it.