"Yes," said Mr. George. "You will see that it is so when we get up to them."
"Up to them?" said Rollo. "You mean down to them."
"No," said Mr. George. "The lakes are up quite high. Many of them are far up the sides of the mountains. The water, in leaving them, runs very rapidly, showing that there is a great descent in the land where they are flowing. Sometimes, in fact, these streams and rivers, after they leave the lakes, form great cataracts and cascades in getting down to the level country below.
"But now," continued Mr. George, "I must go to my writing, and you may see what you can do about the diligence."
So Mr. George went away towards his room, leaving Rollo to hang up the embossed map and then to determine how he should go to work to ascertain what he was to do.
Rollo found less difficulty than he had anticipated in procuring places in the diligence. He first inquired of the clerk, at the office of the hotel. The clerk offered to send a porter with him to show him the way to the diligence office; but Rollo said that he would prefer to go himself alone, if the clerk would tell him in what part of the town it was.
So the clerk gave Rollo the necessary direction, and Rollo went forth.
He found the diligence office very easily. In fact, he recognized the place at once when he came near it, by seeing several diligences standing before it along the street. He entered under an archway. On entering, he observed several doors leading to various offices, with inscriptions over each containing the names of the various towns to which the several diligences were going. At length he found Berne.
Rollo did not know precisely in what way the business at such an office was to be transacted; but he had learned from past experience that all that was necessary in order to make himself understood in such cases was, to speak the principal words that were involved in the meaning that he was intending to convey, without attempting to make full and complete sentences of them. In cases where he adopted this mode of speaking he was accustomed usually to begin by saying that he could not speak French very well.
Accordingly, in this instance he went to the place where the clerk was sitting and said,—