"It is beautiful," murmured Bee, dreamily, but she murmured dreamily not so much because of the beauty of the scene as because eating in the open air that early in the morning always makes her sleepy.
"'Tis not that," I responded. "'Tis because, while some few modest triumphs have come my way, I think I never achieved one which gave me such acute physical satisfaction as I underwent last night at my sister Bee's success as a première danseuse. Shall I ever forget it? Shall danger, or sickness, or poverty, or disaster ever blot from my mind that scene? Jimmie, never again can she scorn us for our sawdust-ring proclivities, for do you know, I shouldn't be surprised to see her end her days on the trapeze!"
But if I fondly hoped to make Bee waver in her thorough approval of her own acts, this cheerful exchange of badinage, where the exchange was all on my part, undeceived me, for Bee simply looked at me without replying, so Jimmie uncoiled himself and handed the map to Bee.
"Jimmie has talked nothing but salt mines for a fortnight," said Bee, finally, "yet by coming here we have left Salzburg behind us."
"Let's go back then," he said. "It isn't far, and it's all through a beautiful country."
For a wonder, we all agreed to this plan without the usual discussion of individual tastes which usually follows the most tentative suggestion on the part of any one of us who has the temerity to leap into the arena to be worried.
The whole Rhiner family, including the chambermaid, the shipmaster, and Bee's friend the cowherd, were on the little pier, under some pretext or other, to see us off, and not only feeling but knowing that we left real friends behind us, we started on our way to Jenbach, down the same little cog-wheel road up which we had climbed, and, as Jimmie said: "literally getting back to earth again," for the descent was like being dropped from the clouds.
The journey from Jenbach to Salzburg was indeed marvellously beautiful, but some little time before we arrived Jimmie emerged from his guide-book to say, somewhat timidly:
"Are you tired of lakes?"
"Tired of lakes? How could we be when we've only seen one this week?"