“I was going to do that anyhow.”
He departed; and presently the fateful eggs arrived and remained on the table one minute, two minutes. I beckoned Dorothea to my side:
“Will you go and fetch my friend? His eggs are getting cold. You may find him in the orchard; he is fond of orchards. Run!” and I gave her a gentle push. Whether she perceived the strategy or not, she was off like an arrow.
What happened under those apple-trees I shall learn in due course of time, by the simple expedient of asking no questions. Up to this moment I only know that Mr. R. returned alone, and sat down to his eggs with a not unsuccessful air of insouciance. The baby, I suspect, was in the kitchen, cooling down that wonderful complexion, and her mother would doubtless have gone to look for her there, had I not meanwhile entangled her into a complicated discussion anent the manufacture of Kirschwasser, a specialty of this village. Thirty thousand kronen a liter, she vowed, was what they were asking for it. Who was going to pay thirty thousand kronen? Well, it struck me that one shilling and sixpence for a bottle and a quarter of the finest Kirschwasser on earth was a fairly reasonable price.
So far good. I came well out of that little episode....
Endless are the other things we have left undone. Why, we have not even been up the Walserthal, nor so much as an inch in the direction of that fairest of all our alps, the Gamperdona behind Nenzing, where twelve hundred cows are munching and mooing day and night. (The Montavon valley may take care of itself; it is full of tourists). And of hills, real hills, nothing has been climbed save the poor old Scesaplana. I had intended to take Mr. R. on some mountain which has more flavor to it, even though it be not so high—the Drei Schwestern, for instance, above Frastanz, about which my father also wrote a paper; or the Widderstein, or the Kanisfluh. There, on the Kanisfluh, he might have satisfied his craving for edelweiss.
No matter. The mountains can wait for another season.
One is sorry, none the less, not to have witnessed the boisterous procession of cattle returning from their summer pastures, the woodlands changing to gold, and that first September hoar-frost which melts at noon, when drops of moisture glisten on every spider-web; sorry not to have seen the gay fungus-people starting out of the dank earth. And here are plums on their trees, almost ripe. Such a crop there never was. Another week, and they would have been ready to be converted into the first of those ambrosial tarts which are smothered, at the last moment, under a deluge of whipped cream and then devoured so dutifully that, on rising from table, you cannot but feel a kind of bewildered reverence for the capacity of the human stomach. Only another week: how provoking!
No matter. We have had a breath of fresh air together.
THE END