A wide vista of rolling green fields stretched away to a range of foothills, overtopped in the far distance by snow mountains.
“By Jove!” he cried. “This is splendid. I have seen nothing like it out of Switzerland.”
“Talking of Switzerland,” said Miss Armstrong, seating herself opposite him, “have you ever been at Thun?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You stopped at the Thunerhof, I suppose?”
“I don’t remember what it was called, but it was the largest hotel in the place, I believe.”
“That would be the Thunerhof,” she said. “I went to a much more modest inn, the Falken, and the stream that runs in front of it reminded me of this, and made me quite lonesome for the ranch. Of course, you had the river opposite you at the Thunerhof, but there the river is half a dozen times as wide as the branch that runs past the Falken. I used to sit out on the terrace watching that stream, murmuring to its accompaniment ‘Home, sweet Home.’”
“You are by way of being a traveller, then?”
“Not a traveller, Mr. Stranleigh,” said the girl, laughing a little, “but a dabbler. I took dabs of travel, like my little visit to Thun. For more than a year I lived in Lausanne, studying my profession, and during that time I made brief excursions here and there.”