“Hold your tongue,” she cried, “or you will drive me mad! Will nothing solemnise you—not even this hideous situation?”
“Oh, hideous!” objected Léon. “Hideous is not the word. Why, where would you be? ‘Dites, la jeune belle, où voulez-vous aller?’” he carolled. “Well, now,” he went on, opening the guitar-case, “there’s another idea for you—sing. Sing ‘Dites, la jeune belle!’ It will compose your spirits, Elvira, I am sure.”
And without waiting an answer he began to strum the symphony. The first chords awoke a young man who was lying asleep upon a neighbouring bench.
“Hullo!” cried the young man, “who are you?”
“Under which king, Bezonian?” declaimed the artist. “Speak or die!”
Or if it was not exactly that, it was something to much the same purpose from a French tragedy.
The young man drew near in the twilight. He was a tall, powerful, gentlemanly fellow, with a somewhat puffy face, dressed in a grey tweed suit, with a deer-stalker hat of the same material; and as he now came forward he carried a knapsack slung upon one arm.
“Are you camping out here too?” he asked, with a strong English accent. “I’m not sorry for company.”
Léon explained their misadventure; and the other told them that he was a Cambridge undergraduate on a walking tour, that he had run short of money, could no longer pay for his night’s lodging, had already been camping out for two nights, and feared he should require to continue the same manœuvre for at least two nights more.
“Luckily, it’s jolly weather,” he concluded.