“Scotch? Why do you say Scotch? She's French, I tell you. Simpson says she can't speak a word of English.”
“But 'Peter Ross' is Scotch, isn't it? At least you can't make it French, however you twist it.”
“I'm not anxious to twist it. Don't you see, Arthur, she is evidently a Frenchwoman who married a man called Peter Ross; she is the veuve, widow, you know! of the lamented Scotchman. Now do you understand? But it is peculiar.”
“Very,” said Clarges. “When do we start?”
“There's a train to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but I thought we had better hire a trap, and a man to bring the trap back, and put all our things, tents and so on, into it, and go out comfortably so as to see the country.”
“All right!” said Clarges. “By Jove, what a splendid night it's going to be, stars out already, Bovey! Don't you hope it'll be like this tomorrow? Shall we camp out the first night and think of—of—Lady Violet by our camp fire, and Rex and Florence—how they'd like to see us, wouldn't they? And they can't, you know, they're three thousand miles away, trying to make out each other's faces in the November fog, eh! Bovey? I say, what shall we get to eat out there, at Lachatte, you know, the country always makes me desperately hungry.”
“Oh! we shall do well enough. Simpson says she is a capital old woman, lives entirely alone; will cook for us, wait on us, make us pancakes, I expect, and give us plenty of that stuff we had this morning at the hotel.”
“Sweet stuff?” asked Clarges. “I know. Syrup, maple syrup, that'll do.”
Simpson, the authority, thrice quoted by the elder of the two Englishmen, appeared at dinner with them that evening. He was a hard-working, stodgy son of person who had come out to the Canadian Civil Service fifteen years, ago, lived much by himself until he took a wife out of a Canadian village, a phlegmatic, stolid, unimaginative sort of a girl, who was nevertheless a good wife and an excellent housekeeper. Simpson sniffed at the dinner. It wasn't as good as his own. He felt ill at ease in the presence of the two men, whose airy talk and loud laughter struck him with a keen sense of its novelty. They joked about everything. Clarges particularly was in high feather. The wine, which came partly from the hotel and partly from the Hon. Bovyne's hamper, flowed often and freely, and Simpson, who was a very moderate fellow, wondered at the quantity his friends seemed to be able to imbibe. “Without showing any traces of it, either,” he said to himself. “All this vivacity is natural; I remember the type; in fact, I was something like it myself ten or twelve years ago.”
After dinner, Clarges rushed up stairs and down again with a small silk plush packet of photographs tied with ribbons. The men were in the smoking room.