Nobody Part 127

"Not quite," said Lois demurely. "We generally send that on ahead, except what will go in small satchels slung over the shoulder."

"And take what you can find at the little inns?"

"O yes; and fare very well."

"I like to be comfortable!" sighed the other lady. "Try that wine, and see how much better it is."

"Thank you, no; I prefer the coffee."

"No use to ask _her_ to take wine," growled Tom. "I know she won't. She never would. She has principles. Offer it to Mr. Dillwyn."

"You do me the honour to suppose me without principles," said Philip dryly.

"I don't suppose you hold _her_ principles," said Tom, indicating Lois rather awkwardly by the p.r.o.noun rather than in any more definite way.

"You never used."

"Quite true; I never used. But I do it now."

"Do you mean that you have given up drinking wine?"

"I have given it up?" said Philip, smiling at Tom's air, which was almost of consternation.

"Because she don't like it?"

"I hope I would give up a greater thing than that, if she did not like it," said Philip gravely. "This seems to me not a great thing. But the reason you suppose is not my reason."

"If the reason isn't a secret, I wish you'd mention it; Mrs. Caruthers will be asking me in private, by and by; and I do not like her to ask me questions I cannot answer."

"My reason is,--I think it does more harm than good."

"Wine?"

"Wine, and its congeners."

"Take a cup of coffee, Mr. Caruthers," said Lois; "and confess it will do instead of the other thing."

Tom accepted the coffee; I don't think he could have rejected anything she held out to him; but he remarked grumly to Philip, as he took it,--

"It is easy to see where you got your principles!"

"Less easy than you think," Philip answered. "I got them from no living man or woman, though I grant you, Lois showed me the way to them. I got them from the Bible, old friend."

Tom glared at the speaker.

"Have you given up your cigars too?"

Mr. Dillwyn laughed out, and Lois said somewhat exultantly,

"Yes, Mr. Caruthers."

"I am sure I wish you would too!" said Tom's wife deploringly to her husband. "I think if anything's horrid, it's the after smell of tobacco."

"But the _first_ taste of it is all the comfort a fellow gets in this world," said Tom.

"No fellow ought to say that," his friend returned.

"The Bible!" Tom repeated, as if it were a hard pill to swallow.

"Philip Dillwyn quoting _that_ old authority!"

"Perhaps I ought to go a little further, and say, Tom, that my quoting it is not a matter of form. I have taken service in the Christian army, since I saw you the last time. Now tell me how you and Mrs. Caruthers come to be at the top of this pa.s.s in a snow-storm on the sixteenth of June?"

"Fate!" said Tom.

"We did not expect to have a snow-storm, Mr. Dillwyn," Mrs. Caruthers added.

"But you might," said Philip. "There have been snow-storms everywhere in Switzerland this year."

"Well," said Tom, "we did not come for pleasure, anyhow. Never should dream of it, until a month later. But Mrs. Caruthers got word that a special friend of hers would be at Zermatt by a certain day, and begged to meet her; and stay was uncertain; and so we took what was said to be the shortest way from where the letter found us. And here we are."

"How is the coffee, Mr. Caruthers?" Lois asked pleasantly. Tom looked into the depths of his coffee cup, as if it were an abstraction, and then answered, that it was the best coffee he had ever had in Switzerland; and upon that he turned determinately to Mr. Dillwyn and began to talk of other things, unconnected with Switzerland or the present time. Lois was fain to entertain Tom's wife. The two women had little in common; nevertheless Mrs. Caruthers gradually warmed under the influence that shone upon her; thawed out, and began even to enjoy herself. Tom saw it all, without once turning his face that way; and he was fool enough to fancy that he was the only one. But Philip saw it too, as it were without looking; and delighted himself all the while in the gracious sweetness, and the tender tact, and the simple dignity of unconsciousness, with which Lois attended to everybody, ministered to everybody, and finally smoothed down even poor Mrs. Caruthers' ruffled plumes under her sympathizing and kindly touch.

"How soon will you be at Zermatt?" the latter asked. "I wish we could travel together! When do you expect to get there?"

"O, I do not know. We are going first, you know, to the AEggischhorn.

We go where we like, and stay as long as we like; and we never know beforehand how it will be."

"But so early!--"

"Mr. Dillwyn wanted me to see the flowers. And the snow views are grand too; I am very glad not to miss them. Just before you came, I had one.

The clouds swept apart for a moment, and gave me a wonderful sight of a gorge, the wildest possible, and tremendous rocks, half revealed, and a chaos of cloud and storm."

"Do you like that?"

"I like it all," said Lois, smiling. And the other woman looked, with a fascinated, uncomprehending air, at the beauty of that smile.

"But why do you walk?"

"O, that's half the fun," cried Lois. "We gain so a whole world of things that other people miss. And the walking itself is delightful."

"I wonder if I could walk?" said Mrs. Caruthers enviously. "How far can you go in a day? You must make very slow progress?"

"Not very. Now I am getting in training, we can do twenty or thirty miles a day with ease."

"Twenty or thirty miles!" Mrs. Caruthers as nearly screamed as politeness would let her do.

"We do it easily, beginning the day early."

"How early? What do you call early?"