s. We went on that Bodensee,
however, I remember with animosity, taking a small steamer at Constance
for Neuhausen. It was a gray and sulky Bodensee, full of little dull
waves and a cold head wind that never changed its mind for a moment.
Isabel and I huddled together for comfort on the very hard wooden seat
that ran round the deck, and the depth of our misery may be gathered
from the fact that, when the wind caught Isabel's floral hat under the
brim and cast it suddenly into that body of water, neither of us looked
round! Mrs. Portheris was very much annoyed at our unhappy indifference.
She implied that it was precisely to enable Isabel to stop a steamer on
the Bodensee in an emergency of this sort that she had had her taught
German. Dicky told me privately that if it had happened a week before he
would have gone overboard in pursuit, for the sake of business, without
hesitation, but, under the present happy circumstances, he preferred the
prospect of buying a new hat. Nothing else actually transpired during
the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as
precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made
port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we
would rather not be on it.

Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or
three dusty miles along a river the identity of which revealed itself to
Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do
we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the
Rhine?" And we endeavoured to do so, though the Senator said that if it
were not so intimately connected with the lake we had just been
delivered from he would have felt more cordial about it. I should like
to have it understood that relations were hardly what might be called
strained at this time between the Senator and myself. There were
subjects which we avoided, and we had enough regard for our dignity,
respectively, not to drop into personalities whatever we did, but we had
a _modus vivendi_, we got along. Dicky maintained a noble and pained
reserve, giving poppa hours of thought, out of which he emerged with the
almost visible reflection that a Wick never changed his mind.

There was a garden with funny little flowers in it which went out of
fashion in America about twenty years ago. There was also a _chalet_ in
the garden, where we saw at once that we could buy cuckoo clocks and
edelweiss an