had managed to secure at the end of the carriage for himself and Nellie,
the poor tired child was as wakeful as an owl.

"Who have you been talking to?" she yawned.

"The eyeglass johnny."

"Oh! Really," Nellie murmured, interested and impressed. "With him, have
you? I could hear voices. What sort of a man is he?"

"He seems to be an ass," said Denry. "Fearfully haw-haw. Couldn't stand
him for long. I've made him believe we've been married for two years."

II

They stood on the balcony of the Hotel Beau-Site of Mont Pridoux. A
little below, to the right, was the other hotel, the Metropole, with the
red-and-white Swiss flag waving over its central tower. A little below
that was the terminal station of the funicular railway from Montreux.
The railway ran down the sheer of the mountain into the roofs of
Montreux, like a wire. On it, two toy trains crawled towards each other,
like flies climbing and descending a wall. Beyond the fringe of hotels
that constituted Montreux was a strip of water, and beyond the water a
range of hills white at the top.

"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.

She was disappointed; he also. But when Denry learnt from the guide-book
and by inquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles across, and the
highest notched peaks ten thousand feet above the sea and twenty-five
miles off, Nellie gasped and was content.

They liked the Hotel Beau-Site. It had been recommended to Denry, by a
man who knew what was what, as the best hotel in Switzerland. "Don't you
be misled by prices," the man had said. And Denry was not. He paid
sixteen francs a day for the two of them at the Beau-Site, and was
rather relieved than otherwise by the absence of finger-bowls.
Everything was very good, except sometimes the hot water. The hot-water
cans bore the legend "hot water," but these two words were occasionally
the only evidence of heat in the water. On the other hand, the bedrooms
could be made sultry by merely turning a handle; and the windows were
double. Nellie was wondrously inventive. They breakfasted in bed, and
she would save butter and honey from the breakfast to furnish forth
afternoon tea, which was not included in the terms. She served the
butter freshly with ice by the simple expedient of leaving it outside
the window of a night. And Denry was struck by this house-wifery.

The other guests appeared to be of a comfortable, companionable class,
with, as Denry said, "no frills." They were amaz