talk like an exacting woman!"

The blood rushed to his face so hotly that it forced water into the
brilliant eyes of wild-chicory blue.

"If I were a woman I don't think I would be an exacting one. I should
only want people I--liked, to do things because they cared about me,
otherwise favours would be of no value. We're pals, as you say, great
pals, but if you don't care enough----"

"Oh, hang it all, Kid, I'll give the thing up," I broke in, crossly.
"I'll potter about with you and the Contessa in Chamounix, and take
some nice, pretty, proper walks. But all the same, you're a little
brute."

"Do you hate me?"

"Not precisely. But if I stop down here, Satan will certainly find
mischief for my idle hands to do. I shall try to take your Contessa
away from you, perhaps."

"Oh, will you? Then I shall try to keep her; and we shall see which is
the better man."

He rose from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his
triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of
his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that I burst out
laughing.

"Come on," I said, "let's go and have a look round Chamounix, since
there's no better sport to be had."

So we strolled out of the _vaste parc avec chamois_ into the streets
of the gay and charming little town, lying like a bright crystal at
the foot of Mont Blanc. Round each of several big telescopes under
striped canvas umbrellas, was collected a crowd. We could guess at
what they were looking. "Shall we stop and see that piteous dark
packet lying lonely on the snow?" I asked, pausing. But the Boy
hurried on. "No, no," he said, "I should feel as if I had been spying
on the dead through a keyhole. I want to buy something at the shops."

"And I want to see the statue of Horace de Saussure, the first man who
ever got to the top of Mont Blanc," said I, with reproachful meaning
in my tone.

The shops were almost as attractive as those of Lucerne, and gave an
air of modernity and civilisation to the little place, which would
have been out of the picture, had it not contrived to suggest the
piquancy of contrast. The Boy spent a hundred francs for a silver
chamois poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts,
mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase,
likening it to the white elephant of Instantaneous Breakfasts et Cie.,
which I had long ago cast behind me.

"You will be throwing your chamois away in a da