ld carry such a name
gracefully, it was Miss Hazel Wilder; her fifty years sat as jauntily as
Constance's twenty-two. This morning she was very business-like in her
short skirt, belted jacket, and green felt Alpine hat with a feather in
the side. No one would mistake her for a cyclist or a golfer or a
motorist or anything in the world but an Alpine climber; whatever Miss
Hazel was or was not, she was always _game_.

Across from Miss Hazel sat her brother in knickerbockers, his Alpine
stock at his elbow and also his fan. Since his domicile in Italy, Mr.
Wilder's fan had assumed the nature of a symbol; he could no more be
separated from it than St. Sebastian from his arrows or St. Laurence from
his gridiron. At Mr. Wilder's elbow was the empty chair where Constance
should have been--she who had insisted on six as a proper breakfast hour,
and had grudgingly consented to postpone it till half-past out of
deference to her sleepy-headed elders. Her father had finished his egg
and hers too, before she appeared, as nonchalant and smiling as if she
were out the earliest of all.

'I think you might have waited!' was her greeting from the doorway.

She advanced to the table, saluted in military fashion, dropped a kiss on
her father's bald spot, and possessed herself of the empty chair. She too
was clad in mountain-climbing costume, in so far as blouse and skirt and
leather leggings went, but above her face there fluttered the fluffy
white brim of a ruffled sun hat with a bunch of pink rosebuds set over
one ear.

'I am sorry not to wear my own Alpine hat, Aunt Hazel; I look so
deliciously German in it, but I simply can't afford to burn all the skin
off my nose.'

'You can't make us believe that,' said her father. 'The reason is, that
Lieutenant di Ferara and Captain Coroloni are going with us to-day, and
that this hat is more becoming than the other.'

'It's one reason,' Constance agreed imperturbably, 'but, as I say, I
don't wish to burn the skin off my nose, because that is unbecoming too.
You are ungrateful, Dad,' she added as she helped herself to honey with a
liberal hand, 'I invited them solely on your account because you like to
hear them talk English. Have the donkeys come?'

'The donkeys are at the back door nibbling the buds off the rose bushes.'

'And the driver?'

'Is sitting on the kitchen doorstep drinking coffee and smiling over the
top of his cup at Elizabetta. There are two of him.'

'Two! I only ordere