and rhododendrons with one
or two bigger trees--and just on the water-edge stood the house itself,
called the Pink Chalet.

I wheeled Peter past the entrance on the crackling snow of the highway.
Seen through the gaps of the trees the front looked new, but the back
part seemed to be of some age, for I could see high walls, broken by
few windows, hanging over the water. The place was no more a chalet
than a donjon, but I suppose the name was given in honour of a wooden
gallery above the front door. The whole thing was washed in an ugly
pink. There were outhouses--garage or stables among the trees--and at
the entrance there were fairly recent tracks of an automobile.

On our way back we had some very bad beer in a cafe and made friends
with the woman who kept it. Peter had to tell her his story, and I
trotted out my aunt in Zurich, and in the end we heard her grievances.
She was a true Swiss, angry at all the belligerents who had spoiled her
livelihood, hating Germany most but also fearing her most. Coffee, tea,
fuel, bread, even milk and cheese were hard to get and cost a ransom.
It would take the land years to recover, and there would be no more
tourists, for there was little money left in the world. I dropped a
question about the Pink Chalet, and was told that it belonged to one
Schweigler, a professor of Berne, an old man who came sometimes for a
few days in the summer. It was often let, but not now. Asked if it was
occupied, she remarked that some friends of the Schweiglers--rich
people from Basle--had been there for the winter. 'They come and go in
great cars,' she said bitterly, 'and they bring their food from the
cities. They spend no money in this poor place.'

* * * * *

Presently Peter and I fell into a routine of life, as if we had always
kept house together. In the morning he went abroad in his chair, in the
afternoon I would hobble about on my own errands. We sank into the
background and took its colour, and a less conspicuous pair never faced
the eye of suspicion. Once a week a young Swiss officer, whose business
it was to look after British wounded, paid us a hurried visit. I used
to get letters from my aunt in Zurich, Sometimes with the postmark of
Arosa, and now and then these letters would contain curiously worded
advice or instructions from him whom my aunt called 'the kind patron'.
Generally I was told to be patient. Sometimes I had word about the
health of 'my