nst the hard, red-plush cushion. Personally, he did not in the least
resent the failure of the scenery.

For something more than three months, this purposeless pleasure-tour had
been dragging him about from point to point, sleeping in strange beds,
eating extraordinarily strange food, transacting the affairs of a
sight-seer among people who spoke strange languages, until he was
surfeited with the unusual. It had all been extremely interesting, of
course, and deeply improving--but he was getting tired of talking to
nobody but waiters, and still more so of having nothing to do which he
could not as well leave undone if he chose. After a few days more
of Switzerland--for they had already gazed with blank faces at this
universal curtain of mist from such different points of view as Lucerne,
Interlaken, and Thun--it was clear to him that they would, as he
phrased it, to himself, make a break for home. Unless, indeed, something
happened at Montreux. Ah, would anything happen at Montreux? For four
days his mind had been automatically reverting to that question; it
lurked continually in the background of his thoughts, now, as he smoked
and idly ruminated, on his way southward through the fog.

All the rest of the prolonged trip had been without any specific motive,
so far as he was concerned. The youngsters had planned all its routes
and halts and details of time and connections, and he had gone along,
with cheerful placidity, to look at the things they bade him observe,
and to pay the bills. Perhaps in all things their tastes had not been
his tastes. He would have liked more of Paris, he fancied, and less of
the small Dutch and North German towns which they seemed to fancy
so much. Still, the beer was good--and really their happiness, as a
spectacle, had given him more satisfaction than a thousand miles of
boulevards could have done.

He liked this niece and nephew of his more than he could ever have
imagined himself liking any young people. They had been shy with him at
the outset--and for the first week his experiment had been darkened by
the belief that, between themselves, they did not deem him quite good
enough. He had been wise enough, then, to have it out with the girl--she
was the one to whom he felt it easiest to talk frankly--and had
discovered, to his immense relief, that they conceived him to be
regarding them as encumbrances. At breakfast next morning, with tactful
geniality, he set everything right, and thereaf