“Up the Matterhorn!”

“At this time of night?”

“It is a bit late, and that’s why I want it kept quiet.  I don’t want any fuss or advice.  I’ve got a couple of excellent guides waiting for me just below by the shoemaker’s hut.  I told you I was on their tracks.  Well, it was to-night or never as far as they were concerned, they are so tremendously full up.  So to-night it is, and don’t you remind me of my mother!”

I was thinking of her when he spoke; for the song had swung through a worthy refrain into another verse, and now I knew it better.  It was Catherine who had introduced me to all my lyrics; it was to Catherine I had once hymned this one in my unformed heart.

“But I thought,” said I, as I forced myself to think, “that everybody went up to the Cabane overnight, and started fresh from there in the morning?”

“Most people do, but it’s as broad as it’s long,” declared Bob, airily, rapidly, and with the same unwonted excitement, born as I thought of his unwonted enterprise.  “You have a ripping moonlight walk instead of a so-called night’s rest in a frowsy hut.  We shall get our breakfast there instead, and I expect to start fresher than if I had slept there and been knocked up at two o’clock in the morning.  That’s all settled, anyhow, and you can look for me on top through the telescope after breakfast.  I shall be back before dark, and then—­”

“Well, what then?” I asked, for Bob had made a significant and yet irresolute pause, as though he could not quite bring himself to tell me something that was on his mind.

“Well,” he echoed nonchalantly at last, as though he had not hesitated at all, “as a matter of fact, to-morrow night I am to know my fate.  I have asked Mrs. Lascelles to marry me, and she hasn’t said no, but I am giving her till to-morrow night.  That’s all, Clephane.  I thought it a fair thing to let you know.  If you want to waltz in and try your luck while I’m gone, there’s nothing on earth to prevent you, and it might be most satisfactory to everybody.  As a matter of fact, I’m only going so as to get over the time and keep out of the way.”

“As a matter of fact?” I queried, waving a little stick toward the lighted windows.  “Listen a minute, and then tell me!”

And we listened together to the last and clearest rendering of the refrain—­

  “Then tell me how to woo thee, Love;
    O tell me how to woo thee! 
  For thy dear sake, nae care I’ll take,
    Tho’ ne’er another trow me!”

“What tosh!” shouted Bob (his mother should have heard him) through the applause.  “Of course I’m going to take care of myself, and of course I meant to rush the Matterhorn while I’m here, but between ourselves that’s my only reason for rushing it to-night.”