“To drive! this time of day!” cried Mr. Musgrave, in a tone of extreme disapprobation; “will not you get well baked?”

“I dare say,” I answer, absently; then, in a low tone to myself, “why does not he smoke? it would be so easy then—­a smoking-cap, a tobacco-pouch, a cigar-holder, a hundred things!”

“Is it quite settled about Loschwitz?” asks the young man, with an air of indifference.

“Quite,” say I, still not thinking of what I am saying.  “That is, no—­ not quite—­nearly—­a bag is useful, you know.”

“I passed the Saxe just now,” he says, giving his hat a little tilt over his nose, “and saw Sir Roger sitting in the balcony, with his cigar and his Times, and he looked so luxuriously comfortable that it seemed a sin to disturb him.  Do not you think, taking the dust and the blue-bottles into consideration, that it would be kinder to leave him in peace in his arm-chair?”

“No, I do not,” reply I, flatly.  “I suppose he knows best what he likes himself; and why a strong, hearty man in the prime of life should be supposed to wish to spend a whole summer afternoon nodding in an arm-chair, any more than you would wish it yourself, I am at a loss to inquire!” The suggestion has irritated me so much that for the moment I forget the traveling-bag.

“When I am as old as he,” replies the young man, coldly, shaking the ash off his cigar, “if I ever am, which I doubt, and have knocked about the world for as many years, and imperiled my liver in as many climates, and sent as many Russians, and Chinamen, and Sikhs to glory as he has, I shall think myself entitled to sit in an armchair—­yes, and sleep in it too—­all day, if I feel inclined.”

I do not answer, partly because I am exasperated, partly because at this moment my eye is caught by an object in a shop-window—­a traveling-bag, with its mouth invitingly open, displaying all manner of manly conveniences.  I hastily furl my green umbrella, and step in.  My squire does not follow me.  I hardly notice the fact, but suppose that he is standing outside in the sun.  However, when I reissue forth, I find that he has disappeared.  I look up the street, down the street.  There is no trace of him.  I walk away, feeling a little mortified.  I go into a few more shops:  I dawdle over some china.  Then I turn my steps homeward.

At a narrow street-corner, in the grateful shade cast by some tall houses, I come face to face with him again.

“Did not you wonder where I had disappeared to?” he asks; “or perhaps you never noticed that I had?”

He is panting a little, as if he had been running, or walking fast.

“I thought that most likely you had taken offense again,” reply I, with a laugh, “and that I had lost sight of you for three more days.”

“I have been to the Hotel de Saxe,” he replies, with a rather triumphant smile on his handsome mustacheless lips.  “I thought I would find out about Loschwitz.”