“How much did you give them, young Santa Claus?” I asked, when he had me out in the rain again.

“About one thousand three hundred dollars.  I can’t stop to calculate it for you in pounds or francs.  I’m too excited.  Oh, how wet you are, poor Man!  And all for me!  But wasn’t it splendid!  And I just know that baby’ll be better to-morrow.  You see if she isn’t.”

She was.  The news was brought to us early in the morning by a poor man half out of his wits with joy and gratitude.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII

The Little Game of Flirtation

“To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you
leave them behind you.” 
—­WALT WHITMAN.

The Contessa had to be pacified, but she adored romance, and she was pleased to say that the story of the bag, lost and found, which I—­not the Boy—­told her, came under that category.  She was in the best of tempers for a day of travelling, and saw us off, before her friends were dressed and ready to begin their drive to Chamounix.

“They are taking as long as they can, on purpose,” she whispered to me, with the air of a naughty child planning mischief behind the backs of its elders.  “Anything to keep me to themselves and away from you!  But you are walking, and the way is uphill for a very long time, so the hotel people say.  We shall catch you up, and just to spite the Di Nivolis, if nothing more, I shall beg first one of you, then the other, to let me give you a lift.  Neither of you must refuse, or I shall cry, and no man has ever made me cry yet.”

“I’m sure no man ever will,” I answered promptly.

“And no boy?” she asked, with a long-lashed glance at my companion, who had given no answer save a smile.

“I wonder how you would look when you cried, Contessa?” was the only reply the little wretch deigned, but instead of offending, it appeared to amuse her.  She watched our cavalcade out of the hotel garden (the ruecksack once more on Souris’ faithless back), and the silver bells of her laughter lightly rang us down the road.

Again we had to pass through Martigny Bourg, and presently, turning aside from the road which had led me to the Grand St. Bernard, we took the way on the right, almost at once feeling the rise of the hill.  Steeper and steeper it grew, and warmer and warmer we, though the day was young.  Often we were glad of the excuse the view gave us to stop and look back, down into the wide bowl of the Rhone Valley, with a heat-haze of quivering blue, creating an effect of great distance, like a “gauze drop” on the stage.

Surely this was the longest lull on earth, and when we reached the top—­if we ever did—­we should find that we had been climbing Jack’s Beanstalk, coming out into a different world!  Up and up we dragged for hours, the Boy determined not to take to donkey-back, despite the protestations of Innocentina, emphatic, but slightly modified by constant association with the man she was engaged in converting.