“Ah, Johnny! are you come?  When is Mother Carey going to send for us?”

“When they leave Leukerbad I fancy,” said John.  “That’s a tiresome place for anyone who does not need to lead the life of a hippo-potamus.”

“It can’t be more tiresome than this is,” said Elvira, with a yawn.  “Lessons all day, and nobody to come near us.”

“Isn’t this a dreadful place?” said John, merrily, as he looked into the rosary, a charming bowery circle of fragrance, inclosed by arches of trellis-work on which roses were trained, their wreaths now bearing a profusion of blossoms of every exquisite tint, from deep crimson or golden-yellow, to purest white, while their more splendid standard sisters bloomed out in fragrant and gorgeous magnificence under their protection.

At the shady end there was a little grass plat round a tiny fountain, whose feather of spray rose and plashed coolness.  Near it were seats where Miss Ogilvie and Janet were discovered with books and work.  They came forward with greetings and inquiries, which Johnny answered in detail.

“Yes, they are both better.  Armine sat by the window for an hour the day before I came away.”

“Will they be able to come back to Eton after the holidays?” asked his father.

“Certainly not Armine, but Jock seems to be getting all right.  If he was to catch rheumatism he did it at the right place, for that’s what Leukerbad is good for.  Oh, Babie, you never saw such a lark!  Fancy a great room, and where the floor ought to be, nothing but muddy water or liquid mud, with steps going down, and a lot of heads looking out of it, some with curly heads, some in smoking-caps, some in fine caps of lace and ribbons.”

“Oh!  Johnny; like women!”

“Like women!  They are women.”

“Not both together.”

“Yes, I tell you, the whole boiling of them, male and female.  There’s a fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes floundering after him, to his very great disgust.  The only things they have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups and newspapers.”

“Oh! like the little blacks in the dear bright bays at San Ildefonso,” cried Elvira.

“You don’t mean that they have no clothes on?” said Babie, with shocked downrightness of speech that made everybody laugh; and Johnny satisfied her on that score, adding that Dr. Medlicott had made a parody of Tennyson’s “Merman,” for Jock’s benefit, on giving him up to a Leukerbad doctor, who was to conduct his month’s Kur.  It was to go into the “Traveller’s Joy,” a manuscript magazine, the “first number of which was being concocted and illustrated amongst the Leukerbad party, for the benefit of Babie and Sydney Evelyn.  As a foretaste, Johnny produced from the bag he still carried strapped on his shoulder, a packet of acrostics addressed to Miss Barbara Brownlow, and a smaller envelope for Janet.