“We can do it all right,” he burst out at last. “See here!--We’ve got 160 francs left after settling up here. We’ll get Madame here to put us up the usual trampers’ lunch,--that’s one franc each. We’ll walk on to Fiesch and then up to the little Firnegarten Inn--small but clean--on the Fiescher Alp, and stop the night there. That’ll be, say, 10 francs. It would cost us more down below. To-morrow we’ll make an early start and climb up to the Märjelen See and the Eggishorn, taking our lunch with us again. Then we’ll come down by the big hotel,--we can only afford to look at the outside of it this time,--and walk along the ridge to Rieder Alp. It’s wonderful,--worth coming all the way from England for,--that and the Aletsch. Stop the night at Rieder Alp. That will be say 12 francs, if I haggle well. And next day we’ll walk down to Brigue and Oberried and Bitsch and the Massa, and get the mid-day train there for Montreux,----” “If it’s running.” “If not we’ll just toddle on.” “But can we afford it?” “Including fares and all it will come to just about as much as four days’ tramping along the road. And two days up aloft here are worth forty days on that road. The road’s fine but it’s not to be compared with the bridle path along Rieder-Alp.” He was so obviously set on it that, in spite of her anxiety to get on, she had not the heart to raise any objection, and five minutes later they were on the road, with the dew-drenched green slopes above and below them shimmering like diamond-dust in the early sunshine, and Ray’s spirits at their highest again at this getting the better of the misfortune that would have done them out of the best bit of the journey. As to the fact that they would arrive in Montreux with only 120 francs between them, that did not trouble him in the slightest now that they were going up aloft. “I’ll wire Uncle Tony the very first thing when we get there. It’ll be quite all right, you’ll see, my child. ‘The year’s at the Spring----’” “Ninth of August!” “That’s nothing. It’s our year I’m talking of, and it’s only a week or so after New Year’s Day.... ‘The day’s at the morn. Morning’s at seven;’----” “Nearer eight,”--with a glance at her wrist-watch. “‘The hillside’s dew-pearled,’----” “Undoubtedly,”--with a comprehensive wave of the hand uphill and down. “‘The lark’s on the wing;’----” “Maybe--somewhere.” “‘The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His Heaven; All’s right with the world!’” “With your and my little world. But, oh, I wonder what’s going on outside there, Ray! It’s terrible to think of war at any time, even though we none of us really know what it means. But for all the Great Powers to be flying at one another’s throats,--and England too! I can’t realise it.”