“Don’t try, child. Rhenius may have caught some flying nightmare by the tail. I haven’t much faith in Italian newspapers. Anyway we’ll make the most of these few days of grace and be thankful for them.... You see, if things really are as bad as he said, we may be stuck for some time in Switzerland, and an extra day up here in heaven will make no difference in the end and is all to the good now. Learn to gather your roses while you may, my child,” and his determined enjoyment carried the day. They made Fiesch about noon, and Ray marched her right through the little town to the house he had stopped at more than once--the cosy-looking little Hotel des Alpes, near where the rushing Fieschbach flung its gray waters into those of the Rhone. They knew him there and were much hurt that he had not come to stop with them again, and were greatly interested in Lois. He had to explain matters very fully before they were pacified sufficiently to permit him to have a bottle of Asti, with a small table and two chairs outside in the sunshine, and the mistress and the two comely maids hung about them all the time they ate their Oberwald lunch of bread and sausage and cheese and biscuits, and insisted on supplementing it with apples and pears and grapes, grumbling good-humouredly at him and chattering and giving such news as they had. “You’d do much better to stop with us. Firnegarten cannot keep very much of a table up there, you know. Most people go right on to the Jungfrau Hotel for the night----” “I know. But we’re pauper-tramps, you see, till we get to Montreux, and we have to look twice at every sou. You see, I was fool enough to lose my purse up at Gletsch there----” “Ach! To lose your purse! That was foolishness. But if you had come to us we would have helped you.” “It’s awfully good of you, and we’re going to come back here as soon as ever we can. There’s heaps of things I want to show mademoiselle,--Binn, and the Fiescher Glacier, and Ernen--oh, heaps. But now we’ve got to get on. We’re going to get married as soon as we reach Montreux, but I couldn’t bear to stump along the road down here when Aletsch and the Rieder-Alp called me. Mademoiselle is not at all sure we’re doing the right thing in not going straight on.” “You will never regret it, mademoiselle,” they assured her. “Though, of course, when one is hurrying along to get married,--” interjected one of the girls thoughtfully. “The Great Aletsch is a thing to see before one dies,--” continued Madame. “Or even before one gets married, when you have to pass right under it,” said Ray. “And the Märjelen----” “Ach--the poor Märjelen! It is gone. It got a hole in it somewhere and all the water has run out, and so now there is nothing to see.” “So! But the Aletsch is still there?” “Och, yes! The Aletsch can never run away through a hole. There it is and there it will remain till the world comes to an end.” “And the war? What news have you?”