‘Fourteen at most,’ murmured his sister. ‘A great deal you know about it! Do you think I am going to be carted up hill and down hill in order to get beforehand with winter on a bleak plateau, diversified with glaciers and pine-trees? It is absurd to suggest such a thing to a man in weak health.’ ‘It is for your health that I make the suggestion, Vernon,’ replied his sister meekly. ‘You cannot deny that Dr. Cavendish recommended the Engadine.’ ‘Simply because the Engadine is the last fad of the moneyed classes. These doctors all sing the same song. One year they send everyone to Egypt, another year they try to popularise Algiers. One would suppose they were in league with the Continental railways and steam companies. One might get one’s nerves braced just as well at Broadway or Malvern, or on the Cornish moors; one might get well or die just as comfortably at Penzance or Torquay. You quite ignore the trouble of a change of quarters. I have made myself thoroughly comfortable here. If I were to go to the Engadine I should take only Lina and Jinman, and you would have to take Daphne home and keep her at the Rectory till our return.’ This was not at all what Mrs. Ferrers had in view. She had taken for granted that if she could induce her brother to go to the Engadine she would be taken, as a matter of course, in his train. He was a free-handed man in all domestic matters, though he very often grumbled about his poverty; and he would have paid his sister’s expenses without a thought, if he were willing to endure her company. But it seemed that he was not willing, and that she had been unconsciously urging him to her own ruin. To have her Swiss experiences suddenly cut short, to have that audacious little flirt Daphne planted upon her for a month’s visit! The thing was too horrible to contemplate. ‘My dear Vernon,’ she exclaimed, with affectionate eagerness, ‘if you do not feel yourself equal to the journey it would be madness to undertake it.’ ‘Exactly my own idea. Please say no more about it,’ he answered coldly. ‘I am sorry you are tired of Montreux.’ ‘Tired! I adore the place. It is positively delicious. A little stifling, perhaps, in the heat of the day, but beyond measure, lovely.’ After this Mrs. Ferrers never more spoke word about St. Moritz or Pontresina. She saw by last week’s society papers that everybody worth talking about was taking his or her pleasure in that exalted region; but she only sighed and kept silence. The ‘society papers’ ignored Lake Leman altogether, nor did they ever mention Mont Blanc. It seemed as if they hardly knew that such things existed. Their contributors all went straight through. Aunt Rhoda remembered how, many years before, when she had gone through the Trossachs and had been full of enthusiasm and delight, and had gone home proud of her tour, her travelled friends had so scorned her that she had never again ventured to mention Katrine or Lomond, Inversnaid or the Falls of Clyde.