"I believe you were right, after all, Jim. There isn't much to see here.
Let's go on to-morrow."
It was a tribute to his powers of prediction.
"Very well," he answered. "As a matter of fact, I should like to go back
to the hotel this minute and lie down."
She would not hear of that.
"Oh, no!" she protested. "There is the Zwingli Museum, the Hohe
Promenade, and the National Museum to see. We mustn't miss them, you
know. What would Aunt Ethel say?"
Nor could she permit him to miss them. She seemed to thrive as much upon
the labour as if she had been shopping as she used to shop in her
unmarried days, and she dragged him after her, a husband more weary than
he had often been in his pilgrimages through the Great Desert.
"To-morrow," he yawned, as he flung himself down to sleep, eight hours
later, "we shall start for some place where we can rest and see a few
real Alps. We'll go to the Engadine."
Muriel was seated at some distance from the bed. She was stooping to
loosen her boots, and her hair fell over her face and hid it.
"Don't let's go there," she said. "Let's go to Innsbruck."
"Innsbruck? That's in Austria, isn't it?"
"Is it? Well, what if it is, Jim?"
"I thought you wanted to see Switzerland."
"We've seen it, haven't we?"
"Only a slice of it; and it must be a long and tiresome ride to
Innsbruck."
Muriel dropped one boot and then the other and carried them outside the
door.
"Anyhow," she said, returning, "we have seen enough of Switzerland to
know what it's like, Jim. I'm awfully tired of it." She came to the bed
and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Do you mind, dear?" she added.
"Oh, no," he sighed. "I suppose not. Only let's go to sleep now: I am
about done up."
Muriel said nothing to that, but the next morning she assumed the plan
to be adopted, and they went to Innsbruck. They went by the way that
Franz von Klausen had described to her: by the narrow, mountain-guarded
Waldersee, the Castle Lichtenstein, the ruins of Graephang and, on the
great rock that rises over Berschia, the pilgrim-church of St. Georgen.
Jim had tipped the guard to secure, at least for a time, the privacy of
their compartment, and the guard, a little fellow with flaring
moustaches and a uniform that was almost the uniform of an officer,
saluted gravely and promised seclusion. Thus, for some hours, they had
the place to themselves, but the train gradually filled, and at last
there entered a young Austrian merchant, who insisted upon giving them a
sense of his knowledge of English and American literature.
"All Austrians of culture read your Irving," he said; "also your Harte
and Twain and Do-_nel_li."
"Our what?" asked Jim.
"Please?"
"I didn't catch that last name."
"Donelli--Ignatius Donelli."
"Oh! Ignatius Donnelly--yes."
"Indeed, yes, sir; and you will find few that do not by the heart know
of Shakespeare: 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen, come listen to me!'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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