By and by we came in sight of a little white house, and upon the path which passed beneath it. Over the door, half hidden by the yellow splashes of _Canariensis_, was the sign, "_Madame Marie Brigue ... Restaurant_." There was a great quiet everywhere about the place. Some pigeons were coo-cooing in the Basse Cour. A cat regarded us with the sleepy dispassion of its race. However, there was certainly a stirring among earthenware somewhere towards the entrance of the cellar. We could make out the grating of carrots, or, as it might be, the scraping of potatoes. I motioned Sweetheart to get behind me--which she did, eager to take a hand in one of "father's ploys." Then I went to the front door, and in the loud, confident voice of one who, after a short absence, has come back at the proper hour, to find his dinner not ready, I called out, "Marie, are those chops not done yet?" A dish clattered on the floor. We could hear the splash of the fragments on the cool flagstones of the inner kitchen. "Marie, old Lazybones! Here have I been twelve hours on the mountains, and not even an omelette ready!" "It is the Herr-with-the-Long-Legs--the Herr who kept my good dinner waiting while he ran about the '_bergen_'! And now--oh, the Good-for-Nothing, the _Vaurien_, he come back to old Marie crying hunger--just as he used to do more than a score of years ago up in the Riffel House!" And before I knew it I was embraced and kissed on both cheeks by this tall, gaunt old woman--greatly, of course, to the joy of Sweetheart. But her turn was yet to come. Madame Marie continued scolding me even in the utmost expansion of her greeting. She held me at arm's length and scolded. She scolded because I had come without warning, and because I had not come sooner. Scolded because I had let the years slip past till her hair was white like the snow on the mountains, on which I had so often tarried till my dinner was burnt to a cinder! While mine--but there--who was this with me? Was I married? "Your daughter!" A daughter like that, and old Marie getting so blind that she had called me bad names--the names of the old time--in her hearing. But Mademoiselle would understand! She would pardon a poor old woman who had known her father, and been a mother to him, years and years before the young lady was born, or even thought of! So, indeed, Mademoiselle understood very well. No forgiveness was necessary. She was all too happy. And while the dinner was preparing, she set down all these facts in her notebook, so that when Madame Marie came to the door to say that the omelette was ready to be put before us on the table, she called to Sweetheart that she was indeed her father's own daughter. For that in the old days at the Riffel House he had always been like that, sitting down on the very glacier to scribble in his notebook all about nothing, and so letting good food spoil because of his foolishness!