"I wonder how you would look when you cried, Contessa?" was the only reply the little wretch deigned, but instead of offending, it appeared to amuse her. She watched our cavalcade out of the hotel garden (the _rücksack_ once more on Souris' faithless back), and the silver bells of her laughter lightly rang us down the road. Again we had to pass through Martigny Bourg, and presently, turning aside from the road which had led me to the Grand St. Bernard, we took the way on the right, almost at once feeling the rise of the hill. Steeper and steeper it grew, and warmer and warmer we, though the day was young. Often we were glad of the excuse the view gave us to stop and look back, down into the wide bowl of the Rhone Valley, with a heat-haze of quivering blue, creating an effect of great distance, like a "gauze drop" on the stage. Surely this was the longest lull on earth, and when we reached the top--if we ever did--we should find that we had been climbing Jack's Beanstalk, coming out into a different world! Up and up we dragged for hours, the Boy determined not to take to donkey-back, despite the protestations of Innocentina, emphatic, but slightly modified by constant association with the man she was engaged in converting. Sometimes we were ministered to by small maidens, with marvellously neat, sleek hair, who sprang up under our eyes, apparently from rabbit-holes, their arms hooked into the handles of big fruit baskets which might easily have been their bathtubs or cradles. If we seemed inclined to turn away with an expressionless gaze, the little creatures forged after us with a determined trot, laid back with tiny brown hands the dainty white napkin hiding the basket's contents, and tempted us with purple plums or mellow pears. In the end, we invariably succumbed to these wiles, even when we had sickened at the thought of fruit, and were obliged surreptitiously to hide our purchases by the wayside, when the sturdy young vendors' backs were turned. We carried our panamas in our hands, and the Boy's short chestnut curls clung to his forehead in damp rings, making him look absurdly childish. I wondered at myself for discussing with eager interest, as I often did, so many of life's unanswerable questions with such a slip of boyhood. Still, I knew that I should often do it again, while we remained together, and that he would know how to measure wits with mine, to my disadvantage, compelling always my respect for his opinions, unless he happened to be in an inconsequential or impish mood.