The Gold of Chickaree Part 68

'What is there, Duke?' asked Primrose, for Hazel did not speak.

'That is called the German Chamounix. The fields of blue ice come down almost to the bottom of the valley.'

'And is it pretty?'

'Chamounix is reckoned so.'

'I should think you would go to the real Chamounix, while you are about it,' remarked Mrs. Coles.

'Common,'?said Dane. 'Never be common, if you can help it.

Then from G' schloss we will mount the Grossen Venediger. It is eleven thousand feet high, to be sure, but uncommonly easy to go up; and from the top we shall have a good wilderness view of rocks and ice and snow?and little else, beside sky.'

'I do not see the pleasure in that,' said Mrs. Coles.

'O I do,' said Primrose. 'But Duke, Hazel could not walk half a day, like you.'

'Yes, she could, in the high Alps.'

'It must be delightful!' Primrose said musingly.

'Another time I will take her over the Dobratsch. She can ride up there.'

'Duke, you do use very odd words. What is the Dobratsch?'

'A mountain in Illyria?almost as good as the Rigi.'

'Why not go to the Rigi?' said Mrs. Coles.

'Crowds. But I will go to the Rigi too, if Hazel makes a point of it.

The Dobratsch has more variety of scenery than the Rigi. Both give you lakes and glaciers; but from the Dobratsch you have a view of tremendous weatherworn limestone peaks, and riven Dolomites. Then we will visit the Warmbad-Villach.'

'What is that, Duke?'

'A little watering place. You would like it. A warm clear spring breaks forth just at the borders of the forest. It is a nice place to be late in the season. Then there is another walk I want to shew her, in the Rainthal, going from Taufers.'

'It sounds like a guide-book,' said Mrs. Coles chuckling. 'Where is Taufers?'

'That is in the Austrian Tyrol. You go for a couple of hours beside a glacier stream which is almost all the way a broad ribband of white foam. The bed of the brook is so steep and rocky that the water is dashed and s.h.i.+vered into spray, glittering in the suns.h.i.+ne, and wetting you all the same. What do you say to that, Hazel? You like brooks.'

Hazel had been deep in the intricacies of a bit of netting; the little foot with the netting-stirrup perched up on a foot cus.h.i.+on, the long needle flying swiftly to and fro. A stir of colour now and then, a curl of the lips, were the only tokens that she heard what went on.

She answered sedately.

'They are good society, to follow.'

'And the lakes are not bad,' Dane went on. 'We should go to Munchen of course, to study art; and from there we will take flying runs to the lakes; Ammersee, and Walchensee, and Konigsee, and the rest of them.'

'But won't you take her to Mont Blanc and Chamounix, and to see the Matterhorn, where those people were lost?' said Mrs. Coles, whose breath seemed to be taken away.

'Of course. But the mountains are just as good where people have not been lost.'

'Have you been to all these other places already, Duke?' Primrose asked.

'More than once, some of them. I have walked there for weeks with Heinert,' he added, turning to Hazel with again the change of tone.

'And that is your wife's travelling clock!' said Mrs. Coles. 'It seems to me you are betimes about your preparations.'

'Always a good way,' said Dane coolly.

'It is a fine thing to be rich!' the lady went on, gazing at the clock.

'You are just about as rich as I am,' said Dane in the same tone.

'I!? As you!!'

'Practically.'

'I don't know what you mean by practically. You have millions, and I have a few hundred or so.'

'I mean only, that neither of us has anything that he can call his own.'

Mrs. Coles stared, but her interlocutor seemed to be looking at things in a very matter-of-fact way. He was now busy fitting another engraving into its fame; a plain black walnut frame, without carving or gilding, like the rest.

'I cannot conceive what you mean, Dane,' Mrs. Coles broke forth.

'It is perfectly simple. Surely the fact that we are only stewards of what we hold, is not strange to you?'

It seemed to be strange however, for Mrs. Coles weighed the statement.

'_But_ Dane,?people do not take that so closely.'

'What then? There is the fact.'

'Prudentia, you have heard papa say the same thing, at least a hundred times,' Primrose reminded her.

'He hadn't much to talk about,' said the doctor's eldest daughter.

'And Dane, _you_ do not take it so closely, either. What do you mean by your fine proposal to go travelling? How will you do it, if you have not the money?'

'I hold the money, to be used for the very best ends and interests I know. If when the time comes, I see any way that I can spend the money better, I'll not go.'

'But it would be spending the money on yourself?yourself and your wife?if you went, at any rate,' persisted Mrs. Coles. 'And you say, it is not yours.'

'Mine to spend.'

'On what you please.'

'No; in such ways as will best do the work the Owner of the money wants done.'

'And what has your travelling to do with that? I don't see.'