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“That’s a beautiful view of the Alps,” I observed.

“Yes,” said Mr. Ruck, without moving, “I’ve examined it. Fine thing, in its way–fine thing. Beauties of nature–that sort of thing. We came up on purpose to look at it.”

“Your ladies, then, have been with you?”

“Yes; they are just walking round. They’re awfully restless. They keep saying I’m restless, but I’m as quiet as a sleeping child to them. It takes,” he added in a moment, drily, “the form of shopping.”

“Are they shopping now?”

“Well, if they ain’t, they’re trying to. They told me to sit here a while, and they’d just walk round. I generally know what that means. But that’s the principal interest for ladies,” he added, retracting his irony. “We thought we’d come up here and see the cathedral; Mrs. Church seemed to think it a dead loss that we shouldn’t see the cathedral, especially as we hadn’t seen many yet. And I had to come up to the banker’s any way. Well, we certainly saw the cathedral. I don’t know as we are any the better for it, and I don’t know as I should know it again. But we saw it, any way. I don’t know as I should want to go there regularly; but I suppose it will give us, in conversation, a kind of hold on Mrs. Church, eh? I guess we want something of that kind. Well,” Mr. Ruck continued, “I stepped in at the banker’s to see if there wasn’t something, and they handed me out a Herald.”

“I hope the Herald is full of good news,” I said.

“Can’t say it is. D-d bad news.”

“Political,” I inquired, “or commercial?”

“Oh, hang politics! It’s business, sir. There ain’t any business. It’s all gone to,”–and Mr. Ruck became profane. “Nine failures in one day. What do you say-to that?”

“I hope they haven’t injured you,” I said.

“Well, they haven’t helped me much. So many houses on fire, that’s all. If they happen to take place in your own street, they don’t increase the value of your property. When mine catches, I suppose they’ll write and tell me–one of these days, when they’ve got nothing else to do. I didn’t get a blessed letter this morning; I suppose they think I’m having such a good time over here it’s a pity to disturb me. If I could attend to business for about half an hour, I’d find out something. But I can’t, and it’s no use talking. The state of my health was never so unsatisfactory as it was about five o’clock this morning.”

“I am very sorry to hear that,” I said, “and I recommend you strongly not to think of business.”

“I don’t,” Mr. Ruck replied. “I’m thinking of cathedrals; I’m thinking of the beauties of nature. Come,” he went on, turning round on the bench and leaning his elbow on the parapet, “I’ll think of those mountains over there; they ARE pretty, certainly. Can’t you get over there?”

“Over where?”

“Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train right up?”

“You can go to Chamouni,” I said. “You can go to Grindelwald and Zermatt and fifty other places. You can’t go by rail, but you can drive.”

“All right, we’ll drive–and not in a one-horse concern, either. Yes, Chamouni is one of the places we put down. I hope there are a few nice shops in Chamouni.” Mr. Ruck spoke with a certain quickened emphasis, and in a tone more explicitly humorous than he commonly employed. I thought he was excited, and yet he had not the appearance of excitement. He looked like a man who has simply taken, in the face of disaster, a sudden, somewhat imaginative, resolution not to “worry.” He presently twisted himself about on his bench again and began to watch for his companions. “Well, they ARE walking round,” he resumed; “I guess they’ve hit on something, somewhere. And they’ve got a carriage waiting outside of that archway too. They seem to do a big business in archways here, don’t they. They like to have a carriage to carry home the things–those ladies of mine. Then they’re sure they’ve got them.” The ladies, after this, to do them justice, were not very long in appearing. They came toward us, from under the archway to which Mr. Ruck had somewhat invidiously alluded, slowly and with a rather exhausted step and expression. My companion looked at them a moment, as they advanced. “They’re tired,” he said softly. “When they’re tired, like that, it’s very expensive.”