as the lady was concerned;
and that Providence alone could have inspired her to call in an agent
who knew what I knew, and who therefore saw his duty as plainly as I
already saw mine. But it is one thing to recognise a painful duty and
quite another thing to know how to minimise the pain to those most
affected by its performance. The problem was no easy one to my mind, and
I lay awake upon it far into the night.

Tired out with travel, I fell asleep in the end, to awake with a start
in broad daylight. The sun was pouring through the uncurtained
dormer-window of my room under the roof. And in the sunlight, looking
his best in knickerbockers, as only thin men do, with face greased
against wind and glare, and blue spectacles in rest upon an Alpine
wideawake, stood the lad who had taken his share in keeping me awake.

"I'm awfully sorry," he began. "It's horrid cheek, but when I saw your
room full of light I thought you might have been even earlier than I
was. You must get them to give you curtains up here."

He had a note in his hand and I thought by his manner there was
something that he wished and yet hesitated to tell me. I accordingly
asked him what it was.

"It's what we were speaking about last night!" burst out Bob. "That's
why I've come to you. It's these silly fools who can't mind their own
business and think everybody else is like themselves! Here's a note from
Mrs. Lascelles which makes it plain that that old idiot George is not
the only one who has been talking about us, and some of the talk has
reached her ears. She doesn't say so in so many words, but I can see
it's that. She wants to get out of our expedition to Monte Rosa
hut--wants me to go alone. The question is, ought I to let her get out
of it? Does it matter one rap what this rabble says about us? I've come
to ask your advice--you were such a brick about it all last night--and
what you say I'll do."

I had begun to smile at Bob's notion of "a rabble": this one happened
to include a few quite eminent men, as you have seen, to say nothing of
the average quality of the crowd, of which I had been able to form some
opinion of my own. But I had already noticed in Bob the exclusiveness of
the type to which he belonged, and had welcomed it as one does welcome
the little faults of the well-night faultless. It was his last sentence
that made me feel too great a hypocrite to go on smiling.

"It may not matter to you," I said at length, "but it may to the la