c to the landscape;
beyond that a wide sweep of hills, with bunches of poplars, and valleys
where white villages lie half concealed; and further still, leaping into
the sky, the immense line of the Pyrenees, looking to-day so near and
sharply outlined that they seemed to be cut out of cardboard. When I was
able to speak I told Brown that the very first thing I should do would
be to walk to those delectable mountains. "I don't think you could quite
manage it, miss," he said, with his quiet smile, "for they are nearly
forty miles away." Then we turned round and drove into the courtyard of
the hotel, which faces the great view.

It looked tremendously swell, and Aunt Mary and I tried to live up to it
by sweeping haughtily in as if we hadn't collected any of the historic
dust of France on our motoring coats and hats. Just as we were
acquitting ourselves quite creditably who should step out from a group
of the very people we were hoping to impress with our superiority but
Jimmy Payne! Oh, you wicked old man, I believe you must have wired or
written him a hint. You know you have a weakness for Jimmy, or rather
for his family. But I can't go about marrying the sons of all the pretty
ladies you were in love with in your vanished youth. Probably there were
dozens, for you're as soft-hearted as you are hard-headed, and you can't
deny it.

Still, I don't mind confessing that I was rather pleased to see Jimmy,
not a bit because he is _Jimmy_, but because he seemed to bring a breath
of homeyness with him, and it is nice to have an old friend turn up in a
"far countree" when you've got dust on your hat and the other women who
are staring at you haven't. If only the friend doesn't proceed to bore
you by insisting on being something more than a friend, which I hope
Jimmy is by this time tired of doing, I think I shall rather enjoy the
encounter than otherwise. As for anything else, it doesn't appeal to
_me_ that he's his mother's son, or that he's clever in stocks, or that
he's got as much money as you have. So now you know, and I hope he does.

Well, we talked a little, and then I found that Aunt Mary was chattering
like mad with the Garrisons (one "talks" oneself; other people
"chatter"; foreigners "jabber"); so we were all glad to see each other,
or said so, which comes to the same thing.

"How's your automobile?" was almost the first thing I asked Jimmy, for
the last time I'd seen him it was the pride of his heart. "I suppose,"