"One would think you were the only person disappointed in love!"
exclaimed Molly. "Why, I have a friend who has really suffered. Dear
little Mercedes----"

Mrs. Winston stopped suddenly, drawing in her breath. She looked
startled, as if she had been on the point of betraying a state secret;
then her eyes brightened; she began abstractedly to trace a leaf on
the damask tablecloth. "I have thought of just the thing for you," she
said, apparently apropos of nothing. "Why don't you buy or hire a mule
to carry your luggage, and walk from Switzerland down into Italy, not
over the high roads, but do a pass or two, and for the rest, keep to
the footpaths among the mountains, which would suit your mood?"

"The mule isn't a bad scheme," I replied. "A dirty man is an
independent animal, but a clean man, or one whose aim is to be clean,
is more or less helpless. If he has a weakness for a sponge bag, a
clean shirt or two, and evening things to change into after a long
tramp, he must go hampered by a caravan of beasts."

"One beast would do," said Molly practically, "unless you count the
muleteer, and that depends upon his disposition."

"I suppose muleteers have dispositions," I reflected aloud.

"Mules have. I've met them in America. But if you think my idea a
bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne.
There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man."

"'A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,'" I quoted dreamily. "Well, if
you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as
Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse. But the difficulty
is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two----"

"We're starting on the first," said Jack.

"What! No Cowes?"

"We wouldn't give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes."

And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme
court beyond which there is no appeal. But man can do no more than
propose; and woman--even American woman--cannot invariably "dispose"
to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according
to her whim.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

Mercedes to the Rescue

"What is more intellectually exhilarating to the mind, and even
to the senses, than . . . looking down the vista of some great
road . . . and to wonder through what strange places, by what
towns and castles, by what rivers and streams, by what mountains
and valleys it will take hi