s it is, I don't. I
like you--Man."

"And I like you, Boy. We are pals now. Shall we shake hands?"

We did. I could have crushed his little brown paw, if I had not
manipulated it carefully.

After that, we did not talk much. By-and-bye, he was tired, and
remounted his donkey, but we still kept side by side, Innocentina
sending at intervals a perfunctory cry of "Fanny-anny," from a
distance, by way of keeping the small brown _ane_ to her work.

So we reached the beautiful valley of Aosta, as the transparent azure
veil of the Italian dusk was drawn, and out of that dusk glimmered now
and then, as if born of the shadows, strange, stunted, and misshapen
forms, gnome-like creatures, who stood aside to let us pass along the
road. It was as if the Brownie Club were out for a night excursion;
and I remembered my muleteer's lecture about the _cretins_ of this
happy valley. These were some of them, going back to town from their
day's work in the fields. I had set my mind upon stopping at a hotel
of which Joseph had told me, extolling its situation at a distance
from Aosta _ville_, the wonderful mountain-pictures its windows
framed, and a certain pastoral primitiveness, not derogatory to
comfort, which I should find in the _menage_. But when my late enemy
and new chum remarked that he was going to the Mont Blanc, I
hesitated.

"And you?" he asked.

"Oh, I--well, I had thought--but it doesn't matter."

"I see what you mean. Would it be disagreeable for you if I were in
the same hotel?"

"On the contrary. But you----"

"I know now that we shall never rub each other up the wrong
way--again. Besides, we shan't have the chance. I suppose you go on
somewhere else to-morrow?"

"No, I want to stop a day or two. Some friends have asked me to tell
them about the sights of the neighbourhood, and what sort of motoring
roads there are near by."

"I'm stopping, too. So, after all, the little sailing boat and the big
bark aren't going to pass each other this night? They are to anchor in
the same harbour for a while."

"And here's the harbour," said I, for we had come down from the hills
into a marvellous old town of ancient towers and arches, with a
background of white mountains. Molly should have been satisfied. I had
obeyed her instructions to the letter, and I was in Aosta at last.

CHAPTER XIII

Afternoon Calls

"If you climb to our castle's top
I don't see where your eyes can stop."