Nothing could have been simpler or more pleasing
than the little visit turned out to be. Miss Madden
had suddenly grown tired of the snowless and dripping
English winter, and had as promptly decided to come
to Switzerland, where the drifts ought to be high enough,
and the frosts searching enough, in all conscience.
They had selected Territet, because it was familiar to her,
and because it was on the way to Martigny and Brieg,
and she had had a notion of crossing either the Simplon
or the St. Bernard in winter. As she found now,
the St. Bernard was quite impracticable, but admittedly
a post road was kept open over the Simplon. It was said
now that she would not be allowed to proceed by this,
but it often happened that she did the things that she
was not allowed to do. The hotel-people at both Brieg
and Berisal had written refusing to let their horses attempt
the Simplon journey, and they were of course quite within
their rights, but there were other horses in Switzerland.
One surely could buy horses--and so on.
Thorpe also had his turn at autobiography. He told
rather whimsically of his three months' experiences at
the tail of the juvenile whirligigs, and his auditors
listened to them with mild smiles. He ventured upon
numerous glowing parentheses about Julia, and they at
least did not say that they did not want to know her.
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