It was nine o'clock one night when they reached Salzburg; and when their baggage had been visited and their passports examined, they had still half an hour to wait before the train went on. They profited by the delay to consider what hotel they should stop at in Vienna, and they advised with their Bradshaw on the point. This railway guide gave in its laconic fashion several hotels, and specified the Kaiserin Elisabeth as one at which there was a table d'hôte, briefly explaining that at most hotels in Vienna there was none.
"That settles it," said Mrs. Kenton. "We will go to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, of course. I'm sure I never want the bother of ordering dinner in English, let alone German, which never was meant for human beings to speak."
"It's a language you can't tell the truth in," said the colonel thoughtfully. "You can't call an open country an open country; you have to call it a Black Forest." Mrs. Kenton sighed patiently. "But I don't know about this Kaiserin Elisabeth business. How do we know that's the _real_ name of the hotel? How can _we_ be sure that it isn't an _alias_, an assumed name, trumped up for the occasion? I tell you, Bessie, we can't be too cautious as long as we're in this fatherland of lies. What guide-book is this? Baedeker? Oh! Bradshaw. Well, that's some comfort. Bradshaw's an Englishman, at least. If it had been Baedeker"--
"Oh, Edward, Edward!" Mrs. Kenton burst out. "Will you _never_ give that up? Here you've been harping on it for the last four days, and worrying my life out with it. I think it's unkind. It's perfectly bewildering me. I don't know where or what I am, any more." Some tears of vexation started to her eyes, at which Colonel Kenton put the shaggy arm of his overcoat round her, and gave her an honest hug.
"Well," he said, "I give it up, from this out. Though I shall always say that it was a joke that wore well. And I can tell you, Bessie, that it's no small sacrifice to give up a joke that you've just got into prime working order, so that you can use it on almost anything that comes up. But that's a thing that you can never understand. Let it all pass. We'll go to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, and submit to any sort of imposition they've a mind to practise upon us. I shall not breathe freely, I suppose, till we get into Italy, where people mean what they say. Haw, haw, haw!" laughed the colonel, "honest Iago's the man _I'm_ after."