Mrs. Sidebottom had reached Lucerne very rumpled and dirty and out of temper, having travelled all night from Brussels, and having had to turn out and have her boxes examined at Thionville and Basle. She had scrambled through a wretched breakfast off cold coffee and a roll at Strasburg, at four o’clock in the morning, and then had been condemned to crawl along by a slow train from Strasburg to Basle, and by another, still slower, from Basle to Lucerne. A night in a comfortable hotel had restored her wonderfully; and when she took her place under the awning in the lake steamer, with a ticket in her glove for Fluelen, which she insisted on calling Flew-ellen, she was in a contented mood, and inclined to patronize the scenery.
The day was lovely, the water blue, Pilatus without his cap, and the distant Oberland peaks seen above the Brunig Pass were silver against a turquoise sky.
’This,’ said Mrs. Sidebottom, dipping into ’Murray’s Handbook’ to ascertain what it was proper to say—’this is distinguished above every lake in Switzerland, and perhaps in Europe, by the beauty and sublime grandeur of its scenery.’
Then past her drifted a party of English tourists, also with ’Murray’ in their hands and on their lips. ’Oh, mamma!’ exclaimed a young lady, ’this lake is of very irregular shape, assuming near its west extremity the form of a cross. Do you see? There is one arm, we are approaching another, and there is the leg.’
’My dear,’ said her mother, ’don’t say leg; it is improper; say stem.’
’And, mamma, how true "Murray" is!—is it not wonderful? He says that at this part the shores of the lake are undulating hills clothed with verdure, and dotted with houses and villas. He really must have seen the place to describe it so accurately.’
’Good gracious!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom; and then, after a pause, ’Gracious goodness!’
Lambert Pennycomequick took no notice of his mother’s exclamations, till a third ’gracious goodness,’ escaping her like the discharge of a minute-gun at sea, called his attention to her, and he asked, ’Well, what is it?’ As he received no answer, he said, ’I don’t believe in that honey served up at breakfast. It is not honey at all, but syrup in which stewed pears have soaked.’