“Are you serious--downright in earnest in all this?” asked Loyd.
“So serious, that I propose our bargain should begin from this hour. We shall each of us place ten Napoleons in that bag of yours. You shall administer all outlay, and I bind myself to follow implicitly all your behests, as though I were a ward and you my guardian.”
“I’m not very confident about the success of the scheme. I see many difficulties already, and there may be others that I cannot foresee; still, I am willing to give it a trial.”
“At last I realise one of my fondest anticipations which was to travel without the daily recurring miseries of money reckoning.”
“Don’t take those cigars, they are supplied by the waiter, and cost two groschen each, and they sell for three groschen a dozen in the Platz;” and, so saying, Loyd removed the plate from before him in a quiet business-like way, that promised well for the spirit is which his trust would be exercised.
Calvert laughed as he laid down the cigar, but his obedience ratified the pact between them.
“When do we go from this?” asked he, in a quiet and half-submissive tone.
“Oh, come, this is too much!” said Loyd. “I undertook to be purser, but not pilot.”
“Well, but I insist upon your assuming all the cares of legislation. It is not alone that I want not to think of the cash; but I want to have no anxieties about the road we go, where we halt, and when we move on. I want, for once in my life, to indulge the glorious enjoyment of perfect indolence--such another chance will scarcely offer itself.”
“Be it so. Whenever you like to rebel, I shall be just as ready to abdicate. I’ll go to my room now and study the map, and by the time you have finished your evening’s stroll on the bridge, I shall have made the plan of our future wanderings.”
“Agreed!” said Calvert. “I’m off to search for some of those cheap cigars you spoke of.”
“Stay; you forget that you have not got any money. Here are six silver groschen; take two dozen, and see that they don’t give you any of those vile Swiss ones in the number.”
He took the coin with becoming gravity, and set out on his errand.
PARTLY to suit Calvert’s passion for fishing, partly to meet his own love of a quiet, unbroken, easy existence, Loyd decided for a ramble through the lakes of Northern Italy; and, in about ten days after the compact had been sealed, they found themselves at the little inn of the Trota, on the Lago d’Orta. The inn, which is little more than a cottage, is beautifully situated on a slender promontory that runs into the lake, and is itself almost hidden by the foliage of orange and oleander trees that cover it. It was very hard to believe it to be an inn with its trellised vine-walk, its little arched boat-house, and a small shrine beside the lake, where on certain saints’ days, a priest said a mass, and blessed the fish and those that caught them. It was still harder, too, to credit the fact when one discovered his daily expenses to be all comprised within the limits of a few francs, and this with the services of the host, Signor Onofrio, for boatman.