There was no doubt that what I had done gratified my pique and tickled my vanity.
"I think now," I said, when I related the matter to my wife, "that he will scarcely say that I am not up to that sort of thing."
"I am not sure," she answered, "that it was exactly fair. He did not know how you were assisted."
"It was fair enough," I said. "He is enabled to climb well by the inherited vigor of his constitution and by his training. He did not tell me what methods of exercise he used to get those great muscles upon his legs. I am enabled to climb by the exercise of my intellect. My method is my business and his method is his business. It is all perfectly fair."
"He _thought_ that you climbed with your legs, and not with your head."
And now, after this long digression, necessary to explain how a middle-aged couple of slight pedestrian ability, and loaded with a heavy knapsack and basket, should have started out on a rough walk and climb, fourteen miles in all, we will return to ourselves, standing on the little bluff and gazing out upon the sunset view. When the sky began to fade a little we turned from it and prepared to go back to the town.
"I left it right here," answered my wife. "I unscrewed the machine and it lay perfectly flat."
"Did you afterward take out the bottles?" I asked, seeing them lying on the grass.
"Yes, I believe I did. I had to take out yours in order to get at mine."
"Then," said I, after looking all about the grassy patch on which we stood, "I am afraid you did not entirely unscrew the instrument, and that when the weight of the bottles was removed the basket gently rose into the air."
"It may be so," she said, lugubriously. "The basket was behind me as I drank my wine."
"I believe that is just what has happened," I said. "Look up there! I vow that is our basket!"
I pulled out my field-glass and directed it at a little speck high above our heads. It was the basket floating high in the air. I gave the glass to my wife to look, but she did not want to use it.
"What shall I do?" she cried. "I can't walk home without that basket. It's perfectly dreadful!" And she looked as if she was going to cry.
"Do not distress yourself," I said, although I was a good deal disturbed myself. "We shall get home very well. You shall put your hand on my shoulder, while I put my arm around you. Then you can screw up my machine a good deal higher, and it will support us both. In this way I am sure that we shall get on very well."