The Argosy — page 290: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

No a ool JACK LAYBOURNE’S INHERITANCE. By JOYCE DARRELL, AUTHOR OF ‘*‘ THAT CHARMING COUNT.” I, Y sister Kate and I were—well, over twenty, and we disposed of ample means. We availed ourselves of these two cir- cumstances to do a great deal of travelling about the Continent. One early summer, on our way through Switzerland, from Italy to England, we decided to make acquaintance with the beautiful Zimmer Thal. For this purpose we engaged a carriage to drive us from Thun to Aigle, and on the particular afternoon when my story opens, we were already within six hours’ journey from the latter place. The scenery had been lovely, but now it was—as Monsieur de Talleyrand would have said—fas sz bien. We had reached a high point among the green Alps, where these presented somewhat bare and rugged crests, worn quite bald in parts from the recent slipping of the snow. Small patches of this still lay about in these first days of July, and the stillness of the lofty places was broken and made musical by the thousand babbling brooklets sent down the hillsides by the ice still melting far above. ‘The few chalets dotted about were deserted, for the inhabitants had migrated to mow the first hay lower down in the valley. In these higher regions the grass of the sloping pastures wore the fresh delicious verdure of earliest summer, and was thickly gemmed with wild flowers, whose fragrance floated upwards like incense through the pure air. Our immediate destination was the Hotel du Sceptre, a chalet- pension perched on a high table-land, and whose sole raison d’étre was the fact that it made aconvenient halting-place between Chateau d’Céu and Sepey. | “Have you quite decided to go on to Aigle, to-morrow ?” asked Kate, after a pause of somewhat drowsy contemplation. My sister was placid and a little lazy. ‘The consequence was that the admin- istrative portion of our common life fell upon me. “Of course!” I said. ‘‘ What shall we delay for? If Sepey were not so stuffy, I should have gone on there this evening, for I be- lieve this place we are going to stop at offers no attractions. It’s one of the cheap pensions affected by British widows and old maids.” ‘Well! we are British old maids ourselves,’ replied my sister, in her comfortable monotone. Finding nothing to say in answer to this that would not have sounded fatuous, I held my peace. And pre- sently the carriage stopped. The Hotel du Sceptre was exactly what I expected it tobe. It summed up the whole region in itself. There were half-a-dozen poor chalets near it, but they had nothing to do EOMINGIOOKS (©) am