Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer were amongst these, and Squib soon picked them out. He did not, however, quit his post of vantage till he had seen all the luggage swung on board by the great crane, which he thought very interesting; and then he went to the very back of the boat where he had seen a nice coil of rope lying, and scrambling up on this he found that he was able to make a fine perch for himself, where he could see the water and have a fine view of the boat, and watch the shore as it seemed to slip away astern.
There was rather a stiff breeze blowing when they got into mid-channel, and the vessel rocked and rolled as the big green waves lifted her up and let her down. Squib thought it better than any rocking-chair or rocking-horse he had ever been on, but he noticed that some of the people began to look very queer. A sort of green hue overspread their faces, and then they generally retired from the scene, and he wondered where they all went. Poor Czar, too, grew rather restless and unhappy, and got up from beside Squib, and took a turn or two and then came and lay down again, and looked up pitifully at his little master, as if asking for sympathy. He did not seem able to get comfortable, and Squib wondered what was the matter.
“Oh, Lor’ bless you, little master, he’s only a bit sea-sick, just the same as Christian folks!” said the kindly sailor whose acquaintance Squib had made previously, and who chanced to pass along at that time. “Like enough he’ll just be a bit sick, like the other folks, and then be right again. It’s a queer thing when you come to think of it, sea-sickness. But Lor’ bless you, nine-tenths of the folks as comes aboard in bad weather can’t stand up against it. You don’t seem no worse yourself though, little master.”
“Oh no; I like it. I didn’t know what made them all look so queer. I heard mother saying she was afraid it would be rough crossing, and that she would be ill. I hope she isn’t.”
Poor Czar, however, did not escape, and was very unhappy for a time, and then quite ill; but the passage was quickly made, and once on firm ground again he thought no more of his troubles.
It amused Squib very much suddenly to hear everybody talking French, and to see the men in their blue blouses, and the fisherwomen in their white caps.
“I wish they wore pretty things like that in England,” he thought as he looked curiously about him, “and what a noise they do make; and how they jabber, and laugh, and move their hands about – just like Mademoiselle when she wants to make us understand. Oh, Uncle Ronald, are we going off already? It is such fun watching the people! I think France is a very pretty, funny country. Are we going to the Douane now? Mademoiselle told me all about that. And shall I have to ‘declare’ Czar? Is he contraband?”
“I don’t think so, but you can ask if you like,” answered Uncle Ronald, laughing. “Come along this way if you want to see the business. Your father is going to the train with the ladies, and Mr. Lorimer will see to the luggage.”
“I should like to go too,” said Squib, keenly interested in the proceedings; and accordingly his uncle led him into a great bare room where luggage was being brought in on the shoulders of blue-bloused men, and where officials were gravely asking questions over the counter on which it was placed, and marking off with white chalk the piles of luggage passed. Squib was greatly amused, especially when one man was detected smuggling tobacco under a lot of books. They could not stay to the end of the altercation, but the gestures of the French official amused the child exceedingly, as well as the laborious efforts of the Englishman to follow, and hold his own in conversation.
Then there was a rush for the train, a confabulation with the authorities about Czar, who was finally permitted to go in the carriage with the party, Uncle Ronald feeling sure that the balance in his favour was turned by Squib’s pretty childish pleading in French, and his confidence that everybody must see the many perfections of his four-footed friend. Perhaps the guard did not particularly desire the companionship of the great hound; perhaps Colonel Rutland’s air of milord Anglais had due effect. Anyway, Czar travelled peacefully to Paris with his owners, and was accorded a like privilege almost the whole way through.
Paris was very gay as the travellers drove through the streets to the hotel in the Rue Rivoli, where Colonel Rutland always stayed. Lady Mary was by this time very tired, and went at once to her room; but Squib was immensely excited by everything, and very anxious to see at least one or two of those sights of Paris over the description of which Mademoiselle had so often grown excited; so Uncle Ronald good-naturedly volunteered to pilot him, provided he would do the talking, to which Squib readily agreed.
First they had some lunch in the Champs Elysées under the trees, which seemed to Squib such a superior arrangement, that he wondered why people ever went indoors to eat. Then they visited the Louvre and spent an hour there, after which a fiacre was chartered to take them to Notre Dame and one or two other places of interest, which Squib felt much elevated by having seen. But the real excitement of the day was when, in returning, Uncle Ronald took him into a shop such as only Paris seems able to produce, and after a great deal of laughing and chaffering with a bright-faced French saleswoman, who was equally amused at Uncle Ronald’s bad and Squib’s good French, a small silver hunting-watch was purchased, together with a silver chain, and presented to the astonished Squib by his young uncle.
“Something to remember your first visit to Paris by, old chap,” he said, as he led him back to the hotel, “and to tell you the time when you get out amongst the mountains, and have nobody to remind you of it, and no big gong carrying a mile to ring you in.”
As for Squib, he hardly knew what to make of his good fortune, and his thanks were so long in coming that it seemed as if Uncle Ronald would have to go without them altogether; but, when they did come, it was with a “chiff and a rush,” as he described it afterwards, which was in itself enough to justify the sobriquet by which his small nephew went. Early upon the following morning, the party started for their long journey across France to Switzerland.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHALET IN THE HILLS
“I don’t call France pretty at all, though Mademoiselle does call it ‘La belle France,’” said Squib from his station at the carriage window, after some hours of silent study. “It’s all flat like a map, and the trees look as if somebody had gone round with an axe and taken all their heads off when they were little, and the rivers look like canals. I like the people and the animals. It’s nice of the cows to help in the fields and to draw the wagons; and the dogs help too, which is very kind of them; and I like the funny clothes the people wear. I should like a blue blouse myself, when I get to Switzerland. But I don’t call it pretty at all; not even the vineyards – and I always thought vineyards would be lovely. England is much prettier – but there’s something funny and queer about France, and that makes it interesting. I like the way they build their châteaux – with such queer little pepper-box towers, and such a lot of red roof. I should like to live in one of those little turrets myself, and have a lot of animals there to keep me company. But I don’t think there’s so very much in France that’s amusing.”
Squib was keenly interested in all he saw, but his longing all the while was for Switzerland, and the chalet in the hills of which he had heard so much, and Lisa, who was to be waiting for them there, with her stories of mountain-spirits and the water-fairies. He was almost sorry when he found that a few days were to be spent at Interlaken before they reached their final destination; yet as soon as they crossed the frontier the sense of interest and delight awoke within him, and he had no time for regrets or useless longings.
Even the railway travelling was more amusing now – the little queer carriages with a passage all down them, the blowing of horns when each station was reached or left behind, the costumes of the peasants as the travellers got more