The Lake of Hakone is a beautiful sheet of water, not unlike Lake[Pg 203] Tahoe in Californiaan aquatic gem in a setting of rugged mountains. These are not lofty, like the mountains of the Golden State, so far as their elevation above the lake is concerned; but they rise directly from the water, and present nearly everywhere a bold frontage. The surface of the lake is said to be more than six thousand feet above the level of the sea; and the water is clear and cold. Our young friends tried a bath in the lake, and found it as inconveniently cold as the springs had been inconveniently warm. "Some people are never satisfied," said Fred, when Frank was complaining about the temperature of the water in the lake. "You wouldn't be contented with the springs because they boiled you, and now you say the lake freezes you. Perhaps we'll find something by-and-by that will come to the point."Alice wished that Julia Fyson could hear him say that. (Julia Fyson probably would have if she had had the influenza too, but that{201} benumbing possibility did not enter Alices head.) He had called her Helper before, but the oftener he called her that the better.
FORE:He had written the cheque and passed it over to her. She took no notice whatever of it, tied the string round her parcel and put it on the table in the window. Then, still without a word, she took up her pencil and her writing-pad, and sat down to receive his dictation.
Well, nothing could possibly matter less to him, so it seemed at that moment, than what his typewriter thought about him. All that mattered was what he thought about his typewriter, whom he considered a very efficient young woman, who got through her work with extraordinary accuracy and speed. He did not care two straws whether she considered him a cad, for what signified the opinion of a girl whose sole connection with you was the nimbleness of her fingers, employed at twenty-five shillings a week? As long as she did her work well, she might take any view she chose about her employer who, for his part, had no views about her except those concerned with the speed and accuracy of her transcriptions.... And then, even as he assured himself that he was as indifferent to her opinion as the moon, he found himself hating the fact that she thought him a cad. Why had she thought that, he asked himself. He had been perfectly polite to her with the icy aloofness of the employer; he had even melted a little from that, for he had opened the door for her to go into her typewriting den, because her hands were full of the papers that composed her work. Why a cad then?{88}"Because we're going to Pek-in."The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.
