01 The School at the Chalet Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’s very famous, and you ought to see it.’
    ‘Then there’s the Mariatheresien Strasse with its swagger shops,’ chimed in Dick, ‘and the great Triumphal Arch. And you must go down and have a look at the Inn. You’ll have plenty to do to-morrow, I can assure you. I’ll go up during the morning, Madge, and take the cases, then you and the kids can come on later.’
    Everyone agreed to this programme, and Jo and Grizel went off to bed quite happily, while their elders took a stroll up to the little station, where the electric railway, which is known as the Stubai Bahn, begins.
    ‘You ought to take the kids up here some day,’ observed Dick.
    ‘Some day,’ agreed Madge; ‘but do remember that I’m here to start a school in the first place!’
    ‘Geography,’ he said shortly, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘ You might make a week-end expedition of it in the summer and take them to the edges of the Stubai Glacier, You could get rooms in Fulpmes, and the Stubai valley is lovely.’
    ‘I know,’ said Madge, sighing. ‘It all is! But oh, Dick! Supposing it isn’t a success! Supposing I fail!’
    ‘Tosh!’ he said easily. ‘You won’t fail! You’ve too much grit for that. Other people. might; but you’ll go on! Buck up, old thing!’
    ‘But I’m so young,’ she said- ‘only twenty-four, Dick!’
    He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze.
    ‘You’ll pull through all right! Keep your hair on, old girl! We’d better be getting back now. You’re tired, and ought to be in bed.’
    ‘Yes, I am,’ acknowledged Madge. ‘Oh, Dick, I shall be so thankful to get to our own house! I must say it sounds attractive. What is little Simone like?’
    ‘Didn’t see much of her,’ he replied. ‘She struck me as jolly quiet. Very dark, of course; not a bit pretty like that Grizel kid.’
    ‘Yes, Grizel will be lovely when she’s grown-up,’ said his sister. ‘ I should think she’s clever, too. Oh, Dick, she and Jo were too funny for anything in Paris! Joey was dreaming it all into history, and Grizel is so absolutely matter of fact. She simply couldn’t understand Joey and her dream-pictures.’
    ‘Jolly good job,’ said Dick austerely. ‘Jo dreams far too much,’
    ‘Well, she hasn’t had much chance to do anything else,’ replied Madge. ‘Perhaps Grizel and Simone, and Evadne when she comes, will make her different.’
    ‘Oh, she’ll be better in the mountains,’ was his answer. ‘Half the trouble has been her health. She’s better already, I think, even though she’s tired.’
    ‘It can rain at Tiern See,’ Madge reminded him.
    ‘I know that. But she’ll have companions of her own age. And don’t you worry, my chicken! Everything’s going grandly!’
    With this assurance the subject was dropped, and presently they reached the hotel, and Madge retired to bed.
    The next day was spent in shopping and sight-seeing. Dick left them early in the day, and went up to Tiern See with the cases and the rugs, while the three girls explored the city to their hearts’ content. Grizel, quick to learn, was already picking up phrases in German, and she took the greatest delight in practising them. Jo, whose German had been fluent in the past, found it coming back to her, even as her French had begun to do in Paris. She instructed her friend as they went about, and eventually poured so much information into her, that it was small wonder that Grizel became muddled. The result was a mistake that the Bettanys remembered against her for long enough.

    Madge had decided to take both children to have their hair shampooed before going up to the lake. She remembered, from their last sojourn in the Tyrol, a very good hairdresser’s shop in the Museum Strasse, and thither she took them. The hairdresser had a little English, but not much. When the shampooing was over, he asked them whether the final rinsing should be of hot or cold water. The German for ‘ hot water’ is ‘heisses Wasser.’ Jo came through the