He only shook his head over his bread and milk, and did not lift his
face.
'Are you English, then?' I said.
No one but an Englishman would have hidden his face in a bowl of milk,
and have shaken his red ears in such painful confusion.
'Yes,' he said, 'I am.'
And I started almost out of my skin at the unexpected London accent. It
was as if one suddenly found oneself in the Tube.
'So am I,' I said. 'Where have you come from?'
Then he began, like a general explaining his plans, to tell me. He had
walked round over the Furka Pass, had been on foot four or five days. He
had walked tremendously. Knowing no German, and nothing of the
mountains, he had set off alone on this tour: he had a fortnight's
holiday. So he had come over the Rhone Glacier across the Furka and down
from Andermatt to the Lake. On this last day he had walked about thirty
mountain miles.
'But weren't you tired?' I said, aghast.
He was. Under the inflamed redness of his sun- and wind- and snow-burned
face he was sick with fatigue. He had done over a hundred miles in the
last four days.
'Did you enjoy it?' I asked.
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