The Austrian customs
have taken from me to-day the equivalent of ten dollars in duty.
I offered them the tobacco on bended knee, but they scorned it."
"Really, Peter?"
"Really."
Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. Ten dollars
was fifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a great deal of money. She
reached over and patted his arm.
"You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some little
extravagance?"
"I might cut down on my tailor bills." He looked down at himself
whimsically. "Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties!"
They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with
that eternal military activity that seems to get nowhere, passed
on a dog-trot. Peter looked at them critically.
"Bosnians," he observed. "Raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia, nine
out of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military
play of Europe. How's Jimmy?"
"We left him very happy with your letter."
Peter flushed. "I expect it was pretty poor stuff," he
apologized. "I've never seen the Alps except from a train window,
and as for a chamois--"
"He says his father will surely send him the horns."
Peter groaned.
"Of course!" he said. "Why, in Heaven's name, didn't I make it an
eagle? One can always buy a feather or two. But horns? He really
liked the letter?"
"He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his
hands."
Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom-house forgotten,
he talked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be
done, if only there were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy.
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