Who is well."
"--Shared some slight glacier dangers together. If, with a boy's vanity,
I rather vaunted my family, I hope I did so as a kind of introduction of
myself. It was very weak, and in very bad taste; but perhaps you know
our English proverb, 'Live and Learn.'"
"You make too much of it," returned the Swiss. "And what the devil!
After all, yours _was_ a fine family."
George Vendale's laugh betrayed a little vexation as he rejoined: "Well!
I was strongly attached to my parents, and when we first travelled
together, Mr. Obenreizer, I was in the first flush of coming into what my
father and mother left me. So I hope it may have been, after all, more
youthful openness of speech and heart than boastfulness."
"All openness of speech and heart! No boastfulness!" cried Obenreizer.
"You tax yourself too heavily. You tax yourself, my faith! as if you was
your Government taxing you! Besides, it commenced with me. I remember,
that evening in the boat upon the lake, floating among the reflections of
the mountains and valleys, the crags and pine woods, which were my
earliest remembrance, I drew a word-picture of my sordid childhood. Of
our poor hut, by the waterfall which my mother showed to travellers; of
the cow-shed where I slept with the cow; of my idiot half-brother always
sitting at the door, or limping down the Pass to beg; of my half-sister
always spinning, and resting her enormous goitre on a great stone; of my
being a famished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they
were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I, the only child of my
father's second marriage--if it even was a marriage.
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