“And wouldn’t he come?” John asked; “and why not?”
“Oh,” she exclaimed with a laugh and a shrug of her shoulders, “shoes.”
“Shoes!” said John. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say,” was the rejoinder. “When I went back to the room I found my brother-in-law sitting on the edge of the lounge, or what you call it, all dressed but his coat, rubbing his chin between his finger and thumb, and gazing with despairing perplexity at his feet. It seems that my sister had got past all the other dilemmas, but in a moment of inadvertence had left the shoe question to him, with the result that he had put on one russet shoe and one black one, and had laced them up before discovering the discrepancy.”
“I don’t see anything very difficult in that situation,” remarked John.
“Don’t you?” she said scornfully. “No, I suppose not, but it was quite enough for Julius, and more than enough for my sister and me. His first notion was to take off both shoes and begin all over again, and perhaps if he had been allowed to carry it out he would have been all right; but Alice was silly enough to suggest the obvious thing to him—to take off one, and put on the mate to the other—and then the trouble began. First he was in favor of the black shoes as being thicker in the sole, and then he reflected that they hadn’t been blackened since coming on board. It seemed to him that the russets were more appropriate anyway, but the blacks were easier to lace. Had I noticed whether the men on board were wearing russet or black as a rule, and did Alice remember whether it was one of the russets or one of the blacks that he was saying the other day pinched his toe? He didn’t quite like the looks of a russet shoe with dark trousers, and called us to witness that those he had on were dark; but he thought he remembered that it was the black shoe which pinched him. He supposed he could change his trousers—and so on, and so on, al fine, de capo, ad lib, sticking out first one foot and then the other, lifting them alternately to his knee for scrutiny, appealing now to Alice and now to me, and getting more hopelessly bewildered all the time. It went on that way for, it seemed to me, at least half an hour, and at last I said, ‘Oh, come now, Julius, take off the brown shoe—it’s too thin, and doesn’t go with your dark trousers, and pinches your toe, and none of the men are wearing them—and just put on the other black one, and come along. We’re all suffocating for some fresh air, and if you don’t get started pretty soon we shan’t get on deck today.’ ‘Get on deck!’ he said, looking up at me with a puzzled expression, and holding fast to the brown shoe on his knee with both hands, as if he were afraid I would take it away from him by main strength—‘get on deck! Why—why—I believe I’d better not go out this morning, don’t you?’ ”
“And then?” said John after a pause.
“Oh,” she replied, “I looked at Alice, and she shook her head as much to say, ‘It’s no use for the present,’ and I fled the place.”
“M’m!” muttered John. “He must have been a nice traveling companion. Has it been like that all the time?”
“Most of it,” she said, “but not quite all, and this morning was rather an exaggeration of the regular thing. But getting started on a journey was usually pretty awful. Once we quite missed our train because he couldn’t make up his mind whether to put on a light overcoat or a heavy one. I finally settled the question for him, but we were just too late.”
“You must be a very amiable person,” remarked John.
“Indeed, I am not,” she declared, “but Julius is, and it’s almost impossible to be really put out with him, particularly in his condition. I have come to believe that he can not help it, and he submits to my bullying with such sweetness that even my impatience gives way.”
“Have you three people been alone together all the time?” John asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “except for four or five weeks. We visited some American friends in Berlin, the Nollises, for a fortnight, and after our visit to them they traveled with us for three weeks through South Germany and Switzerland. We parted with them at Metz only about three weeks since.”
“How did Mr. Carling seem while you were all together?” asked John, looking keenly at her.
“Oh,” she replied, “he was more like himself than I have seen him for a long time—since he began to break down, in fact.”
He turned his eyes from her face as she looked up at him, and as he did not speak she said suggestively, “You are thinking something you don’t quite like to say, but I think I know pretty nearly what it is.”
“Yes?” said John, with a query.
“You think he has had too much feminine companionship, or had it too exclusively. Is that it? You need not be afraid to say so.”
“Well,” said John, “if you put it ‘too exclusively,’ I will admit that there was something of the sort in my mind, and,” he added, “if you will let me say so, it must at times have been rather hard for him to be interested or amused—that it must have—that is to say—”
“Oh, say it!” she exclaimed. “It must have been very dull for him. Is that it?”
“ ‘Father,’ ” said John with a grimace, “ ‘I can not tell a lie!’ ”
“Oh,” she
