For the wine is hidden in the grape, and the grape is ripening." And, as often as not, the chance acquaintance of an inn dejeuner would catch the phrase and repeat it thoughtfully.
"Ah! is that so ?" he would ask, with a sudden glance at Dormer Colville's companion, who had hitherto passed unobserved as the silent subordinate of a large buyer; learning his trade, no doubt.

"The grape is ripening.

Good!" And as sure as he seemed to be struck with this statement of a self-evident fact, he would, in the next few minutes, bring the numeral "nineteen"-- tant bien que mal--into his conversation.
"With nineteen days of sun, the vintage will be upon us," he would say; or, "I have but nineteen kilometres more of road before me to-day." Indeed, it frequently happened that the word came in very inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsy conversationalist.
There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonism as travel--a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married life with a journey.

The majority of people like to know the worst at once.
To travel, however, with Dormer Colville was a liberal education in the virtues.

No man could be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which are the two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of travel.
Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Colville became fast friends during the month that elapsed between their departure from Mrs.St.
Pierre Lawrence's house and their arrival at the inn at Gemosac.