She doesn't say so in so many words, but I can see it's that.

She wants to get out of our expedition to Monte Rosa hut--wants me to go alone.

The question is, ought I to let her get out of it?
Does it matter one rap what this rabble says about us?
I've come to ask your advice--you were such a brick about it all last night--and what you say I'll do." I had begun to smile at Bob's notion of "a rabble": this one happened to include a few quite eminent men, as you have seen, to say nothing of the average quality of the crowd, of which I had been able to form some opinion of my own.

But I had already noticed in Bob the exclusiveness of the type to which he belonged, and had welcomed it as one does welcome the little faults of the well-night faultless.

It was his last sentence that made me feel too great a hypocrite to go on smiling.
"It may not matter to you," I said at length, "but it may to the lady." "I suppose it does matter more to them ?" The sunburnt face, puckered with a wry wistfulness, was only comic in its incongruous coat of grease.