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SCENE -- _in Front of the Hotel Bodenhaus at Spluegen. The Diligence For Bellinzona is having its team attached. An elderly Englishwoman is sitting on her trunk, trying to run through the last hundred pages of a novel from the Hotel Library before her departure._ PODBURY _is in the Hotel, negotiating for sandwiches._ CULCHARD _is practising his Italian upon a very dingy gentleman in smoked spectacles, with a shawl round his throat._
THE DINGY ITALIAN (_suddenly discovering_ CULCHARD'S _nationality_). Ecco, siete Inglese! Lat us spika Ingelis. I onnerstan' 'im to ze bottomside. (_Laboriously, to_ CULCHARD, _who tries to conceal his chagrin._) 'Ow menni time you employ to go since Coire at here? (C. _nods with vague encouragement._) Vich manners of vezzer you vere possess troo your travels -- mosh ommerella? (C. 's _eyes grow vacant._) Ha, I _tink_ it vood! Zis day ze vicket root sall 'ave plenti 'orse to pull, &c., &c. (_Here_ PODBURY _comes up, and puts some rugs in the coupe of the diligence._) You sit at ze beginning-end, hey? better, you tink, zan ze mizzle? I too, zen, sall ride at ze front -- we vill spika Ingelis, altro!