A Mad Tour Author:J. H. Riddell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER II. HOW IT WENT OX. When I sold myself into slavery, when I agreed to be led by Bobby, and to become the victim of his whims, eternity could not have seemed much more remote ... more »than that evil thirty-first of May when we were to start on our travels. But the days had fled as spring days always seem to do, and it was the thirtieth of the fair spring month. Merry my friends had made themselves, very merry, and I joined in their laughter; but if they had only known what I felt, the most callous amongst them might have been moved to tears. Bobby was chaffed unmercifully. Surely, no one ever looked less fit to guide himself, to say nothing of another person, than did he. People came to tea and stayed for supper simply to listen to Bobby's programme. It was a joy even to hear him speak. " By the end of next week," said He, with the calm modesty of conscious power, " we shall be at Constance." " I shan't," I thought; " I shall be in the next world." " But you do not mean to say you will have textit{walked there ? " suggested a sceptic. " Yes," Bobby replied firmly; " with the exception only of that little bit of mountain railway to Friberg." " I would rather you did than I, then," was the sensible answer. " I wish there were any ' rather' in my case," I mentally considered. In the whole range of useless articles this world contains; there was scarcely one that Bobby had not been advised to include in his outfit. Materials for lighting fires in the event of being benighted, a small cooking battery, a lantern, the " Art of War," a pocket-compass, firearms, Liebig's extract, a tent, a hammock, a fishing-rod, a reading- lamp, were amongst the items suggested, but he rejected them all. "We are going," he said firmly, "only to take a knapsack each and waterproof—so much, and no...« less