"And what sort of old witch did you have in the top bunk?"
"Young and pretty.
She's called Helga Guttmann, and she's going to the same sanatorium as I am."
"Really?"
"Yes, Robby.
But you've slept badly, that's evident.
You must have a good breakfast."
"Coffee," said I. "Coffee with a dash of cherry."
We went to the dining car.
I was suddenly quite cheerful again.
Things didn't seem so bad as last night.
Helga Guttmann was already there.
She was a slim, lively girl of southern type. "Extraordinary," said I, "that you should meet like that, going to the same sanatorium."
"Not so extraordinary at all," she replied.
I looked at her.
She laughed.
"All the birds migrating gather about this time.
Over there—" she pointed to the corner of the dining car—"the whole table is going too."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"I know everyone from last time.
Everybody knows everybody else up there."
The waiter came with the coffee.
"And bring me a large cherry brandy as well," said I.
I had to have something to drink.
It was suddenly all so simple.
There were people sitting there who were going to the sanatorium for the second time, even, and they seemed to make no more of it than if they were going for a walk.
It was stupid to be so frightened.
Pat would come back, just as all these people had come back.
I didn't stay to think that all these people were now going up again—it was enough to know that you did come back and have another whole year before you.
In a year a lot can happen.
The past had taught us to work on short credits.
We arrived late in the afternoon.
The weather had cleared, the sun shone golden on the fields of snow, and the sky was bluer than we had seen it for weeks.
At the station a crowd of people were waiting.
They shouted greetings and waved and the new arrivals waved back from the train.
Helga Guttmann was carried off by a laughing, fair-headed woman and two fellows in bright plus-fours.
She was quite excited and giddy, as if she had come home again after a long absence.
"Au revoir, afterwards, up top," she called to us, getting into a sleigh with her friends.
The people dispersed rapidly and a few minutes later we were alone on the platform.
A porter came up to us.
"What hotel?" he asked.
"Sanatorium Waldfrieden," I replied.
He nodded and signalled a driver.
The two stowed our luggage into a bright blue sleigh, harnessed to a pair of white horses.
The horses had gay tufts of feathers on their heads and the vapour of their breath drifted round their snouts like a cloud of mother-of-pearl.
We got in. "Do you want to go to the funicular, or up by sleigh?" asked the driver.
"How far is it with the sleigh?"
"Half an hour."
"Then by sleigh."
The driver clucked with his tongue and we set off.