"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked.

They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other
delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth
and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the
western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and
the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays
and whites into color.

"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which
bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of
stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half
like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I
think. Do you suppose that people live there?"

"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe.

Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose
pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by
the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of
the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were
white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of
lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and
made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French.

"Celle-la?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est
la Pension Suisse."

"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun
it must be to board there!"