Water under the bridge

Having another rummage through accumulated old stuff (I believe it's called death-cleaning now) I made the serious mistake of opening the bin bag from my last foray into the past. (Yes obviously I should have got rid of it straight away.) Three ancient photos catch my eye and I can't resist another look. They're so seductive...

There in the centre is my father, sitting rather awkwardly on a chair in a garden, holding a stick and wearing a boater. I think he must be in his late teens, maybe still at school or at university in England, but these photos I'm pretty sure were all taken in Switzerland where he spent much of his childhood and where his father had lived since leaving Russia. This would make the date not long before the first world war. My father hated social events where he had to dress smartly and he hated being photographed; doubtless he's itching to escape into the mountains. He loved Switzerland for that reason.

I have no idea who the other two individuals are. On the right there's a  young man who is dressed to appear older (perhaps) with a generous-sized cap, collar and tie, jacket, walking stick, watch chain and a raincoat over his arm. He has a badge on his lapel (illegible but could it be a flag?) and over his shoulder is slung a box or case. He's standing beside a road and  there's snow on the ground. To me he looks like a youth setting out for his first job, perhaps in a clerical position or as a junior official, and he's anxious to give the right impression. He's unsmiling, a bit tense.

It's the young woman on the left who fascinates me. She's holding something up which at first I couldn't make out but magnified turns out to be a tobacco pipe (my father's? He was a pipe smoker and that curved style was what he favoured.) She's not conventionally pretty but she has wonderful dimples and is giving a mischievous smile as she pretends to smoke. Who can she be? Is she wearing an apron and does that suggest she was a servant or has she just donned it to perform a household task? Whoever she is she's clearly got a sense of fun and it would be entirely in character for my father to be enchanted by her. It's possible they were having a liaison of some sort.
(I've enlarged her face as an extra.)

Now they must all go back into the bin bag.

But I have so many more.