"Generously spoken! But I came here and hired most of this inn to be near the telegraph office. Though as big a fool as you care to call me I nevertheless look to my buttons. The hook-and-eye people are formidable competitors, and the button may in time become obsolete--stranger things have happened. I keep in touch with our main office, and when I don't feel very good I fire somebody. Only this morning I bounced our general manager by wire for sending me a letter in purple type-writing; I had warned him, you understand, that he was to write to me in black. But it was only a matter of time with that fellow. He entered a bull pup against mine in the Westchester Bench Show last spring and took the ribbon away from me. I really couldn't stand for that. In spite of my glassy splash in the asparagus bed, I'm a man who looks to his dignity, Donovan. Will you smoke?" I lighted my pipe and encouraged him to go on. "How long have you been in this bake-oven?" "I moved in this morning--you are my first pilgrim. I have spent the long hot day in getting settled. I had to throw out the furniture and buy new stuff of the local emporium, where, it depressed me to learn, furniture for the dead is supplied even as for the living. That chair, which I beg you to accept, stood next in the shop to a coffin suitable for a carcass of about your build, old man. But don't let the suggestion annoy you! I read your book on tiger hunting a few years ago with pleasure, and I'm sure you enjoy a charmed life. "I myself," he continued, taking a chair near me and placing his feet in an open window, "am cursed with rugged health. I have quite recovered from those unkind cuts at the nunnery--thanks to your ministrations--and am willing to put on the gloves with you at any time." "You do me great honor; but the affair must wait for a lower temperature." "As you will! It is not like my great and gracious ways to force a fight. Pardon me, but may I inquire for the health of the ladies at Saint What's-her-name's?" "They are quite well, thank you." "I am glad to know it;"--and his tone lost for the moment its jauntiness. "Henry Holbrook has gone to New York." "Good riddance!" I exclaimed heartily. "And now--" "--And now if I would only follow suit, everything would be joy plus for you!" He laughed and slapped his knees at my discomfiture, for he had read my thoughts exactly. "You certainly are the only blot on the landscape!" "Quite so. And if I would only go hence the pretty little idyl that is being enacted in the delightful garden, under the eye of a friendly chaperon, would go forward without interruption."