“I'm afraid your tea is quite cold. Boozy? How singular! I hope it doesn't imply alcoholic habits.”
“No,” shaking his head gravely, so that his beard wagged to the judicial negation. “Takes so much to tank me up I can't afford it, let alone it ain't moral.”
The two ate with haste, the stranger from habit and experience, Father Wiliston for fear of Bettina's sudden return. When the last egg and slice of bread had disappeared, the stranger sat back with a wheezing sigh.
“I wonder,” began Father Wiliston mildly, “Mr. Toboso—Toboso is the last name, isn't it, and Del the first?”
“Ah,” the other wheezed mysteriously, “I don't know about that, Elder. That's always a question.”
“You don't know! You don't know!”
“Got it off'n another man,” went on Toboso sociably. “He said he wouldn't take fifty dollars for it. I didn't have no money nor him either, and he rolled off'n the top of the train that night or maybe the next I don't know. I didn't roll him. It was in Dakota, over a canyon with no special bottom. He scattered himself on the way down. But I says, if that name's worth fifty dollars, it's mine. Del Toboso. That's mine. Sounds valuable, don't it?”
Father Wiliston fell into a reverie. “To-boso? Why, yes. Dulcinea del Toboso. I remember, now.”
“What's that? Dulcinea, was it? And you knowed him?”
“A long while ago when I was younger. It was in a green cover. 'Don Quixote'—he was in a cage, 'The Knight of the Rueful Countenance.' He had his face between the bars.”