Dubois threw up both hands in vehement protest.
"Non, non! Mon Dieu, non, non!"
The Dago Duke shrugged his shoulders impertinently.
"You aim higher, perhaps?"
"Mais certes," he leered. "Old Dubois has thirty thousand sheep."
"To exchange for——"
"A queen, ze belle of Crowheart—Mees Essie Teesdale!"
The Dago Duke stared and continued to regard his employer fixedly. Essie Tisdale! Had the solitude affected the old man's mind at last? Was he crazy? How else account for the preposterous suggestion, his colossal egotism? Why, Essie Tisdale, even to the Dago Duke's critical eye, was like a delicately tinted prairie rose, while old Dubois with his iron-gray hair bristling on his bullet-shaped head, his thick, furrow-encircled neck, his swarthy, obstinate, brutal face, was seventy, a remarkable seventy, it is true, but seventy, and far from prepossessing. It was too absurd! It must be one of the lady doc's practical jokes—it was sufficiently indelicate, he told himself. At any rate he would soon see Dubois returning crestfallen from his courting expedition, and the sight, he felt, was one he should relish.
"I'll reserve my congratulations until you come," said the Dago Duke as he picked up his sheep-herder's staff and returned to his band of sheep.
"You will have ze opportunity, my frien'," grinned Dubois confidently.