Dr. Harpe laughed good-naturedly; she had no desire to antagonize Mrs. Terriberry.
She watched the Dago Duke hold up a warning finger as Essie placed the heavy hotel dishes before him.
"Be careful, Miss, be very careful not to nick this fragile ware. As a lover of ceramic art, it would pain me to see it injured."
The girl dimpled, and, in spite of herself, burst into a trill of laughter which was so merry and contagious that the grave stranger beside him looked up at her with an interested and amused smile as though seeing her for the first time.
"Breakfasting at the Terriberry House was a pleasure which seemed a long way off last night," observed the Dago Duke without embarrassment. "You heard the imprisoned bird singing for his liberty? Music to soothe the savage breast of your sheriff. When I am myself I can converse in five languages; when I am drunk it is my misfortune to be able only to sing or holler. Your jail is a disgrace to Crowheart; I've never been in a worse one. The mattress is lumpy and the pillow hard; I was voicing my protest."
"I don't care why you sing so long as you sing," said Essie, dimpling again. "It was beautiful, but isn't it bad for your health to get so—drunk?"
"Not at all," returned the Dago Duke airily. "Look at me—fresh as a rock-rose with the dew on it!"
Again the grave stranger smiled but rather at Essie Tisdale's laughter than his companion's brazen humor.
He interested Dr. Harpe, this other stranger, and as soon as her breakfast was finished she looked for his name upon the register.
"Ogden Van Lennop," she read, and his address was a little town in the county. She shook her head and said to herself: "He never came from this neck of the woods. Another black sheep, I wonder?"