"What's the matter?" asked Wallingford, detecting something real beneath all this absurdity. "I called at your place in Boston, and found a corn doctor's sign on the door. I didn't mean to plant you out here."
"Plant is the word," responded Mr. Daw, "and I've rooted fast in the soil. I'm going to take out naturalization papers and grow a chin beard. You're harboring a fugitive, Jim. The very day I got your letter from dear old Lunnon, throwing open a section of your bank account and telling me to buy a farm, the postal authorities took it into their heads to stop all traffic in the Yellow Streak gold mine; also they wanted to mark one Horace G. Daw 'Exhibit A,' and slam him in a cold cage for future reference; so I put on my green whiskers and snuck here to the far, far prairies."
A certain amount of reserve had been quite noticeable in Mrs. Wallingford, and it was still apparent as she asked courteously:
"Where is Mrs. Daw?"
"Raven, if you please," he corrected her, and, in spite of his general air of flippancy, his face lengthened a trifle. "Mrs. Violet Bonnie D.," he replied, "has returned to the original lemon box of which she was so perfect a product, and is now delighting a palpitating public in 'The Jolly Divorcée,' with a string of waiting Johnnies from the stage door two blocks down Broadway every night. Let us mention the lady no more lest I use language."
"What a pretty place you have made of this!" exclaimed Mrs. Wallingford, thawing into instant amiability. She had her own reasons for being highly pleased with the absence of Violet Bonnie Daw.
"Pretty good," agreed the pseudo Raven. "Step inside and imagine you're in Peacock Alley at the Waldorf."
With considerable pride he led them inside. Knowing Wallingford as he did, he had spared no expense to make this house as luxurious as fine furnishings would render it, and, having considerable taste in Wallingford's own bizarre way, he had accomplished rather flaming results.
"And this," said he, throwing open a door upstairs, "is my own room; number twenty-three. Upon the walls you will observe the mournful relics of a glorious past."
The ceiling was papered with silver stock certificates of the late Los Pocos Lead Development Company, the walls with dark green shares of the late Mexican and Rio Grande Rubber Company, and dark red ones of the late St. John's Blood Orange Plantation Company, while walls and ceiling were divided by a frieze of the beautiful orange-colored stock certificates of the late Yellow Streak Gold Mining Company.