John Stuart Webster studied the name after the conductor withdrew. “That's a Spanish name,” he soliloquized, “but for all that, she's not a parakeet. There's something Gaelic about her features, particularly her eyes. They're brown, with golden flecks in them, and if she had a drop of dark blood in her, they'd be smoky and languid. Also if she were a Latin she would have referred to my black eye—whereas she referred to, a red eye with blue trimmings! Same thing but different! All things considered, I guess I'll take a chance and investigate.”
CHAPTER III
WEBSTER'S dreams of bliss had, with very slight variation, come true as per schedule.
In Salt Lake City he abandoned the beefsteak on his damaged eye for two businesslike leeches, which quickly reduced the nocturne effect around his orb, enabling him, the third day, to saunter forth among his fellowmen. By the end of the week he was a being reincarnated, and so he packed a huge new wardrobe-trunk with his latest purchases and journeyed on to Denver. Coincident with his arrival there, we again take up the thread of our story.
One hour after his trunk arrived the gentleman from Death Valley might have been observed standing before a cheval glass looking long and earnestly at the reflection of his middle-aged person, the while he marked the fit of his new raiment.
Let us describe these habiliments, alleging as an excuse for dwelling with emphasis upon the subject the fact that John Stuart Webster was all dressed up for the first time in three long, labour-ridden years, and was tremendously glad of it. Hark to this inventory. There were the silken hose and underwear next his well-scrubbed skin; then there was the white pleated linen shirt—a shirt so expensive and exquisite that Mr. Webster longed to go somewhere and shoot a game of billiards, in order that thus he might have an excuse to remove his coat and exhibit that shirt to the gaze of the multitude. His collar irked him slightly, but he had been assured by the clerk who sold it to him “that it was strictly in vogue.” His gray silk Ascot tie was held in a graceful puff by a scarfpin with a head of perfect crystal prettily shot with virgin gold; his black afternoon coat enveloped his wide shoulders and flanked his powerful neck with the perfection of the epidermis on a goose in the pink of condition; his gray striped trousers broke exactly right over his new “patent leather” shoes. The tout ensemble, as the gentleman himself might have expressed it had he possessed a working knowledge of French (which he did not), was perfect.
He “shot” his cuffs and strutted backward and forward, striving to observe his spinal column over his right shoulder, for he was in a transport of delight as truly juvenile as that on the never-to-be-forgotten day when he had attained to the dignity of his first pair of long trousers. He observed to himself that it was truly remarkable, the metamorphosis nine tailors and a talkative barber can make in an old sour-dough.
Presently, convinced that he was the glass of fashion and the mould of form, Mr. Webster took up a smart lancewood stick and a pair of new gray suede gloves and descended to the lobby of Denver's most exclusive hotel. He paused at the cigar stand long enough to fill his case with three-for-a-half perfectos and permit the young woman in charge to feast her world-weary eyes on his radiant person (which she did, classifying and tabulating him instantly as a millionaire mining man from Nevada). After this he lighted a cigar and stepped forth into Seventeenth Street, along which he strolled until he came to a certain building into the elevator of which he entered and was whisked to the twelfth floor, where he alighted and found himself before a wide portal which bore in gold letters the words: Engineers' Club.