“It's the climate, pardner. These here high altitudes braces a man up most amazin'——”
“The climate's all right, but you can get just as rank here as anywhere else,” warned Johnny. Mr. Bunny gave him a sidelong glance. Johnny completed his toilet in silence.
“Going in to supper now, Mr. Severance?” asked Mr. Bunny affably.
Johnny nodded, led the way around the building, in through the office, and on into the diningroom where sat Miss Mollie, inoffensive Mr. Brown and Mollie at supper. He presented Mr. Bunny with no little formality.
Mr. Bunny's company manners immediately developed one striking merit. They seemed to afford their fortunate possessor the greatest possible satisfaction and confidence. Also when you tapped Mr. Bunny you tapped an unfailing spring. Moreover he had a generous and withal a thoughtful nature, had Mr. Bunny, especially was it thoughtful.
“Miss Ferguson will try them pickles, Mr. Severance. Just chase the butter down this way, Mr. Brown,—Miss Mollie's aimin' her eye at it. Mr. Severance, 'low me to shoot a slice of bread on to your plate...” This and much more of a similar character in the interval of agreeable and easy conversation, the burden of which Mr. Bunny lightly sustained. And while he talked, his small wicked eyes, close-set under their low brows and of an indeterminable color, slid around in a furtive circle. They took in everything, but they came back and back to Mollie.
“Say, Denver, Albuquerque, Dawson, 'Frisco,—I've seen 'em all; and say, I've seen a lot of life, too,—and me only twenty-five. How many fellows do you reckon have been about as much as me? But I'm giving it to you straight when I say it's good to hit a place like this where you feel at home, and where you can wash out of a tin basin at the back door like you done at mother's!”
Johnny listened abashed to Mr. Bunny's easy flow of words. It might have occurred to him that this fascinating stranger never spoke of anybody but himself; that his own moods, emotions, ambitions, thoughts so called, occupied him entirely and to the exclusion of all else, for he moved in a world of men rock walled by his own towering egotism. It was wasted labor to try to change the drift of the conversation. Whatever was said instantly reminded Mr. Bunny of himself. At the most, one merely opened up fresh and inviting fields for him to enter and claim his place in the foreground.
After supper he cornered quiet Mr. Brown in the office. That gentleman's bad eye had attracted his attention, and he seized the first opportunity to ask Brown how he came by that scar, thus artfully framing a question that covered the eye as well.
“Knife slipped while I was picking my teeth,” said Brown, regarding him malevolently.