"Will you ask him," said the colonel, "the outside price of a first-class assault and battery in Vienna?"
The consul put as much of this idea into German as the language would contain, which was enough to make the commissary laugh and shake his head warningly.
"It wouldn't do, he says, Kenton; it isn't the custom of the country."
"Very well, then, I don't see why we should occupy his time." He gave his hand to the commissary, whom he would have liked to embrace, and then hurried forth again with the consul. "There is one little thing that worries me still," he said. "I suppose Mrs. Kenton is simply crazy by this time."
"Is she of a very--nervous--disposition?" faltered the consul.
"Nervous? Well, if you could witness the expression of her emotions in regard to mice, you wouldn't ask that question, Davis."
At this desolating reply the consul was mute for a moment. Then he ventured: "I've heard--or read, I don't know which--that women have more real fortitude than men, and that they find a kind of moral support in an actual emergency that they wouldn't find in--mice."
"Pshaw!" answered the colonel. "You wait till you see Mrs. Kenton."
"Look here, Kenton," said the consul seriously, and stopping short. "I've been thinking that perhaps--I--I had better dine with you some other day. The fact is, the situation now seems so purely domestic that a third person, you know--"
"Come along!" cried the colonel. "I want you to help me out of this scrape. I'm going to leave that hotel as soon as I can put my things together, and you've got to browbeat the landlord for me while I go up and reassure my wife long enough to get her out of that den of thieves. What did you say the scoundrelly name was?"
"The Sign of the Savage, we should make it, I suppose,--the Wild Man."
"Well, I don't know whether it was named after me or not; but if I'd found that sign anywhere for the last four or five hours, I should have known it for home. There hasn't been any wilder man in Vienna since the town was laid out, I reckon; and I don't believe there ever was a wilder woman anywhere than Mrs. Kenton is at this instant."
Arrived at the Sign of the Savage, Colonel Kenton left his friend below with the portier, and mounting the stairs three steps at a time flew to his room. Flinging open the door, he beheld his wife dressed in one of her best silks, before the mirror, bestowing some last prinks, touching her back hair with her hand and twitching the bow at her throat into perfect place. She smiled at him in the glass, and said, "Where's Captain Davis?"