I promised that, too, and she went away, but I made up my mind to talk to Mr. Pierce.  The sanatorium business isn’t one where you can put your own likes and dislikes against the comfort of the guests.

Miss Cobb came out a few minutes after; she had on her new green silk with the white lace trimming.  She saw me staring as she threw off her cape and put her curler on the log.

“It’s a little dressy for so early, of course, Minnie,” she said, “but I wish you’d see some of the other women!  Breakfast looked like an afternoon reception.  What would you think of pinning this black velvet ribbon around my head?”

“It might have done twenty years ago, Miss Cobb,” I answered, “but I wouldn’t advise it now.”  I was working at the slot-machine, and I heard her sniff behind me as she hung up her mirror on the window-frame.

She tried the curler on the curtain, which she knows I object to, but she was too full of her subject to be sulky for long.

“I wish you could see Blanche Moody!” she began again, standing holding the curler, with a thin wreath of smoke making a halo over her head.  “Drawn in—­my dear, I don’t see how she can breathe!  I guess there’s no doubt about Mr. von Inwald.”

“I’d like to know who put this beer check in the slot-machine yesterday,” I said as indifferently as I could.  “What about Mr. von Inwald?”

She tiptoed over to me, the halo trailing after her.

“About his being a messenger from the prince to Miss Jennings!” she answered in a whisper.  “He spent last night closeted with papa, and the chambermaid on that floor told Lily Biggs that there was almost a quarrel.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I objected.  “If the Angel Gabriel was shut in with Mr. Jennings for ten minutes he’d be blowing his trumpet for help.”

Miss Cobb shrugged her shoulders and took hold of a fresh wisp of hair with the curler.

“I dare say,” she assented, “but the Angel Gabriel wouldn’t have waited to breakfast with Miss Jennings, and have kissed her hand before everybody at the foot of the stairs!”

“Is he handsome?” I asked, curious to know how he would impress other women.  But Miss Cobb had never seen a man she would call ugly.

“Handsome!” she said.  “My dear, he’s beautiful!  He has a duel scar on his left cheek—­all the nobility have them over there.  I’ve a cousin living in Berlin—­she’s the wittiest person—­and she says the German child of the future will be born with a scarred left cheek!”

Well, I was sick enough of hearing of Mr. von Inwald before the day was over.  All morning in the spring-house they talked Mr. von Inwald.  They pretended to play cards, but they were really playing European royalty.  Every time somebody laid down a queen, he’d say, “Is the queen still living, or didn’t she die a few years ago?” And when they played the knave, they’d start off about the prince again.  They’d all decided that Mr. von Inwald was noble—­somebody said that the “von” was a sort of title.  The women were planning to make the evenings more cheerful, too.  They couldn’t have a dance with the men using canes or forbidden to exercise, but Miss Cobb had a lot of what she called “parlor games” that she wanted to try out.  “Introducing the Jones family” was one of them.