"Ma'am, you'll perhaps remember your own daddy wasn't so terribly happy over the prospect when I started sparking you. After I'd come courting and had gone on home again I guess it was as much as the old man could do to keep from taking a shovel and shoveling my tracks out of the front yard. But he had sense enough to keep his mouth shut where you were concerned. Suppose he'd tried to influence you against me, tried to break off the match--what would have happened? You'd have thought you were oppressed and persecuted and you'd have grabbed for me even quicker than you did." "Why, Hector Gatling, I never grabbed--" "I'm merely using a figure of speech. But no, he had too much gumption to undertake the stern-father racket. He locked his jaw and took it out in nasty looks and let nature take its course, and the consequence was we got married in the First Methodist Church with bridesmaids and old shoes and kins folks and all the other painful details instead of me sneaking you out of a back window some dark night and us running off together in a side-bar buggy. No, ma'am, if you'll take a tip from an old retired yardmaster of the Lackawanna, forty-seven years, man and boy, with one road, you'll--" "You never worked a day as a railroad man and you know it." "Just another figure of speech, my dear. Understand now, you're to keep mum for a while and I keep mum and we just sit back in our reserved seats up in the grandstand and see how the game comes out. A nice polite quiet game of watchful waiting--that's our line and we're both going to follow it. We'll stand by for future developments and then maybe I'll frame up a little campaign. With your valuable advice and assistance, of course!" * * * * * With a manner which she strove to make casual and unconcerned, the disturbed Mrs. Gatling that day watched. It was the manner rather of a solicitous hen with one lone chick, and she continually oppressed by dreads of some lurking chicken-hawk. It would have deceived no one who closely studied the lady's bearing and demeanor. But then, none in the party closely studied these.