"The devil you say, Guy Little!" The old man, beginning to settle in his chair, sat bolt upright. "Is some female woman tryin' to get her hooks in my gran'son already? Name her to me, sir!" "Name of Temple," said Little. "Terry Temple as they call her, an' a sure good-lookin' party, if you ask me! Classy from eyes to ankles an' when it comes to----" "Hold on, Guy Little!" exploded old man Packard, leaping to his feet, towering high above the little man, who looked up at him with an earnest and placid expression. "That wench, that she-devil, that Jezebel! Settin' her traps for my boy Stephen, is she? Why, man alive, she ain't fit to scrape the corral-mud off'n his boots. She's a low-down, deceitful jade, that's what she is, sired by a sheep-stealin', throat-cuttin', ornery, no-'count, worthless cuss! The whole pack of them Temples, he an' she of 'em, big an' little of 'em, ought to be strung up on the firs' tree! The low-down bunch of little prairie dawgs, tryin' to trap a Packard with puttin' a putty-faced fool girl in their snare. I say, Guy Little, I'll make the whole crowd of 'em hunt their holes!" And he hurled his pipe from him so that on the hearthstone it broke into many pieces. Now that was a long speech for old man Packard and Guy Little listened interestedly. At the end, when the old man went growling back to his chair, the mechanician took up his tale. "She's purty, though," he maintained. "Like a picture!" "Doll-faced," snorted the old man, who had not the least idea what Terry Temple looked like, not having laid his eyes on her for the matter of years. "Dumpy, pudgy, squidge-nosed little fool. I'll run both her and her thief of a father out of the country." "An'," continued Guy Little, "I didn't exac'ly' say, m'lord, as how this Terry Temple party was after him. I said as how he was after her! That is, as how, roundin' out what I know about him, he's got a eye for a fine-lookin' lady. Which, against argyment, I maintain that Terry Temple girl is." "Guy Little," cried Packard sharply, "you're a fool! Maybe you know all there is about motor-cars an' gasoline. When it comes to females you're a fool." "Ah, m'lord, not so!" protested Guy Little, a gleam in his eye like a faint flicker from a dead fire. "There was a time--before I set these hoofs of mine into the wanderin' trail--when----" The rest might best be left entirely to the imagination and there he left it. But the old man was all untouched by his henchman's utterance and innuendoed boast for the simple reason that he had heard nothing of it.