"You--you hit someone!" gasps Old Hickory, starin' puzzled at her. "What with?" "Why, with the car," says she. "I was driving. Dudley tried to stop me; but I was horrid about it. We had a regular fight over it. Then I coaxed Henry to let me, and--and this happened. Don't listen to Dudley. It was all my fault." "Wow!" I whispers to Mr. Robert. "Now she's spilled the beans!" Did she? Say, I wa'n't in on the fam'ly conference that follows, but I gets the result from Mr. Robert next day, after he's been to court and seen Dudley's case dismissed. "No, the young folks haven't been sent away," says he. "In fact, Father thinks more of them than ever. He's going to take 'em both abroad with him next summer." Wouldn't that smear you, though? Say, I wish someone would turn me loose with a limousine! CHAPTER VI GLOOM SHUNTING FOR THE BOSS Trouble? Say, it was comin' seven diff'rent ways there for awhile,--our stocks on the slump, a quarterly bein' passed, Congress actin' up, a lot of gloom rumors floatin' around about what was goin' to happen to the tariff on steel, and the I Won't Workers pullin' off a big strike at one of our busiest plants. But all these things was side issues compared to this scrap that develops between Old Hickory and Peter K. Groff. Maybe you don't know about Peter K.? Well, he's the Mesaba agent of Corrugated affairs, the big noise at the dirt end of the dividends. It's Groff handles the ore proposition, you understand, and it's his company that does the inter-locking act between the ore mines and us and the railroads. Course, I can't give you all the details without pullin' down a subpoena from the Attorney-General's office, and I ain't anxious to crowd Willie Rockefeller, or anybody like that, out of the witness chair. But I can go as far as to state that, as near as I could dope it out, Peter K. was only standin' on his rights, and if only him and Mr. Ellins could have got together for half an hour peaceable-like things could have been squared all around. We needed Groff every tick of the clock, and just because he ain't always polite in statin' his views over the wire wa'n't any first-class reason for us extendin' him an official invitation to go sew his head in a bag. Uh-huh, them was Old Hickory's very words. I stood by while he writes the message. Then I takes it out and shows it to Piddie and grins. You should have seen Piddie's face. He turns the color of green pea soup and gasps. He's got all the fightin' qualities of a pet rabbit in him, Piddie has. "But--but that is a flat insult," says he, "and Mr. Groff is a very irascible person!" "A which?" says I. "Never mind, though. If he's got anything on Old Hickory when it comes to pep in the disposition, he's the real Tabasco Tommy." "But I still contend," says Piddie, "that this reply should not be sent." "Course it shouldn't," says I. "But who's goin' to point that out to the boss? You?"