“A lot we care about that,” I said. “We want this little fellow to stay with us. Findings is keepings; everybody knows that’s the rule. We’ve got a lot of room up at our house. I should worry about three hundred dollars. And we’ve got a private alarm and fire extinguishers and everything, so it’s all right. And my sister likes kids, too, but she hates caterpillars. Most everything I want——” _Good night_, that was as far as I got. All of a sudden, who should I see but my mother, right there, putting her arms around me, and all that, and giving the inventor a good hug. She said he should go home with her and be a bandit—that’s just what she said. Gee whiz, I guess the kid thought a cyclone struck him. Mr. Brownell said, “Look out for the matches.” My mother said, “He shall have an electric light.” “Will it have a handle to turn it out?” the kid piped up. The judge said he didn’t know but he would remand (that means _put_) the inventor in the custody of my mother till they heard from the Home. Gee whiz, I never even knew my mother was there until that minute. The kid said to my mother, “And I’ll take you in my new car down in the field.” “Good night,” I said to Westy; “the bandit has taken the car.” Outside a whole lot of people crowded around and wanted to get a look at the inventor. He was some famous inventor, all right. He was clutching his box of matches in one hand and Submarine Sam in the other, and he looked about as big as a speck. My father was there, and, oh, gee, but he looked happy. He said, “We’d have a famous inventor and a famous discoverer in the house.” Maybe he meant my mother, hey? There were a lot of ladies around our auto, and gee, but that old Cadillac looked big on account of the inventor looking so little. He sat in the middle of the back seat with my mother. Everybody was crazy about him. That’s the way it is with girls—they’re crazy about people who have had adventures. I said to Westy, “The inventor started as a poor boy under Tony’s Lunch Wagon, and now look, he has the world at his feet. They go crazy about bandits.” “Look,” Westy whispered to me. I was just going to step into the car when I looked where he pointed, and there, standing all by himself, quite a ways off, was Charlie Slausen. He looked as if maybe he was waiting to speak to us, only didn’t dare to come up where all the people were. “Go ahead,” I said to our chauffeur; “we’ll walk up. You’ve got a heavy enough load with the inventor.” After the car had started off we went over to where Charlie was standing. He looked awful funny, his eyes kind of, I don’t know—— I said, “Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. We didn’t get you in dutch, did we? Didn’t I tell you to leave it to us?” He just began patting me on the shoulder and he kind of put his other arm around Westy’s shoulder. “We were lucky they didn’t ask us anything more,” Westy said.