"It has been that way for ages," says she. "Mr. Hurd is only running true to type. But see! The potatoes are nearly all peeled and our dinner is going to be served on time. What splendid assistants you've both been!" At that, though, if there'd been a medal to be passed out, I guess it would have been pinned on Forsythe. CHAPTER XV THE HOUSE OF TORCHY This trip it was a matter of tanks. No, not the ice-water variety, or the kind that absorbs high-balls. Army tanks--the sort that wallows out at daybreak and gives the Hun that chilly feelin' down his spine. Accordin' to my credentials, I was supposed to be inspectin' 'em for weak spots in the armor or punk work on the gears. And I can tell you now, on the side, that it was 90 per cent. bluff. What the Ordnance Department really wanted to know was whether the work was bein' speeded up proper, how many men on the shifts, and was the steel comin' through from the rollin' mills all right. Get me? Sleuth stuff. I'd been knockin' around there for four days, bein' towed about by the reserve major, who had a face on him like a stuffed owl, a nut full of decimal fractions, and a rubber-stamp mind. Oh, he was on the job, all right. So was everybody else in sight. I could see that after the first day. In fact, I coded in my O. K. the second noon and was plannin' to slip back home. But when I hinted as much to the Major he nearly threw a cat-fit. Why, he'd arranged a demonstration at 10 A.M. Thursday, for my special benefit. And there were the tests--horse-power, gun-ranges, resistance, and I don't know what all; technical junk that I savvied about as much as if he'd been tryin' to show me how to play the Chinese alphabet on a piccolo. Course, I couldn't tell him that, nor I didn't want to break his heart by refusin'. So I agrees to stick around a while longer. But say, I never enjoyed such a poor time doin' it. For there was just one spot on the map where I was anxious to be for the next few days. That was at home. It was one of the times when I ought to be there too, for---- Well, I'll get to that later. Besides, this fact'ry joint where they were buildin' the tanks wasn't any allurin' spot. I can't advertise just where it was, either; the government wouldn't like it. But if there's any part of Connecticut that's less interestin' to loaf around in, I never got stranded there. You run a spur track out into the bare hills for fifteen miles from nowhere, slap up a row of cement barracks, and a few acres of machine shops, string a ten-foot barbed-wire fence around the plant, drape the whole outfit in soft-coal smoke, and you ain't got any Garden of Eden winter resort. Specially when it's full of low-brow mechanics who speak in seven different lingos and subsist mainly on cut plug and garlic.