It rather took my breath away, but I tried not to betray the fact. He was a refugee, after all, and only too anxious to go into hiding for a few weeks.
“Can you milk?” I demanded, deciding to keep him in his place, from the start. And he sadly acknowledged that he wasn’t able to milk. Windmill men seldom were, he casually asserted.
“Then you’ll have to make yourself handy, in other ways,” I proclaimed as he sat appraising me from his deep-padded car-seat.
“All right,” he said, as though the whole thing were settled, on the spot. But it wasn’t so simple as it seemed.
“How about this car?” I demanded. His eye met mine; and I made note of the fact that he was compelled to look away.
“I suppose we’ll have to hide it somewhere,” he finally acknowledged.
“And how’ll you hide a car of that size on the open prairie?” I inquired.
“Couldn’t we bury it?” he asked with child-like simplicity.
“It’s pretty well that way now, isn’t it? But I saw it three miles off,” I reminded him.
“Couldn’t we pile a load of prairie-hay over it?” he suggested next, with the natural cunning of the criminal. “Then they’d never suspect.”