"It never occurred to me," drawled dad, "that I needed help to run my business."
"And last spring you rose up, all of a sudden, and started in to cure me of being a drone. The medicine you used was strong; it did the business pretty thoroughly. You've no kick coming at the result. I'm going to start to-morrow."
Dad looked at me till I began to feel squirmy. I've thought since that he wasn't as surprised as I imagined, and that, on the whole, he was pleased. But, if he was, he was mighty careful not to show it.
"You would better give me a list of your debts, then," he said laconically. "I shall see that your allowance goes on just the same; you may want to invest in—er—cattle."
"Thank you, dad," I said, and turned to go.
"And I wish to Heaven," he called after me, "that you'd take Rankin along and turn him loose out there. He might do to herd sheep. I'm sick of that hark-from-the-tombs face of his. I made a footman of him while you were gone before, rather than turn him off; but I'm damned if I do it again."
I stopped just short of the door and grinned back at him. "Rankin," I said, "is one of the horrors I'm trying to leave behind, dad."
But dad had gone back to his correspondence. "In regard to that Clark, Marsden, and Clark affair, I think, Crawford, it would be well—"
I closed the door quietly and left them. It was dad's way, and I laughed a little to myself as I was going back to my room to round up Rankin and set him to packing. I meant to stand over him with a club this time, if necessary, and see that I got what I wanted packed.
The next evening I started again for Montana—and I didn't go in dad's private car, either. Save for the fact that I had no grievance with him, and that we ate dinner alone together and drank a bottle of extra dry to the success of my pilgrimage, I went much as I had gone before: humbly and unheralded except for a telegram for some one to meet me at Osage.