“Oh, you’ve been by here before, have you?” Stacey returned sharply. “Well, you’re not going by this time. You’re coming in.”
“No, now listen, Captain! I’m going to take the ten P.M. for Omaha.”
“Well, you can start for it from here as well as from anywhere else. Come now! March!”
Newspaper reporters were ringing Stacey insistently on the telephone.
“Pshaw!” he answered. “Nothing to it. Went down to strike headquarters to ask silly questions, and got into a baby fracas, as I deserved to. No casualties. No, I can’t tell you any more. There isn’t any more to tell.”
He took Burnham up to his study and made him sit down. “Now I tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “About nine-fifteen or so we’ll drive around to your boarding-house or wherever it is you’ve been living and pick up your things—”
Burnham was grinning. “Gee, Captain, you’re innocent, considering what kind of things you’ve been through!” he interrupted. “D’you think after what’s happened that I’d find any of my stuff there? I’d find a bunch of the boys waiting to beat me up.”
“Oh!” said Stacey. And, paying no heed to Burnham’s embarrassed protestations, he pulled a travelling-bag from a closet and packed it. “Oh, shut up!” he said finally. “Go into the bath-room there and wash. You’re even dirtier than I am.”
Presently the door of the study was thrown open and Mr. Carroll hurried in, red-faced and out of breath. “I’ve just heard,” he panted. “Did those damned scoundrels do you any—”
“Sh!” said Stacey, raising his finger to his lip, as Burnham came out of the bath-room. “Father, this is Burnham, my first sergeant—C Company—and as good a man as I’ve run up against. Incidentally, though he’s one of the boys who’re striking, he turned in and fought them with me this afternoon. Whole thing very silly. Neither of us hurt at all. Burnham will stay to dinner.”