“You are; just about as unwelcome as a Dakota blizzard in the middle of July. There isn’t anybody on the force, from the chief down, who has any time to waste on the social dewdabs, or for carting you people around on a sight-seeing tour. How long are you going to stay?”
“Gracious! I don’t know! If your chief makes it as chilly for us as you’re trying to make it for me, I shouldn’t suppose we’d stay five minutes! I’m sure I shouldn’t.”
“Well you might as well know it just as it is, and I wouldn’t shed any tears if you should tell your father. Nobody else will tell him, of course; but I’m giving you the raw facts.”
“I should say you are!” said the girl with a toss of her head. “You don’t seem any more like the Dick Maxwell I knew when we were at Lake Topaz last summer than——”
“Maybe I’m not,” Dick broke in. “This is a man’s job up here.”
“Well, supposing it is; is that any reason why we shouldn’t come and look on, if we want to?”
Dick despaired of ever being able to make a mere girl understand, but he did his best.
“I should think you’d know without being told. Here we are, in the hottest part of a hot fight with the O. C., with everything cluttered up and in the way, and with everybody working twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, trying to get somewhere. And right in the thick of it we’ve got to stop and find room for a train of joy-wagons, and let the work go to pot while we’re being nice to a lot of Big Money bosses!”
Somewhat to Dick’s disappointment, the girl took this wrathful outburst with perfect calm.