Steve tapped his breast pocket.
"The papers have been signed; we got a notary; everything is shipshape. Go in; I'll tell you all about it later."
He turned toward the car and the stiffened figure of the man gripping the wheel with tense, hard hands.
"Grandy——"
"Grandy, your foot!" boomed old Packard suddenly, one hand jerked away to be clenched into a lifted fist. "An' Terry! My God!"
"What do you mean?" asked Steve. "I don't understand."
"I mean," shouted Packard senior, his voice shaking with emotion, "that no mouth in the world is big enough to hold them two words the same night! If you want to chum with any Temple livin', he-Temple or she-Temple, if, sir, you intend to go 'round slobberin' over the low-down enemies of your own father an' father's father, why, sir, then I'm Mr. Packard to you and the likes of you!"
Still was Steve mystified.
"I thought," he muttered, "that since you two came together, since you yourself have driven her in——"
"If I, sir," thundered his grandfather, "have chosen to bring that petticoated wildcat there an' that ol' pill-slinger from my place to Red Creek in a shake less'n forty-nine minutes—jus' to show her that anything on God's earth done by a Temple can be better done by a Packard—you got to go to thinkin' things, have you? Why, sir, so help me, sir, I've a notion to jump down right now an' give you the horsewhippin' of your life!"