"I guess we had our scare for nothing," he observed. "If that'd been Buller behind us, he'd have got here before now."
"Not if he'd had tire-troubles. But prob'ly you're right," said Martha.
Sam considered. "Then what's the use of keeping the poor girl hid?"
"It won't hurt her. An' a ounce o' pervention is worth a pound o' cure."
Later the telegraph-operator took the trouble to shove up his window and address Martha through it. His tone was loftily supercilious, ironically facetious.
"Nothing doing! You've been stringing me, I guess!" he sagely opined.
Mrs. Slawson regarded him blandly.
"Certaintly. My husban' an' me, we come twenty-five miles streakin' through the night on purpose to do it. Such a precious jewel of a fella as you, anybody'd want to string'm, for safe-keepin', so's he wouldn't fall down an' roll away an' be lost in a crack o' the floor."
The telegraph-operator grimaced.
"Say, now, no joke! You said you'd tell me the whole story, so I'd know what I was in for. I ain't hankering to be called down by the Company for outdoing my duty."