And all Zebedee said was: "I'll be——" and just as Dee said would be the case, what he said does not bear repetition and certainly is not to be printed.
Mrs. Barton Alston had many a treat from the Tuckers. Dum did not collect her two dollars and ten cents until she had made many trips to the boss. He tried to persuade her to accept a steady job with him as an agent for household novelties, and while she naturally could not do it, she declared it gave her a very comfortable feeling that if she should have to earn her living there was at least one avenue open to her.
The day after Dee's success as a jitneur the paper came out with headlines that the jitneys were no longer within the law. Bonds must be furnished, licenses must be paid, etc. Dee had been not a day too soon in her venture.
Zebedee never said one word of reproach to Tweedles. When he gave voice to the unprintable remark above he was through.
"I know I ought to do something about it," he moaned to me several days after when he caught me alone. "It was a very risky thing for both of my girls—they might have got in no end of scrapes—but what am I to do? If I row with them and get Mr. Tuckerish even you get out with me, and somehow I feel as long as the girls tell me everything, that they can't get into very serious mischief. I know I have not done my part by them. If I had been the right kind of unselfish father I would have married long ago when they were tiny little tots and have had some good, sensible woman bring them up."
"They don't look at it that way."
"Well, you could hardly expect them to 'kiss the rod'."
I laughed aloud at that.
"What's the matter?"
"I am wondering what the 'good, sensible woman' would think at being called a rod. I wonder if there is any woman good enough to undertake the job of rod."