Now a grateful government had transferred him to the nation's capital, where his straightforward reasoning might be at the service of the President himself ... and because Hank Cleaver and Jim Blakeson are as inseparable as corn pone and chitlins, I was here with him.
As a matter of fact, dear old Washington-on-the-Potomac was beginning to look like an overgrown Midland U. campus. H. Logan MacDowell, president of the college, was here as a "dollar a year man"—and worth every penny of it!—while his charming daughter, Helen, Hank's fiancée, was working in the U.S.O. headquarters.
"It ain't," complained Hank, scowling, "as if I was hard to git along with. Gosh knows I'm easy-goin' enough—"
There was no gainsaying that. Hank was as mild and gentle as a Carnation cow.
"—but he plagues me!" confessed Hank. "Disagrees with most everything I say. Spouts facts an' figgers at me, when he knows dingbusted well I can't understand that kind o' talk. My brain don't work thataway. I jest git the theories an' work 'em out by plain, dumb hoss-logic—"
I said, "Well, what's the trouble now?"
Hank fingered a paper of cut-plug, tucked enough in his cheek to make him look as if he were munching on a medium sized billiard ball. This was his one vice. When he married fair Helen a few months hence, it would probably become tabu. Meanwhile, in the privacy of the apartment we shared, he kept his molars and incisors well lubricated.
"Wa-a-all," he said, "it's time!"
I stared at the clock. "Time? Time for what?"