“Mr. Carhart,”—the reporters were still at it,—“one of your assistants, J. B. Flint, was carried on a cot the other day to the C. & S. C. station and put on a train. What was the matter with him?”
Carhart hesitated. Personally he cared not at all whether the facts were or were not given to the public. He felt little pleasure in lying about them. Engineers as a class do not lie very well. But he was doing the work of the Sherman and Western, and the Sherman and Western, for a mixture of reasons, wished the facts covered. And then, somewhat to his relief, the youngest reporter in the group blundered out the question which let him off with half a lie.
“Is it true, Mr. Carhart,” asked this reporter, “that Mr. Flint has been really an invalid for years?”
“Yes,” Carhart replied cheerfully, “it is true.”
The party seemed to be breaking up. Tiffany caught Young Van’s eye, and beckoned. “Come on!” he called—“the Dinner!”
“They are starting, Mr. Carhart,” said Young Van.
“Are they? All right.—That’s all, boys. You can say, with perfect truth, that the Sherman and Western has been completed to Red Hills.”
“And that the H. D. & W. hasn’t,” cried the youngest reporter.
Carhart laughed. “The H. D. & W. will have to do its own talking,” he replied.