In the mornin' I got the verdict. "Auntie's going back to town," says Vee. "She thinks, after all, that it will be more restful there."
"It will be for me, anyway," says I.
I don't know how Vee and Master Richard still stand with Auntie. They may be in the will yet, or they may not. As for Buddy and me, I'll bet we're out. Absolutely. But we can grin, even at that.
CHAPTER XVIII
HARTLEY PULLS A NEW ONE
Looked like kind of a simple guy, this Hartley Tyler. I expect it was the wide-set, sort of starey eyes, or maybe the stiff way he had of holdin' his neck. If you'd asked me I'd said he might have qualified as a rubber-stamp secretary in some insurance office, or as a tea-taster, or as a subway ticket-chopper.
Anyway, he wasn't one you'd look for any direct action from. Too mild spoken and slow moving. And yet when he did cut loose with an original motion he shoots the whole works on one roll of the bones. He'd come out of the bond room one Saturday about closin' time and tip-toed hesitatin' up to where Piddie and I was havin' a little confab on some important business matter—such as whether the Corrugated ought to stand for the new demands of the window cleaners, or cut the contract to twice a month instead of once a week. Mr. Piddie would like to take things like that straight to Old Hickory himself, but he don't quite dare, so he holds me up and asks what I think Mr. Ellins would rule in such a case. I was just giving him some josh or other when he notices Hartley standin' there patient.
"Well?" says Piddie, in his snappiest office-manager style.