"I was, but I'm not," says the chatterbox.
"Eh?" says I, gawpin'.
"Can't take it on," says he. "Tell Ellins, will you?"
"Not much!" says I. "Guess you'll have to hand that to him yourself, Mr. Wells. He'll be here any minute. Right this way."
And a swell time I had keepin' him entertained in the private office for half an hour. Not that he's restless or fidgety, but when you get a party who only stares bored at a spot about ten feet behind the back of your head and answers most of your questions by blinkin' his eyes, it kind of gets on your nerves. Still, I couldn't let him get away. Why, Mr. Robert had been prospectin' for months to find the right man for that transportation muddle and when he finally got hold of this Nicky Wells he goes around grinnin' for three days.
Seems Nicky had built up quite a rep. by some work he did over in France on an engineerin' job. Ran some supply tracks where nobody thought they could be laid, bridged a river in a night under fire, and pulled a lot of stuff like that. I don't know just what. Anyway, they pinned all sorts of medals on him for it, made him a colonel, and when it was all over turned him loose as casual as any buck private. That's the army for you. And the railroad people he'd been with before had been shifted around so much that they'd forgotten all about him. He wasn't the kind to tell 'em what a whale of a guy he was, and nobody else did it for him. So there he was, floatin' around, when Mr. Robert happened to hear of him.
"Must have got you in some lively spots, runnin' a right of way smack up to the German lines?" I suggests.
"M-m-m-m!" says he, through his teeth.
"Wasn't it you laid the tracks that got up them big naval guns?" I asks.
"I may have helped," says he.