"An' _Terry_! My God!"
"What do you mean?" asked Steve. "I don't understand."
"I mean," shouted Packard senior, his voice shaking with emotion, "that
no mouth in the world is big enough to hold them two words the same
night! If you want to chum with any Temple livin', he-Temple or
she-Temple, if, sir, you intend to go 'round slobberin' over the
low-down enemies of your own father an' father's father, why, sir, then
I'm Mr. Packard to you and the likes of you!"
Still was Steve mystified.
"I thought," he muttered, "that since you two came together, since you
yourself have driven her in----"
"If I, sir," thundered his grandfather, "have chosen to bring that
petticoated wildcat there an' that ol' pill-slinger from my place to
Red Creek in a shake less'n forty-nine minutes--jus' to show her that
anything on God's earth done by a Temple can be better done by a
Packard--you got to go to thinkin' things, have you? Why, sir, so help
me, sir, I've a notion to jump down right now an' give you the
horsewhippin' of your life!"
Steve, in spite of himself, chuckled. Terry, reassured about her
father, giggled. Both sounds were audible; the two, mingled, were
entirely too much to be borne.
"You--you disgrace to an honorable name," the old man called bitterly
and wrathfully. "You----"
He broke off, hesitated, glared from Steve at the car's side to Terry
already on the steps of the store, and concluded something more quietly
though not a whit less furiously for all that: "You speak of papers
signed.
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