He stopped on that phrase, not liking the sound of it, and in doubt about asking her not to take it literally.  She saw all that as plainly as if she had been looking through an open window into his mind.  He took another deliberate sip of the brandy, instead, and then went on.

“Why, it’s the way things don’t happen; the way we can’t get anything done.”

He did not see the sympathetic hand she stretched out to him; went back to the big brandy glass instead, for another long luxurious inhalation and a small sip or two.  “It’s partly our own fault, of course,” he went on, presently.  “We’ve made some fool mistakes.  But it isn’t our mistakes that are going to beat us, it’s the damned bull-headed incompetence of the so-called labor we’ve got to deal with.”

He ruminated over that in silence for a minute or two.  “They talk about the inefficiency of the army,” he exclaimed, “but I’ve been four years in two armies and I’ll say that if what we’ve found out at Hickory Hill is a fair sample of civilian efficiency, I’ll take the army way every time.  There are days when I feel as if I’d like to quit;—­go out West and get a job roping steers for Bob Corbett, even if he is bone-dry.”

She thought if he played any longer with that brandy glass she must cry out, but he drained it this time and pushed it away.  With an effort of will she relaxed her tight muscles.

“I suppose I must have looked to you like a hopeless slacker,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have asked Darby to send me back to work.  No,—­I didn’t mean to put it that way.  I look like one to myself, that’s all, when I stop to think.  Only you don’t know how it has felt, this last six weeks, to go on getting tighter and tighter in your head until you feel as if you were going to burst.  I went out and got drunk, once,—­just plain, deliberately boiled—­in order to let off steam.  It did me good, too, for the time being.”

She didn’t look shocked at that as he had expected her to—­gave him only a rather wry smile and a comprehending nod.  “We’re all alike; that’s the trouble with us,” she said.  “But you will take us out to Hickory Hill, won’t you?  Aunt Lucile and I. I’ll promise we won’t be in the way nor make you any more work.”

She saw he was hesitating and added, “At that, perhaps, I may be some good.  I could cook anyhow and I suppose I could be taught to milk a cow and run a Ford.”

He laughed at that, then said a little uncomfortably that this wasn’t what he had been thinking about.  “I suppose you’re counting on Graham’s being in New York.  He isn’t.  At least, he telegraphed me that he’d be back at Hickory Hill to-morrow morning.  I knew you’d been rather keeping away from him and I thought perhaps...”

“No, that’s all right.”  She said it casually enough, but it drew a keen look of inquiry from him, nevertheless.  “Oh, nothing,” she went on.  “I mean I haven’t made up with him.  Of course, I never quarreled with him as far as that went.  Only it’s what I meant when I said just now that we were all alike, father and you and I. We all get so ridiculously—­tight about things.  Well, I’ve managed to let off steam myself.”