initial commit of ebook 1098HEADmain

15 files changed, 76796 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/1098-0.txt b/1098-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b74afe2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1098-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10145 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1098 ***
+
+THE TURMOIL
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+1915.
+
+
+To Laurel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
+must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
+him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
+it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
+loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
+tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked
+and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of
+dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has
+the meager alternative of suicide.
+
+The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
+to one tune: “Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
+Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
+dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean--but I
+will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall
+be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!” And yet it
+is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is
+hasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for
+wealth is in the smoke.
+
+Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much
+of the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place--“homelike,” it
+was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State Asylum
+for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from a
+little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
+were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for
+a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the
+air was clean, and there was time to live.
+
+But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+American hearts--Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
+
+In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound
+longing for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became
+an accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
+Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became
+a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax
+them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get
+them! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of
+people; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag!
+Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is
+patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is
+Money! We want Bigness!
+
+They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
+years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people
+and yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
+thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than
+they could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came,
+the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish,
+Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes,
+Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians,
+Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and
+every hybrid that these could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos
+nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might furnish failed
+to swim and bubble in this crucible?
+
+With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
+roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under
+the tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of
+the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney
+type began to emerge discernibly--a cynical young mongrel barbaric
+of feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned
+apparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians.
+The female of his kind came with him--a pale girl, shoddy and a little
+rouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and
+elisions. Nay, the common speech of the people showed change: in
+place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean, and not
+unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to
+be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by the
+public journals.
+
+The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,
+and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its
+vitals, like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body
+of a man, missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to the
+saloons and all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation
+and ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase by the
+venturesome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimes
+killed; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; while
+house-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality. Life
+itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it was in
+medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer was more
+like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath the wheels lay
+in ambush at every crossing.
+
+The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did
+not matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!
+They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke.
+They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; though
+sometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new laws
+that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget both new and old.
+Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes--or wherever it was too
+much to bother--it became a joke. Influence was the law.
+
+So the place grew. And it grew strong.
+
+Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
+  Power to get more power!
+  Riches to get more riches!
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He
+had come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and
+he had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; but
+each time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally,
+after a year of overwork and anxiety--the latter not decreased by a
+chance, remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in the
+penitentiary--he found himself on top, with solid substance under
+his feet; and thereafter “played it safe.” But his hunger to get was
+unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew fiercer.
+
+He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And
+when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. “It's
+good! It's good!” he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. “Good, clean
+soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!” The smoke was one of his
+great enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who
+called to beg his aid against it. “Smoke's what brings your husbands'
+money home on Saturday night,” he told them, jovially. “Smoke may hurt
+your little shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhal
+climate and the adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makes
+the climate better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people wash
+more. They have to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You go
+home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' the
+pay-roll--and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out more
+smoke instead o' chokin' it off!”
+
+It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection
+in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and
+unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out
+he believed it was the finest city in the world. “Finest” was his word.
+He thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family;
+and just as profoundly believed his city to be the finest city in
+the world, so did he believe his family to be--in spite of his son
+Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a matter of fact, he knew
+nothing worth knowing about either.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered
+the failure--the “odd one”--of the family. Born during that most
+dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and
+the father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and
+grew meagerly, only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At his
+christening he was committed for life to “Bibbs” mainly through lack of
+imagination on his mother's part, for though it was her maiden name, she
+had no strong affection for it; but it was “her turn” to name the baby,
+and, as she explained later, she “couldn't think of anything else she
+liked AT ALL!” She offered this explanation one day when the sickly boy
+was nine and after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for
+his name's being Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to
+be allowed to exchange names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling
+Sheridan, or with the oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being
+refused went down into the cellar and remained there the rest of
+that day. And the cook, descending toward dusk, reported that he had
+vanished; but a search revealed that he was in the coal-pile, completely
+covered and still burrowing. Removed by force and carried upstairs,
+he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to utter a syllable of
+explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing was wholly a
+mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to trace and
+connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and mysterious
+fool, an impression not effaced as the years went by.
+
+At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding
+of a man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked,
+long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired
+and dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at
+first sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for
+he seemed upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not
+grief, but mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching
+scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he seemed about to burst out
+crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but it
+was impossible to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion of his
+life, either laughed aloud or wept.
+
+He was a “disappointment” to his father. At least that was the parent's
+word--a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to make
+a “business man” of the boy. He sent Bibbs to “begin at the bottom and
+learn from the ground up” in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic
+Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs
+to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.
+
+“You needn't worry, mamma,” Sheridan told his wife. “There's nothin' the
+matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put
+him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well
+as the next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.
+Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He
+makes me tired!”
+
+Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease
+was incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack
+of physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some
+subtle weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or
+slyness. He understood typhoid fever, pneumonia, and appendicitis--one
+had them, and either died or got over them and went back to work--but
+when the word “nervous” appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly
+suspicious: he had the feeling that there was something contemptible
+about it, that there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+
+“Look at me,” he said. “Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
+twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin'
+wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a
+country grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR
+because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man
+he wouldn't be sick.”
+
+He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental
+discussions--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and
+gesticulating to his bedded spouse. “My Lord!” he said. “If a little,
+teeny bit o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for
+anything! It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I
+won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of
+it's put on!”
+
+“Bibbs didn't want the doctor,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “It was when he was
+here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
+Honey, you better come to bed.”
+
+“Eat!” he snorted. “Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
+imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for
+that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice
+about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs.
+Sheridan: busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick.
+You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the
+sick people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!”
+
+“Honey,” she said again, drowsily, “you better come to bed.”
+
+“Look at the other boys,” her husband bade her. “Look at Jim and Roscoe.
+Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies.
+Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my
+shoulders already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter
+business man in this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me
+something to push AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look
+at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that boy's done for himself, and barely
+twenty-seven years old--married, got a fine wife, and ready to build
+for himself with his own money, when I put up the New House for you and
+Edie.”
+
+“Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet,” she murmured. “You better
+come to bed.”
+
+“And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl,” he continued, emphatically,
+“as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good
+wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in
+the United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school
+and took the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and
+she'd never even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I
+ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough
+literary judge for me--turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any
+man in the city. I tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me
+to get me to promise the New House--and I guess you had your finger
+in that, too, mamma! This old shack's good enough for me, but you and
+little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and push her
+the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them
+three chuldern! But Bibbs--” He paused, shaking his head. “Honest,
+mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth
+their salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget
+about Bibbs.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. “You did the
+best you could, papa,” she said, impatiently, “so come to bed and quit
+reproachin' yourself for it.”
+
+He glared at her indignantly. “Reproachin' myself!” he snorted. “I ain't
+doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want
+to reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was
+the best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was
+in him and make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous
+dyspepsia' on me!”
+
+He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and
+muttered his way morosely into bed.
+
+“What?” said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+
+“More like hook-worm, I said,” he explained, speaking louder. “I don't
+know what to do with him!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and “zwieback” as the
+basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he
+was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a
+nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the
+building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode
+of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was
+found sufficient to his support.
+
+Edith met him at the station. “Well, well, Bibbs!” she said, as he came
+slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.
+She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick
+glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. “Do
+you think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!”
+
+“But I certainly do look better,” he returned, in a voice as slow as
+his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak
+quickly he stammered. “Up to about a month ago it took two people to see
+me. They had to get me in a line between 'em!”
+
+Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
+quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
+troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some
+obligation of business to visit a “bad” ward in a hospital. She was
+nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness
+of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close
+upon beauty. Her movements were eager and restless: there was something
+about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was
+something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was
+a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her
+a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an
+automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+
+“That's the new car,” she said. “Everything's new. We've got four now,
+besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two.”
+
+“Edith, you look--” he began, and paused.
+
+“Oh, WE're all well,” she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
+his tone had caught her as significant, “Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?”
+
+“You look--” He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
+brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
+and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
+mode--all suited to the October day.
+
+“How do I look?” she insisted.
+
+“You look,” he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
+watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, “you look--expensive!” That
+was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
+preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
+glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+intimacies.
+
+“I expect I am!” she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
+glance. “Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening
+thing, for the theater--but my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby
+Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want
+Claus to help you in?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Bibbs. “I'm alive.” And after a fit of panting subsequent
+to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, “Of course, I have to
+TELL people!”
+
+“We only got your telegram this morning,” she said, as they began to
+move rapidly through the “wholesale district” neighboring the station.
+“Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month.”
+
+“They seemed to be through with me up there in the country,” he
+explained, gently. “At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep
+me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They
+told me to go home--and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
+right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day.”
+
+“Pshaw!” She laughed nervously. “Of course we're all of us glad to have
+you back.”
+
+“Yes?” he said. “Father?”
+
+“Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?” She did not turn
+to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly
+forward.
+
+“No,” he said; “father hasn't written.”
+
+She flushed a little. “I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one
+of the boys--”
+
+“Oh no; that was all right.”
+
+“You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often
+planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would turn
+up. And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of
+course we knew mamma was writing often and--”
+
+“Of course!” he said, readily. “There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
+glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
+forgotten how sooty it is here.”
+
+“We've been having very bright weather this month--for us.” She blew the
+flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+
+He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like
+a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a
+decoration. “Yes,” said Bibbs. “It's very gay.” A few moments later, as
+they passed a corner, “Aren't we going home?” he asked.
+
+“Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?”
+
+“No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?”
+
+“No. This is right. We're going straight home.”
+
+“But we've passed the corner. We always turned--”
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried. “Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know
+we were in the New House?”
+
+“Why, no!” said Bibbs. “Are you?”
+
+“We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--” She broke
+off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: “Of course, mamma's never
+been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but
+keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's
+got some of his business friends and people from around the
+OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and
+'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all on her
+hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa would have
+her up again before--”
+
+“Of course,” said Bibbs. “Do you like the new place, Edith?”
+
+“I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
+finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa
+bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's
+perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the
+front hall, and it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old
+fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new
+dining-room. You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced open,
+and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with two dead
+prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-store years and
+years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the
+museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of
+date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn
+giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told
+papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he
+did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me
+tired! Sibyl!”
+
+Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full
+gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation
+of her sister-in-law.
+
+“SIBYL!” she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
+to strike fire on her lips. “I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
+married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good! He could
+have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and
+Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of
+that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully
+nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last
+spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even HEARD of 'em!”
+
+“I thought you were great friends with Sibyl,” Bibbs said.
+
+“Up to the time I found her out!” the sister returned, with continuing
+vehemence. “I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
+lately--”
+
+“It's only lately?”
+
+“Well--” Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. “Of course, I
+always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
+ROSCOE!”
+
+“It seems,” said Bibbs, in laconic protest, “that she married him.”
+
+The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: “Why, she'd have
+married YOU!”
+
+“No, no,” he said; “she couldn't be that bad!”
+
+“I didn't mean--” she began, distressed. “I only meant--I didn't mean--”
+
+“Never mind, Edith,” he consoled her. “You see, she couldn't have
+married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
+mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even
+had to lend me the money for my ticket home.”
+
+“I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU,” Edith babbled. “I only
+meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
+marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Bibbs, “it's all straight.” And, perceiving that
+his sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set
+matters perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+
+“Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her,” she continued, a moment later. “Too
+lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
+MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!”
+
+“'Behave'?”
+
+“Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere,” said Edith, characteristically
+evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and
+in this not unique of her sex.
+
+Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. “Business
+is crawling up the old streets,” he said, his long, tremulous hand
+indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. “The boarding-houses
+come first and then the--”
+
+“That isn't for shops,” she informed him. “That's a new investment of
+papa's--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'”
+
+“Well, well,” he murmured. “I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+known here already.”
+
+“Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!” she said, impatiently. “I guess
+there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't
+know who we are. But we aren't in with the right people.”
+
+“No!” he exclaimed. “Who's all that?”
+
+“Who's all what?”
+
+“The 'right people.'”
+
+“You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people
+that have the real social position in this town and that know they've
+got it.”
+
+Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. “I
+thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it
+didn't know it,” he said. “I've always understood that it was very
+unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and
+if you had it you didn't know it.”
+
+“That's just bosh,” she retorted. “They know it in this town, all right!
+I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building
+out in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
+society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't
+all belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their
+clubs--but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling
+and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about
+anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and
+the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and--”
+
+“I see,” Bibbs interrupted, gravely. “Their ancestors fled together
+from many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I
+always understood the first house was built by an old party of the name
+of Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to
+these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him.”
+
+Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. “You mustn't repeat that
+story, Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and
+of course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before
+Mary Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this
+settlement. He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives
+there YET--some of the best people in Lynn!”
+
+“No!” exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+
+“And there are other old families like the Vertreeses,” she went on,
+not heeding him; “the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston
+Smiths--”
+
+“Strange names to me,” he interrupted. “Poor things! None of them have
+my acquaintance.”
+
+“No, that's just it!” she cried. “And papa had never even heard the name
+of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see
+him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his
+wages from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I
+thought I just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr.
+Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of
+course. They're the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And
+to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees
+country mansion--it's in the very heart of the best new residence
+district now, and that's where the New House is, right next door to
+them--and I must say it makes their place look rather shabby! I met Mary
+Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers, but she never did
+any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break I doubt if
+she'll do that! They haven't called.”
+
+“And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing
+Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--”
+
+“Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him
+understand that,” said Edith, demurely, “and he's promised to try and
+meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't
+know THEM, it's practically no use in our having built the New House;
+and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the
+right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told
+Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but
+it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees
+decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs Lamhorn'll never come. That's
+ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage! She SAID Bobby offered to bring his
+mother--”
+
+“You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?” Bibbs asked.
+
+“Oh, he's a friend of the whole family,” she returned, with a petulance
+which she made an effort to disguise. “Roscoe and he got acquainted
+somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night.
+Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps--” She broke off with an angry
+little jerk of the head. “We can see the New House from the second
+corner ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you
+know. Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes--the way
+she pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets
+anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him
+behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She got
+him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it
+was--”
+
+“Good heavens!” said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and
+the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. “Is that the
+New House?”
+
+“Yes. What do you think of it?”
+
+“Well,” he drawled, “I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+bigger; I can't be certain till I measure.”
+
+And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+“But it's beautiful!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect
+who loved the milder “Gothic motives” had built what he liked: it was to
+be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
+picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
+time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
+accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look
+of newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at
+least one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was
+thinner in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart
+of the town, it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather
+could be malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and
+corn had been growing not ten years gone.
+
+Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
+successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing
+of the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses
+that cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every
+inch of mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no
+matter what be done to it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the
+old name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind
+to change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places
+of its type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides;
+rich families, one after another, take title and occupy such houses as
+fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to
+imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New
+House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it--“beautiful.”
+
+What the architect thought of the “Golfo di Napoli,” which hung in its
+vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
+be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
+
+“Edith, did you say only eleven feet?” Bibbs panted, staring at it, as
+the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
+overcoat.
+
+“Eleven without the frame,” she explained. “It's splendid, don't you
+think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before.”
+
+“No gloom now!” said Bibbs.
+
+“This statue in the corner is pretty, too,” she remarked. “Mamma and I
+bought that.” And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
+grove of tubbed palms, a “life-size,” black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
+composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his
+chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped
+spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
+
+“Hallelujah!” was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
+saying she would “find mamma,” left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
+after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood
+waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. “What do YOU think of it?”
+ Bibbs asked, solemnly.
+
+“Gran'!” replied the servitor. “She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
+'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'.”
+
+“I expect she must be,” said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
+to the black bull beard for a moment. “Is there a place anywhere I could
+lie down?”
+
+“Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
+staihs, suh. Nice room.”
+
+He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to
+rest, and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the
+exodus from the “old” house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the
+patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly
+enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+
+“Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,” Bibbs's
+guide explained, chuckling. “Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
+doin's!”
+
+The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in
+every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
+pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have
+seemed pleasant to him after his journey. He stretched himself flat
+immediately, and having replied “Not now” to the attendant's offer to
+unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
+
+White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
+an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
+overseer--in the hall without. Said the emerging one: “He mighty shaky,
+Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all black.
+Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I change
+'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an'
+keep out the ground!”
+
+Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. “Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+somebody awready laid out,” he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
+near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
+pessimistic.
+
+“Hech!” said one, lamenting in a whisper. “It give me a turn to see him
+go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
+make ye kind o' sick to look at um?”
+
+“Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!”
+
+“Well,” said the other, “I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--”
+ She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+
+It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+
+She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
+like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
+husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
+she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
+two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
+absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and
+Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago
+become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his. She
+invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when she
+did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost
+spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not comprehend it
+and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one actual
+altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the early
+days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
+impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he
+had thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of “The
+Black Crook.” But she had not once referred to this during the last ten
+years.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
+more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time
+and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down
+over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's
+door.
+
+At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+
+“Don't go, mother,” he said. “I'm not asleep.” He swung his long legs
+over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
+restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+
+“No,” she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, “I just come for a
+minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--”
+
+“Poor Edith!” he murmured. “She couldn't look at me. She--”
+
+“Nonsense!” Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
+back to the bedside. “You look a great deal better than what you did
+before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body
+can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't
+got much color--”
+
+“No,” he said, “I haven't much color.”
+
+“But you will have when you get your strength back.”
+
+“Oh yes!” he responded, cheerfully. “THEN I will.”
+
+“You look a great deal better than what I expected.”
+
+“Edith must have a great vocabulary!” he chuckled.
+
+“She's too sensitive,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “and it makes her exaggerate
+a little. What about your diet?”
+
+“That's all right. They told me to eat anything.”
+
+“Anything at all?”
+
+“Well--anything I could.”
+
+“That's good,” she said, nodding. “They mean for you just to build up
+your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you
+at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's
+only a little time ago. How long was it?”
+
+“Eight months, I think.”
+
+“No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
+longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
+even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
+along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
+Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up
+pretty well on the home news.”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“What I think you need,” said the mother, gravely, “is to liven up a
+little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
+morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
+appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--”
+
+“Plans?” Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
+with his hand, so that he might see her better. “What--” He paused.
+“What plans is he making for me, mother?”
+
+She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
+“Well, you better talk it over with HIM,” she said, with perceptible
+nervousness. “He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any
+call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway.”
+ She came and stood by the bedside once more. “But you must remember,
+Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and
+wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always find he's
+right in the end.”
+
+He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
+she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.
+“You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night.”
+
+“You--you mean--he--” Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
+quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly,
+“Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?”
+
+“Well, I think he does,” she answered. “You see, it's the
+'house-warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern
+ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's
+just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You
+don't feel too bad to come down, do you?”
+
+“Mother?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Take a good look at me,” he said.
+
+“Oh, see here!” she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. “You're not so bad
+off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
+any harm to please your--”
+
+“It isn't that,” he interrupted. “Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
+spoil somebody's appetite. Edith--”
+
+“I told you the child was too sensitive,” she interrupted, in turn.
+“You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look
+like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all
+there is to it.”
+
+“All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
+can!”
+
+“It 'll do you good,” she returned, rustling into the hall. “Now take
+a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
+dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!”
+
+Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something
+she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+interminably. “His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
+you--his plans for you--” And then, taking the place of “his plans for
+you,” after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice came
+back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: “He loves his
+chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern”--“you'll find
+he's always right--you'll find he's always right--” Until at last, as he
+drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted realities, the voice
+seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that came out of the
+wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing within the room,
+and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky, bridging the
+whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke, and out
+of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over, “His
+plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--” And then there
+was nothing.
+
+He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
+against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting
+to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that
+it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+
+He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
+next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, “the old Vertrees
+country mansion.” It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the
+Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box
+of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been
+spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of
+it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and
+the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
+
+The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of
+the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly
+opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make
+a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic “summer-house.” It was
+almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and
+it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses
+in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the
+juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the “summer-house” was
+pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little
+girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and “housekeeping,”
+ or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm
+afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
+dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
+
+Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
+with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the
+window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He
+looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end
+to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic
+seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an
+entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared
+to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again
+and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete
+disapproval.
+
+“You certainly are one horrible sight!” he said, aloud.
+
+And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly,
+he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a
+rustic aperture of the “summer-house” and staring full into his
+window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
+a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
+Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her
+action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in
+the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending,
+and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any
+other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she
+had allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of
+things of which she was in reality unconscious.
+
+Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the
+same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan
+or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained
+composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of
+the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door
+and came to meet her.
+
+“Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?”
+
+“Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows,” said Mary
+Vertrees. “I got caught at it.”
+
+“Mary!” cried her mother. “Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!”
+
+“We'll go, just the same,” the daughter returned. “I suppose those women
+would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground.”
+
+“But WHO saw you?” insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+
+“One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
+At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
+about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
+Then he looked out and caught me.”
+
+“What did he--”
+
+“Nothing, of course.”
+
+“How did he look?”
+
+“Like a ghost in a blue suit,” said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
+street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who
+was observing them from the window of his library. “Rather tragic and
+altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!”
+
+And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
+their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who
+had something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and
+began to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was
+about sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little
+sketch of an elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache--relic of a
+forgotten Anglomania--had been profoundly black, but now, like his
+smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though
+his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for
+greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow
+black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket,
+a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling
+him the descendant of patriot warriors.
+
+The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
+marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
+“Eastlake” bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
+incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless “woodwork” everywhere,
+and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
+sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
+“very fine things.” They had been the first people in town to possess
+Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
+had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when
+Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's
+houses he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he
+found an edition of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final
+corroboration of culture, he would say, inevitably, “Those people know
+good pictures and they know good books.”
+
+The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
+had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin
+to grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody.
+Mr. Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At
+about the time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance,
+an office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
+winter; and he had a country place--a farm of four hundred acres--where
+he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
+home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit
+still and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but,
+strangely enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall
+down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the
+role of Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of
+the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
+buying bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers
+and read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained
+milkers milked her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and
+the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then
+he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to pay the
+taxes on the suburban lots and to “keep them up.” The lots refused to
+stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his family up,
+so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully the next year)
+for “traction stock” that was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased
+to buy and sell. Thus he disappeared altogether from the commercial
+surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top; and
+Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her “anti-smoke”
+ committee, had never heard the name.
+
+Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+“managed somehow” on the dividends, though “managing” became more and
+more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But
+there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took
+greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long
+after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there
+was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the “traction stock” henceforth
+was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help
+“manage somehow” according to his conception of his “position in
+life”--one of his own old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the
+completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses
+and the worn Victoria and “station-wagon,” to pay the arrears of his two
+servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--and a
+pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
+ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service.
+Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in
+all the buzzing city--he could do nothing.
+
+It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come
+in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if
+his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+
+The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
+closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round
+about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone
+of firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
+rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
+ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
+return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
+
+She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
+the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
+Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary,
+she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite
+certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
+
+“Papa! Oh, oh!” And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
+her eyes. “I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it--”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. “I suppose I'm very dull,” she said,
+gently. “I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the
+house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--”
+
+“Papa!” Mary cried, breaking in. “They asked us to DINNER!”
+
+“What!”
+
+“And I'm GOING!” she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
+“Think of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the
+daughter--and just BARELY met her--”
+
+“What about you?” interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his
+wife.
+
+She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
+not agree with her. “I couldn't!” she said. “I--”
+
+“Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!”
+ cried Mary, choking. “And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn
+it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a
+squeal!”
+
+“I suppose,” said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, “that Mary will have an
+uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--”
+
+Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
+and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her
+shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
+
+“THEY didn't notice anything,” she said. “So far as they were concerned,
+mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.”
+
+“Who were 'they'?” asked her father. “Whom did you see?”
+
+“Only the mother and daughter,” Mary answered. “Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy
+and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the
+fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have
+their pictures in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very
+successfully--partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly
+because she began too late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted
+plaster or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was
+to her credit that she selected it!”
+
+“They have oil-paintings, too,” added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+gentle pride at the Landseers. “I've always thought oil-paintings in a
+private house the worst of taste.”
+
+“Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!” said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
+the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. “Go on,
+Mary. None of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
+or--” He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with
+the poker. “Or one of the sons?”
+
+Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
+He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+
+“No,” she said, “no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
+sons thoroughly!”
+
+“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+
+“Oh, most adroitly, too!” laughed the girl. “Only she couldn't help
+unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!”
+
+“Mary Vertrees!”
+
+“Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
+could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
+same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
+oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is
+very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me
+that 'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one,
+caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem
+to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan
+mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,'
+and had been to some cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the
+subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me! The other
+brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house
+across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert,
+goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch with
+Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim'
+still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night. Papa--” She
+stepped nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were
+troubled as he did. There may have been a trouble deep within her own,
+but she kept their surface merry with laughter. “Papa, Bibbs is the
+youngest one's name, and Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a
+lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does it have to be Jim?”
+
+“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. “You're outrageous! That's a
+perfectly horrible way of talking!”
+
+“Well, I'm close to twenty-four,” said Mary, turning to her. “I haven't
+been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
+never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
+my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began
+to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything--but
+something's got to be done.”
+
+“But you needn't talk of it like THAT!” insisted the mother,
+plaintively. “It's not--it's not--”
+
+“No, it's not,” said Mary. “I know that!”
+
+“How did they happen to ask you to dinner?” Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+uneasily. “'Stextrawdn'ry thing!”
+
+“Climbers' hospitality,” Mary defined it. “We were so very cordial and
+easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
+old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who
+did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's
+in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it
+might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort of
+house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it--and
+then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And
+mamma--” Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment.
+“Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I
+mean you coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had
+promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
+daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am,
+and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at
+seven-thirty!”
+
+And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture
+of flying grace as she sped.
+
+When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
+the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
+the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
+was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded
+gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+
+“At least no one could suspect me to-night,” she said. “I LOOK rich,
+don't I, papa?”
+
+She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+“regal.” A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
+poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were
+like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and
+livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
+
+“Don't I look too rich to be suspected?” she insisted.
+
+“You look everything beautiful, Mary,” he said, huskily.
+
+“And my dress?” She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
+of white and silver. “Anything better at Nice next winter, do you
+think?” She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again.
+“Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over.”
+
+“You can do anything, Mary.”
+
+There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
+significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
+he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
+breath.
+
+And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted
+her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he
+should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+
+“Don't worry,” she said, in a low voice and gravely. “I know exactly
+what you want me to do.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
+was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room,
+and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to
+converse--necessarily at the tops of their voices. The whole company
+of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the occasion by
+carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed
+a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of crystal and
+silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
+white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
+marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end,
+white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing.
+They were models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan
+Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the
+guests recognized them without having to be told what they were, and
+pronounced the likenesses superb.
+
+The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
+great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
+then on each side came the neighbors of the “old” house, grading down to
+vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments,
+and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a
+consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the thralls and
+bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could
+look at him and eat.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
+for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
+devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked
+at Bibbs.
+
+He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
+effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
+fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when
+each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health,
+turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the talk
+went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the
+orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass,
+and there was a mighty babble.
+
+“Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.”... “Yellow flounces on the
+overskirt--“... “I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
+this year,' I says.”... “Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
+weeks.”... “One of the biggest men in the biggest--“... “The wife says
+she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--“... “Say, did you see
+that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever--“...
+“Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I
+says, and so he ups and--“... “Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost
+now.”... “Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.”... “Yes,
+sir! Not a dollar to his name, and look at what--“... “You wait! The
+population of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she
+stops.”... “Well, if you can show me a bigger deal than--”
+
+And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+sentence, “Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+just what'll do it for my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass
+grow where one grew before!” It was his familiar flourish, an old
+story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary
+Vertrees.
+
+It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave. He sat
+there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
+smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
+simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health,
+of good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none
+bought, and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was
+thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big
+beneath its vast facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds
+twinkled, circling three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong,
+and he used them freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and,
+though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the
+look of readiness and activity.
+
+He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at
+every one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they
+were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure,
+and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
+discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a
+band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out
+for a band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra
+they hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
+
+He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the
+table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
+or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
+real business of eating and shouting.
+
+“Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!” he would bellow down the length of
+the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the
+“Toreador” song, perhaps. “Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy
+Lee'!” And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer
+to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the “Toreador” continuing
+vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments of “Nancy
+Lee,” naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that uxorious
+tribute.
+
+“Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's
+wife a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy
+Lee! Oh, Na-hancy Lee!”
+
+“HAY, there, old lady!” he would bellow. “Tell 'em to play 'In the
+Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they
+don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S
+good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin,
+get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter you
+folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!”
+
+“What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
+watch, ahoy!”
+
+No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
+conviction, it bore none now; though “mineral waters” were copiously
+poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
+wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
+could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
+Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
+said, he had “plans for Bibbs”--plans which were going to straighten out
+some things that had gone wrong.
+
+So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps,
+turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the
+table at his right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less
+naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired
+the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her--it needed but the
+sight of her.
+
+The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the
+jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the
+rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court
+to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the
+sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and
+admiration. “Wonder who that lady is--makin' such a hit with the old
+man.” “Must be some heiress.” “Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it
+to marry rich, then!”
+
+Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
+with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
+Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
+but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
+She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
+she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
+bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It
+enchanted him.
+
+As he proclaimed to the table, she had “a way with her.” She had,
+indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the
+feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed
+upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the
+look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech to him--
+
+“I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!”
+
+Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and “Why?” was all he managed to say.
+
+She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
+mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one,
+reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would
+“really flirt” with married men--she was obviously the “opposite of all
+that.” Edith defined her as a “thoroughbred,” a “nice girl”; and the
+look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and
+she was another whom it puzzled--though not because its recipient was
+married.
+
+“Because!” said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. “And
+also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times
+ahead for both of us if we don't get along.”
+
+Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+brought up to believe that when a man married he “married and settled
+down.” It was “all right,” he felt, for a man as old as his father to
+pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but
+for himself--“a young married man”--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
+friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+“flirted”--they were always very matter-of-fact with each other. Roscoe
+would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped he was
+susceptible.
+
+“Yes--we're neighbors,” he said, awkwardly.
+
+“Next-door neighbors in houses, too,” she added.
+
+“No, not exactly. I live across the street.”
+
+“Why, no!” she exclaimed, and seemed startled. “Your mother told me this
+afternoon that you lived at home.”
+
+“Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the
+street.”
+
+“But you--” she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into
+her cheek. “But I understood--”
+
+“No,” he said; “my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year,
+but that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.”
+
+“I--I see,” she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from
+him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
+name, “Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.” And from that moment Roscoe had little
+enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
+coquetries.
+
+Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor
+to “get through with old Roscoe,” as he thought of it, and give a
+bachelor a chance. “Old Roscoe” was the younger, but he had always been
+the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was “steady” enough, but was
+considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for
+Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
+“capable, hard-working young business men,” and the principal difference
+between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
+bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of
+hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches
+taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the
+father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have
+sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing “rich
+suitings in dark mixtures.”
+
+Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+color, which increased his approbation. “What's that old Roscoe saying
+to you, Miss Vertrees?” he asked. “These young married men are mighty
+forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.”
+
+“Am I blushing?” she said. “Are you sure?” And with that she gave him
+ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
+upon Roscoe. “I think you must be mistaken,” she continued. “I think
+it's your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.”
+
+“How?”
+
+She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
+confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. “By trying
+to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!”
+
+This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
+nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized
+that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was
+instantly snared by that realization.
+
+“By George!” he said. “I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+anything--yes, and get away with it, too!”
+
+She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
+laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
+she said: “But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not.
+I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away
+with YOU?”
+
+“More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!” Jim was inspired
+to reply. “Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making
+fun of me like that.”
+
+“I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,” she said, regarding him
+with sudden gravity.
+
+“Well,” said Jim, in simple honesty, “you're a funny girl!”
+
+Her gravity continued an instant longer. “I may not turn out to be funny
+for YOU.”
+
+“So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+manage to be satisfied.” And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
+turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+
+“Yes,” he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, “I can see
+you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
+means anything!”
+
+“'Laugh'!” she cried, gaily. “Why, it might be a matter of life and
+death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
+considering the mistake I made with your brother.”
+
+Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
+nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it;
+he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
+consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
+lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he
+mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
+
+“Put what question?” he said, breathlessly.
+
+“As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,” she returned,
+speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, “I think it would
+be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with
+any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?”
+
+“Not yet,” he gasped. “Are you?”
+
+“NO!” she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+
+Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
+lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
+Vertrees was “starting rather picturesquely with Jim.” And he added,
+languidly, “Do you suppose she WOULD?”
+
+For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+interested in the clasp of a long “rope” of pearls, a loop of which she
+was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
+and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
+clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty,
+but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
+accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize
+the wrongness of the wearer.
+
+“I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,”
+ repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+“I heard you.” There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
+eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
+now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. “Starting any
+stronger than you did with Edith?” she inquired.
+
+“Oh, keep the peace!” he said, crossly. “That's off, of course.”
+
+“You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely,” said
+Sibyl, looking at him steadily. “You've talked to her for--”
+
+“For Heaven's sake,” he begged, “keep the peace!”
+
+“Well, what have you just been doing?”
+
+“SH!” he said. “Listen to your father-in-law.”
+
+Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
+begun to play “The Rosary,” to his vast content.
+
+“I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,” he roared, beating the measures
+with his fork. “EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's
+the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
+thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--”
+
+“Mr. Sheridan,” she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, “you
+don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways,
+and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
+something important.”
+
+“I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!” the father
+threatened, more delighted with her than ever. “By gosh! if I was his
+age--or a widower right NOW--”
+
+“Oh, wait!” cried Mary. “If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
+Sheridan to hear.”
+
+“She'd say the same,” he shouted. “She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--”
+
+“You must listen to your father,” Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
+had grown red again. “He's going to tell us how, when he was your age,
+he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could
+see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!”
+
+At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. “Look here, young
+lady!” he roared. “Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or
+I'm goin' to kiss you!”
+
+Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed “too awful,” but
+Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+
+“Both!” she cried. “Both! The one to make me forget the other!”
+
+“But which--” he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+“Jim,” he roared, “if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
+you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!”
+
+And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
+little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew what his
+father's plans were now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Mrs. Vertrees “sat up” for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
+after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
+Landseers. Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for
+her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did
+the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a
+long vigil of it.
+
+She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her
+in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they
+had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
+the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her
+own room, which was directly over the “front hall.” There, book in hand,
+she employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief
+that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+
+Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought
+her--and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward
+because she did not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward
+this troubled couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which
+neither of them could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they
+had talked it over, day after day, from the very hour when they heard
+Sheridan was to build his New House next door. For--so quickly does
+any ideal of human behavior become an antique--their youth was of the
+innocent old days, so dead! of “breeding” and “gentility,” and no craft
+had been more straitly trained upon them than that of talking about
+things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital
+difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
+Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
+matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
+grocery while they were still dancing.
+
+It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+Mary's laugh, and “Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!”
+
+The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
+of cold and bracing air into her mother's room. “Yes,” she said, before
+Mrs. Vertrees could speak, “he brought me home!”
+
+She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
+pat upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+
+“Mamma!” Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that
+she had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. “Why don't you ask
+me?”
+
+This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. “I don't--” she
+faltered. “Ask you what, Mary?”
+
+“How I got along and what he's like.”
+
+“Mary!”
+
+“Oh, it isn't distressing!” said Mary. “And I got along so fast--” She
+broke off to laugh; continuing then, “But that's the way I went at it,
+of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?”
+
+“I don't know what you mean,” Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+plaintively.
+
+“Yes,” said Mary, “I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
+afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
+You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them while
+YOU pretend to run away!”
+
+“My dear, I don't know what to--”
+
+“What to make of anything!” Mary finished for her. “So that's all
+right! Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and
+tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures,
+but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned
+and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could manage at least twice
+as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone
+would have lasted us a couple of months. There they were, before me, but
+I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em, and so--well, so I did what I could!”
+
+She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. “It
+seemed to be a success--what I could,” she said, clasping her hands
+behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+accompaniment to her narrative. “The girl Edith and her sister-in-law,
+Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things on me.
+The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it. He's
+what he is. I like him.” She paused reflectively, continuing, “Edith's
+'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not stupid, but
+I think he's--” She interrupted herself with a cheery outcry: “Oh! I
+mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make Edith like him, I
+ought to respect him as a colleague.”
+
+“I don't understand a thing you're talking about,” Mrs. Vertrees
+complained.
+
+“All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that
+know. He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those
+people you wondered about at the theater, the last time we went--dressed
+in ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She
+flatters the father, and so did I, for that matter--but not that way. I
+treated him outrageously!”
+
+“Mary!”
+
+“That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of
+us follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the
+Palatine. He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em
+listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present of the
+house. What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples
+panorama in the hall. He made us look at all the plumbing--bath-rooms
+and everywhere else--and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples. He
+said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And
+he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken
+a prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed
+in mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful
+and nice--he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was
+modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
+after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street
+to her house with them--her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim
+Sheridan--”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. “'Jim'!” she exclaimed. “Mary, PLEASE--”
+
+“Of course,” said Mary. “I'll make it as easy for you as I can,
+mamma. Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe
+explained that 'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed
+that Mr. Lamhorn was the only one near death's door on that account.
+Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They
+were objectionably apologetic about it, and they seemed to think NOW we
+were going to have a 'good time' to make up for it. But I hadn't been
+bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and the 'good time' at Mrs.
+Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid.”
+
+“But, Mary,” her mother began, “is--is--” And she seemed unable to
+complete the question.
+
+“Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?
+I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise--Oh, what
+right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly
+my kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the
+Sheridan Building--”
+
+“Oh, no!” Mrs. Vertrees cried. “Surely not!”
+
+“Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what. But, after
+all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a palace
+in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver pieces
+had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I
+shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it picturesque and
+stately--I'd have been impressed. And what's the real difference? The
+icing is temporary, and that's much more modest, isn't it? And why is
+it vulgar to feel important more on account of something you've done
+yourself than because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides,
+if we go back a few generations, we've all got such hundreds of
+ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of
+ourselves about. Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to
+Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't see anything out of place
+in the Sheridan Building in sugar.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head
+gravely. “My dear, dear child,” she said, “it seems to me--It looks--I'm
+afraid--”
+
+“Say as much of it as you can, mamma,” said Mary, encouragingly. “I can
+get it, if you'll just give me one key-word.”
+
+“Everything you say,” Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, “seems to have the
+air of--it is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--”
+
+“Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+him.”
+
+“Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant,” said Mrs. Vertrees,
+speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. “But you said
+that--that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs.
+Sheridan's unentertaining--”
+
+“And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at
+dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I--”
+ And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+
+“Well,” she asked, gravely, “is there anything else I can do? You and
+papa don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is
+the only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress
+me. That's all there is about it, isn't it?”
+
+“But nothing MUST distress you!” the mother cried.
+
+“That's what I say!” said Mary, cheerfully. “And so it doesn't. It's all
+right.” She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
+the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet.
+“Mother, you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter
+whom a girl marries.”
+
+“No, no!” Mrs. Vertrees protested. “I never said such a--”
+
+“No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
+marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
+right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
+One man as well as another?”
+
+“Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I--”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mary, indulgently. “I don't mean you and papa. But
+isn't it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there
+must be something in it.”
+
+“Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that.” And Mrs. Vertrees
+lifted pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared. “It
+sounds--almost reckless!”
+
+Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. “Never fret,
+dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been
+too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our
+choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more
+than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house
+next door?”
+
+She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
+this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. “Oh,
+the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--”
+
+“Did he speak of it?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+
+“No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
+But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
+he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
+'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
+ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were
+in the Sheridan family”--she laughed a little ruefully--“he might be
+interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and
+bonds. I didn't see him after dinner.”
+
+“There must be something wrong with him,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “They'd
+have introduced him if there wasn't.”
+
+“I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people
+like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke of
+sending him back to a machine-shop of some sort; I suppose he meant
+when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr.
+Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me;
+and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic
+change came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!”
+
+“You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.”
+
+“No,” said Mary, thoughtfully, “I don't think he is; but he might be
+uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he
+once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy
+just then! I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--”
+
+“I wouldn't.” Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there
+was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. “I'd keep my mind on
+pleasanter things, Mary.”
+
+Mary laughed and nodded. “Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and
+probably, if all were known, too good--even for me!”
+
+And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Edith, glancing casually into the “ready-made” library, stopped
+abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the
+pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read
+it:
+
+                  FUGITIVE
+
+  I will forget the things that sting:
+    The lashing look, the barbed word.
+  I know the very hands that fling
+    The stones at me had never stirred
+  To anger but for their own scars.
+    They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars
+    Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like
+  These wounded ones I must not be,
+    For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free
+    Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+
+“Bibbs!” Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she
+came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful
+than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her
+coat.
+
+Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed
+by the poem. “Pretty young, isn't it?” he said. “There must have been
+something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe
+the poem did it.”
+
+She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a
+low voice: “I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all,
+Bibbs. I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't
+want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about
+it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it
+aloud to the whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what
+other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more,
+and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought
+I'd die of shame!”
+
+“You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp,” Bibbs suggested.
+
+“I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every
+time anybody speaks of the thing.”
+
+Bibbs looked grieved. “The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
+only seventeen when you wrote it.”
+
+“Oh, hush up!” she snapped. “I wish it had burnt my fingers the first
+time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where
+it was. I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--”
+
+“No, no,” he said, comfortingly. “It was the very most flattering thing
+ever happened to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
+machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--”
+
+“But I DON'T like it!” she exclaimed. “I don't even understand it--and
+papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
+truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize.”
+
+“Maybe they expected father to endow the school,” Bibbs murmured.
+
+“Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!
+I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how
+I 'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
+thing, the way he says it. I hate it!”
+
+“You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another
+name you might find--”
+
+“Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first
+chance I get.” She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. “I'd like
+to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!”
+
+“Edith!” he called, as she went into the hall.
+
+“What's the matter?”
+
+“I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used
+to me?”
+
+“What on earth do you mean?” she said, coming back as far as the
+threshold.
+
+“When I first came you couldn't look at me,” Bibbs explained, in his
+impersonal way. “But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if
+I'd--”
+
+“It's because you look so much better,” she told him, cheerfully. “This
+month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change.”
+
+“Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change.”
+
+“You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw,” said Edith, with supreme
+candor. “But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
+life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you
+mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say.
+But you're right about my not being able to look at you at first. You
+had a kind of whiteness that--Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose,
+but you've got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody
+could look at you now, Bibbs, and no--not get--”
+
+“Sick?”
+
+“Well--almost that!” she laughed. “And you're getting a better color
+every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly.”
+
+“I--I'm afraid so,” he said, ruefully.
+
+“'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean
+father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.
+I heard him say something about it the night of the--” The jingle of
+a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. “Bobby
+Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the country.
+Afternoon, Bibbs!”
+
+When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf,
+his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted
+almost entirely of handsome “uniform editions”: Irving, Poe, Cooper,
+Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon,
+Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert,
+Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves
+of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of “famous classics,” of “Oriental
+masterpieces,” of “masterpieces of oratory,” and more shelves of
+“selected libraries” of “literature,” of “the drama,” and of “modern
+science.” They made an effective decoration for the room, all these
+big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a
+reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace;
+but Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them
+considered them a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a
+burden of dust, and that nobody else considered them at all. Himself, he
+disturbed not one.
+
+There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house,
+and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.
+“Awready, Mist' Bibbs,” he announced. “You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you'
+ride, an' she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at
+fo' 'clock. Aw ready, suh.”
+
+He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in
+the manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the
+hall they passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket
+opened the door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the
+chauffeur in the car which stood waiting in the driveway.
+
+“It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I
+first came home, George,” said Bibbs, thoughtfully. “What did you tell
+me?”
+
+“Yessuh!” George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. “You
+ast me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty
+near ev'y day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me
+twicet.” He shook his head solemnly. “Look to me mus' be somep'm might
+lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!”
+
+“Mighty what?”
+
+“Mighty lamiDAL!” George, burst out laughing. “What DO 'at word mean,
+Mist' Bibbs?”
+
+“It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?”
+
+“I nev' DID hear it!” said George. “I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f
+an' she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so good,
+seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!”
+
+“Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes--”
+
+“Do she?” cried George. “WHAT she mean?”
+
+“It's exactly the word for the statue,” said Bibbs, with conviction, as
+he climbed into the car. “It's a lamiDAL statue.”
+
+“Hiyi!” George exulted. “Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!”
+
+“I expect she is!” said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from sight.
+
+George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in
+the hallway. “Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she is!'
+Ev'y day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways,
+las' thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git
+well, 'at young man go' be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh,
+right now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!”
+
+“Look out with all 'at money, George!” Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+“White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you. You the on'y man
+bettin' on 'im!”
+
+“I risk it!” cried George, merrily. “I put her all on now--ev'y cent!
+'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!”
+
+This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for
+the meaning of “lamiDAL,” differed radically from another prediction
+concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some
+twenty minutes later.
+
+Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees
+beside him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon
+the highroad. The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the
+occupants of Jim's had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on
+the back seat--his white face startlingly white against cap and collar
+of black fur--but he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+
+Jim waved his left hand carelessly. “It's Bibbs, taking his
+constitutional,” he explained.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Mary. “I bowed to him, too, though I've never met
+him. In fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice. I hope he won't think
+I'm very bold, bowing to him.”
+
+“I doubt if he noticed it,” said honest Jim.
+
+“Oh, no!” she cried.
+
+“What's the trouble?”
+
+“I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them.”
+
+“Oh, I see!” said Jim. “Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is
+funny.”
+
+“Is he? How?” she asked. “He strikes me as anything but funny.”
+
+“Well, I'm his brother,” Jim said, deprecatingly, “but I don't know what
+he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS
+his brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half
+alive to me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we
+were too big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his
+own age. He'd rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself.
+Nobody could ever get him to DO anything; you can't get him to do
+anything now. He never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my
+brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever
+made! Father put him in the machine-shop over at the Pump Works--best
+thing in the world for him--and he was just plain no account. It made
+him sick! If he'd had the right kind of energy--the kind father's got,
+for instance, or Roscoe, either--why, it wouldn't have made him sick.
+And suppose it was either of them--yes, or me, either--do you think any
+of us would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it,
+but Bibbs Sheridan'll never amount to anything as long as he lives.”
+
+Mary looked thoughtful. “Is there any particular reason why he should?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
+believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much
+money his father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be
+carried on by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've
+got and see other fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things
+already, isn't it every man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger?
+Isn't it his duty? Don't we always want to get bigger and bigger?”
+
+“Ye-es--I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He
+looked so lonely--and sick.”
+
+“He's gettin' better every day,” Jim said. “Dr. Gurney says so. There's
+nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous
+diseases, because they don't have time to imagine 'em.”
+
+“You mean his trouble is really mental?”
+
+“Oh, he's not a lunatic,” said Jim. “He's just queer. Sometimes he'll
+say something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off
+the subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance,
+the other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The
+darky asked him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody
+else in the world would have just said what time they DID want it, and
+that would have been all there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says,
+and I heard him with my own ears. 'What time do I want the car?' he
+says. 'Well, now, that depends--that depends,' he says. He talks slow
+like that, you know. 'I'll tell you what time I want the car, George,'
+he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think of this statue!' That's
+exactly his words! Asked the darky what he thought of that Arab Edith
+and mother bought for the hall!”
+
+Mary pondered upon this. “He might have been in fun, perhaps,” she
+suggested.
+
+“Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work
+of art! Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just
+kind-hearted--and that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!” she laughed.
+
+“See here!” he cried. “Isn't there any way for us to get over this
+Mister and Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed
+to be with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you
+know how I feel by this time--”
+
+She looked panic-stricken immediately. “Oh, no,” she protested, quickly.
+“No, I don't, and--”
+
+“Yes, you do,” he said, and his voice shook a little. “You couldn't help
+knowing.”
+
+“But I do!” she denied, hurriedly. “I do help knowing. I mean--Oh,
+wait!”
+
+“What for? You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly
+WANTED me to feel that way--or else pretended--”
+
+“Now, now!” she lamented. “You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!”
+
+“'Spoilin' it!'” He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+squarely. “See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--”
+
+“Stop! Stop the car a minute.” And when he had complied she faced him as
+squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. “Listen. I don't want
+you to go on, to-day.”
+
+“Why not?” he asked, sharply.
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“You mean it's just a whim?”
+
+“I don't know,” she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest,
+and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+
+“Will you tell me something?”
+
+“Almost anything.”
+
+“Have you ever told any man you loved him?”
+
+And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. “No,”
+ she said. “And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that--or ever
+know what it means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan.”
+
+“Then you--you've just been flirting with me!” Poor Jim looked both
+furious and crestfallen.
+
+“Not one bit!” she cried. “Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant
+every single thing!”
+
+“I don't--”
+
+“Of course you don't!” she said. “Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start
+the car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I
+have not flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing
+more, and then I want you to take me straight home, talking about the
+weather all the way. I said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care'
+for any man, and that is true. I doubt the existence of the kind of
+'caring' we hear about in poems and plays and novels. I think it must be
+just a kind of emotional TALK--most of it. At all events, I don't feel
+it. Now, we can go faster, please.”
+
+“Just where does that let me out?” he demanded. “How does that excuse
+you for--”
+
+“It isn't an excuse,” she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+wholly desolate. “I haven't said I should never marry.”
+
+“What?” Jim gasped.
+
+She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+unfathomably sorrowful.
+
+“I promise nothing,” she said, faintly.
+
+“You needn't!” shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. “You needn't! By
+George! I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise
+whenever you're ready!”
+
+“Don't forget what I asked,” she begged him.
+
+“Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!” cried the
+happy Jim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields
+and sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean
+air beneath a glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so
+maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible
+for men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+
+Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.
+How largely this apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his
+face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the
+result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than
+the circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a
+month before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it
+seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to convey her forgiveness.
+
+There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
+his experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the
+impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her
+veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind--and that
+look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+
+By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed
+and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the
+smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon,
+that nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine
+shrouded in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very
+heart of it, for a commanded interview with his father, the distant
+cloud was like an implacable genius issuing thunderously in smoke from
+his enchanted bottle, and irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+
+They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of
+November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and
+here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray;
+the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there,
+nevertheless--impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And
+then, as the car drove on, the chimneys and stacks of factories came
+swimming up into view like miles of steamers advancing abreast, every
+funnel with its vast plume, savage and black, sweeping to the horizon,
+dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation over league on league already
+rich and vile with grime.
+
+The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar
+and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car
+passed two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways
+possible to make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and
+lurid the next with the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing
+blackened giants, half naked, in passionate action, struggling with
+formless things in the hot illumination. And big as these shops were,
+they were growing bigger, spreading over a third block, where two new
+structures were mushrooming to completion in some hasty cement process
+of a stability not over-reassuring. Bibbs pulled the rug closer about
+him, and not even the phantom of color was left upon his cheeks as he
+passed this place, for he knew it too well. Across the face of one of
+the buildings there was an enormous sign: “Sheridan Automatic Pump Co.,
+Inc.”
+
+Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and
+adding their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses
+of a thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots
+and nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from
+one another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch
+some night when the right wind blew. They were only waiting for that
+wind and a cigarette, and then they would all be gone together--a pinch
+of incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+
+Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there
+a forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people
+said it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure
+that asphalt and “improving” the streets did it; but Bigness was in
+too Big a hurry to bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles
+and telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the
+thousand to take their places. So he let the trees die and put up his
+poles. They were hideous, but nobody minded that; and sometimes the
+wires fell and killed people--but not often enough to matter at all.
+
+Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the
+town where the few solid old houses not already demolished were in
+transition: some, with their fronts torn away, were being made into
+segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into
+trade, brazenly putting forth “show-windows” on their first floors,
+seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped
+humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one story
+erected in the old front yards. Altogether, the town here was like a
+boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old ingredients
+were discernible.
+
+This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached
+the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing
+while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried
+before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of
+feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them,
+rising higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings
+were coming down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men
+worked underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs
+like spiders in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to
+split the wind like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way
+round swarming corners; motor-cars of every kind and shape known to
+man babbled frightful warnings and frantic demands; hospital ambulances
+clamored wildly for passage; steam-whistles signaled the swinging of
+titanic tentacle and claw; riveters rattled like machine-guns; the
+ground shook to the thunder of gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate
+sound of it all was the sound of earthquake playing accompaniments for
+battle and sudden death. On one of the new steel buildings no work
+was being done that afternoon. The building had killed a man in the
+morning--and the steel-workers always stop for the day when that
+“happens.”
+
+And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and
+the pagan women--there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For
+the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the
+rush and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+
+Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be “to the minute” or his father
+would consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's
+office marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with
+his entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under
+Sheridan's direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or
+audible suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to
+the new-comer. As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly
+stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that
+they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a
+disappointment, the “queer one” of the family, and that he had been
+summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly
+what they understood.
+
+“Sit down,” said Sheridan.
+
+It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
+
+Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his
+big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They
+were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as might be
+still damp from a basin.
+
+“Well, Bibbs,” he said at last, not altering his attitude, “do you know
+what I'm goin' to do with you?”
+
+Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon
+the ceiling. “I heard you tell Jim,” he began, in his slow way. “You
+said you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to
+Miss Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But--”
+
+“But what?” said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+
+“Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?”
+
+That brought his father sharply round to face him. “You beat the devil!
+Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?”
+
+“Liver, maybe,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+“Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you
+organically. No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter,
+and that's ALL the matter. Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put
+through the big deals! No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just
+sets out on the back fence and thinks about how much trouble there must
+be in the world! That ain't the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs;
+it's the kind that borrows fifteen cents from his wife's uncle's
+brother-in-law to get ten cent's worth o' plug tobacco and a nickel's
+worth o' quinine!”
+
+He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned
+again to the window.
+
+“Look out there!” he bade his son. “Look out o' that window! Look at the
+life and energy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
+tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young
+men are doin' in this town!” He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk
+in the middle of the room. “Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look
+at what your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look
+at Jim! I made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last
+New-Year's, with charge of every inch o' ground and every brick and
+every shingle and stick o' wood we own; and it's an example to any young
+man--or ole man, either--the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found
+out we wanted two more big warehouses at the Pump Works--wanted 'em
+quick. Contractors said it couldn't be done; said nine or ten months
+at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What'd Jim do? Took the
+contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process;
+kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day
+himself--and, by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week! Four
+months and a half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o'
+these fellers that make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young
+man can be like Jim, because there's mighty few got his ability, but
+every young man can go in and do his share. This town is God's own
+country, and there's opportunity for anybody with a pound of energy and
+an ounce o' gumption. I tell you these young business men I watch just
+do my heart good! THEY don't set around on the back fence--no, sir! They
+take enough exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball
+game once or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice
+families, with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the
+work--because the work's got to go ON! They're puttin' their life-blood
+into it, I tell you, and that's why we're gettin' bigger every minute,
+and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin' to keep ON
+gettin' bigger!”
+
+He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing
+that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still
+fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan
+was impelled to groan. “Oh, Lord!” he said. “This is the way you always
+were. I don't believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You
+don't LOOK as if you did. By George! it's discouraging!”
+
+“I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger,” said Bibbs,
+bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. “I don't see
+just why--”
+
+“WHAT?” Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+staring across it incredulously at his son.
+
+“I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?”
+
+“Great God!” shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+clenched fist. “A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the
+poorest day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question--”
+
+“I did once,” Bibbs interrupted; “when I was in the machine-shop. I--”
+
+“Wha'd he say?”
+
+“He said, 'Oh, hell!'” answered Bibbs, mildly.
+
+“Yes, I reckon he would!” Sheridan swung away from the desk. “I reckon
+he certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now,
+myself!”
+
+“It's the same answer, then?” Bibbs's voice was serious, almost
+tremulous.
+
+“Damnation!” Sheridan roared. “Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,
+you ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the
+word PROGRESS?”
+
+He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,
+his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. “Now then,” he said,
+huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, “what do you want to do?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What do you WANT to do, I said.”
+
+Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. “What--what do--I--what--”
+
+“If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you
+do?”
+
+Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound
+shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his
+shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to
+the desk in school.
+
+“What would you do? Loaf?”
+
+“No, sir.” Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it
+made was unquestionably a guilty sound. “I suppose I'd--I'd--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I suppose I'd try to--to write.”
+
+“Write what?”
+
+“Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps.”
+
+“That all?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I see,” said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+putting upon himself. “That is, you want to write, but you don't want to
+write anything of any account.”
+
+“You think--”
+
+Sheridan got up again. “I take my hat off to the man that can write
+a good ad,” he said, emphatically. “The best writin' talent in this
+country is right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for
+good writin'--look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for
+that kind o' writin'. Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried
+it, and I can't do it. I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes
+people do the hardest thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to
+make 'em give up their MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell
+you when it comes to the actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to
+make things HAPPEN, R. T. Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in
+a minute than George Waldo Emerson ever knew in his whole life!”
+
+“You--you may be--” Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered in
+a cough.
+
+“Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up
+with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'!
+My Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper
+without havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane
+Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why,
+look at Edith! I expect that poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water
+mark for you, young man, and it's the only one she's ever managed to
+write in her whole LIFE! When I wanted her to go on and write some more
+she said it took too much time. Said it took months and months. And
+Edith's a smart girl; she's got more energy in her little finger than
+you ever give me a chance to see in your whole body, Bibbs. Now look
+at the facts: say she could turn out four or five poems a year and you
+could turn out maybe two. That medal she got was worth about fifteen
+dollars, so there's your income--thirty dollars a year! That's a fine
+success to make of your life! I'm not sayin' a word against poetry. I
+wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith's;
+and poetry's all right enough in its place--but you leave it to the
+girls. A man's got to do a man's work in this world!”
+
+He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+Bibbs confidentially on the knee. “This city's got the greatest future
+in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're
+goin' to have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty fair share. I love
+this town. It's God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every
+day right along, I don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own
+business, and I'd fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family.
+It's a beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any
+district you want to; look at the park system we're puttin' through,
+and the boulevards and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she
+grows!” He had become intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. “Now,
+Bibbs, I can't take any of it--nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor
+bonds--away with me in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave
+my share in it to my boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and
+a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before,
+whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built
+big, and I want the buildin' to go on. And when my last hour comes I
+want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're fit
+to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want
+to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to take hold of big things.
+Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made
+mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my
+boys.”
+
+He leaned back, deeply moved. “There!” he said, huskily. “I've never
+spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you
+to understand--and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that
+way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs.”
+
+“I see,” said Bibbs. “At least I think I do. But--”
+
+“Wait a minute!” Sheridan raised his hand. “If you see the least bit
+in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set
+here and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you
+must understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have
+him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium
+because he couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs.
+I've had a whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time
+another, and I reckon I understand your case just about as well as he
+does, anyway! Now here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder
+than what I did the other boys, and that was for your own good, because
+I saw you needed to be shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of
+moody and mopish--and you needed work that'd keep you on the jump. Now,
+why did it make you sick instead of brace you up and make a man of you
+the way it ought of done? I pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look
+here, ain't it really because he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says,
+'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it, it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it,
+and that affects his nervous system. The more he tries it, the more he
+hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.' That
+ain't quite his words, but it's what he meant. And that's about the way
+it is.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, “that's about the way it is.”
+
+“Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to
+make you like it!”
+
+Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+ghostly. “I can't,” he said, in a low voice. “I can't.”
+
+“Can't go back to the shop?”
+
+“No. Can't like it. I can't.”
+
+Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
+exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father
+should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious
+stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from
+childhood. “By George, you will!” he cried. “You'll go back there and
+you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like it, and he
+says it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks as if it
+was about up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work
+doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you, whether you hate
+it or not. I've never made a mistake in a serious matter in my life,
+and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And
+I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back there and vindicate my
+judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin'
+to learn the right one! He says in a couple more months this fool thing
+that's been the matter with you'll be disappeared completely and you'll
+be back in as good or better condition than you were before you ever
+went into the shop. And right then is when you begin over--right in that
+same shop! Nobody can call me a hard man or a mean father. I do the best
+I can for my chuldern, and I take full responsibility for bringin' my
+sons up to be men. Now, so far, I've failed with you. But I'm not goin'
+to keep ON failin'. I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and
+I'm not goin' to begin with my own son. I'm goin' to make a MAN of you.
+By God! I am!”
+
+Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. “You say you
+give me a couple of months?” he said.
+
+Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. “Gurney said two months more
+would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself
+in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!”
+
+“Good-by, sir,” said Bibbs, meekly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the “lamidal”
+ George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of
+temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception
+of himself as a permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the
+mantelpiece the two photographs that he owned: one, a “group” twenty
+years old--his father and mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys--and the
+other a “cabinet” of Edith at sixteen. And upon a table were the books
+he had taken from his trunk: Sartor Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque,
+Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles. There were some other books in the
+trunk--a large one, which remained unremoved at the foot of the bed,
+adding to the general impression of transiency. It contained nearly all
+the possessions as well as the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs
+sat beside it, the day after his interview with his father, raking over
+a small collection of manuscripts in the top tray. Some of these he
+glanced through dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but one made
+him smile. Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to
+read it. It was written on paper stamped “Hood Sanitarium,” and bore the
+title, “Leisure.”
+
+  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace--
+
+Having read so far as the word “peace,” Bibbs suffered an interruption
+interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the
+hall just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel
+was in progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and
+continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+
+“Yes, you BETTER go home!” Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.
+“You better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!”
+
+“Edie, Edie!” he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+
+“You see here!” This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+tremulous. “Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother
+Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she
+thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good.”
+
+“Yes, you did!” And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. “Yes, you
+did! YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it
+up between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--”
+
+“Edie, Edie! Now, now!”
+
+“Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what
+about his not going to HER house. How--”
+
+“I've explained that to Mother Sheridan.” Sibyl's voice indicated that
+she was descending the stairs. “Married people are not the same. Some
+things that should be shielded from a young girl--”
+
+This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. “'Shielded from
+a young girl'!” she shrilled. “You seem pretty willing to be the shield!
+You look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!”
+
+Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+pacification were renewed. “Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,
+and you'd oughtn't to--”
+
+“Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa--”
+
+“Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--”
+
+“You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!” the girl cried, passionately.
+
+“Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll--”
+
+“No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!” And Edith,
+flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung
+round it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself,
+face down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no
+perception of Bibbs's presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a
+passion of tears, she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched
+fists. “Sneak!” she babbled aloud. “Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!”
+
+Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward
+the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some
+sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+
+“Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago.”
+
+“Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry--”
+
+“Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?”
+
+“Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going
+out.”
+
+“No; don't go.” She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob,
+and repeated her request. “Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet,
+anyhow. Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at
+all, but I wish you'd sit down.”
+
+“All right.” And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. “Go ahead
+and cry all you want, Edith,” he said. “No harm in that!”
+
+“Sibyl told mamma--OH!” she began, choking. “Mary Vertrees had mamma and
+Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had some
+women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid
+herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em
+ever since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn
+is so bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice
+people in town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it's
+a falsehood, and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place
+I know the reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I
+won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and all of you would think
+I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably
+quit speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I
+ask. Just you watch that woman. You'll see!”
+
+As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching “that woman.” Glancing from
+the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old
+house next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked
+quickly up the path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention
+of calling. But he did not mention this to his sister, who, after
+delivering herself of a rather vague jeremiad upon the subject of her
+sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her own chamber, leaving him to
+his speculations. The chief of these concerned the social elasticities
+of women. Sibyl had just been a participant in a violent scene; she had
+suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to set her quivering
+with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to the presence
+of people whom she knew no more than “formally.” Bibbs marveled. Surely,
+he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon Sibyl's face or in
+her manner; she could not have ironed it all quite out in the three or
+four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses' door.
+
+And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose
+that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may
+and does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex
+as well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is
+a type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought
+greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women
+and by its own “lack of perspective,” for it is a type that never sees
+itself. Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question--it
+was like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not
+even the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make
+a certain impression she believed that she made it. She believed that
+she was believed.
+
+“My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,”
+ Mary said, when they were seated.
+
+Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had
+been brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark
+addressed to her by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms.
+It was intended partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an
+impression of sweetness.
+
+“Just thought I'd fly in a minute,” she said, continuing the cooing to
+relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. “I thought I'd just behave
+like REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far
+from down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted
+to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that
+afternoon. You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here
+before, I've had to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely, and
+I really've known scarcely anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed
+in business ever since he was a mere boy, why, of course--”
+
+She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+
+“Of course,” said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+
+“Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+afternoon,” Sibyl went on. “They're really delightful people. Indeed
+they are! Yes--”
+
+She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected
+with the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of
+cheerful ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of
+hands.
+
+“Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people
+here in town the other day,” said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and
+protracting it. “They said something that took ME by surprise! We were
+talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--”
+
+Mary interrupted her promptly. “Do you mean 'mutual' to include my
+mother and me?” she asked.
+
+“Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean.”
+
+“No,” said Mary. “We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+ours.”
+
+To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. “That's
+just the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!” she cried, with a vehemence that
+made Mary stare. “Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families
+here speak of him!”
+
+Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.
+“I had the impression he was a friend of yours,” she said; adding,
+hastily, “and your husband's.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said the caller, absently. “He is, certainly. A man's
+reputation for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to
+married people, of course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN
+it may be very, very dangerous. There are a great many things safe and
+proper for married people that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young
+girl. Don't you agree, Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“I don't know,” returned the frank Mary. “Do you mean that you intend
+to remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's
+doing so?”
+
+“That's it exactly!” was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. “What
+I feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable
+for Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell
+you,” she cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, “her father ought to
+put his foot down!”
+
+Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and
+then retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one
+might catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back
+into hiding under a bush.
+
+“Of course,” said Sibyl, much more composedly, “I hardly need say that
+it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as
+fond of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting
+about it. It would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled.”
+
+This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with
+pathos, but she flatted.
+
+And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the
+stress of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not
+uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect
+obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and
+the other flawed. In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect
+consciousness of Mary. The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely
+something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose--a Mary Vertrees who
+was incapable of penetrating that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing
+that she was projecting the image of herself that she desired to
+project, never dreaming that with every word, every look, and every
+gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to
+the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed
+woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but
+possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong--perhaps even violent.
+What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began to suspect.
+
+“And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled,” Sibyl continued. “It would be a
+dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
+Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
+would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't
+tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent
+and hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too
+late. You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just
+what it's my duty to do.”
+
+“I see,” said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, “Does Miss Sheridan
+seem to--to care very much about him?”
+
+“He's deliberately fascinated her,” returned the visitor, beginning to
+breathe quickly and heavily. “Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she
+wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that
+were, and she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start
+that made it easy for him--and he didn't need it. He could have done
+it, anyway!” Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice
+shook. “He went after her deliberately, the way he does everything; he's
+as cold-blooded as a fish. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and
+lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold of a piece of real
+money--and there was Edith! And he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can
+stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any money if she marries
+him, and the only person that could make him understand that is Father
+Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed, because Lamhorn is going to
+hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so last night. He said he was
+going to marry her the first minute he could persuade her to it--and
+little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!” Sibyl's eyes flashed green
+again. “And he swore he'd do it,” she panted. “He swore he'd marry Edith
+Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!”
+
+And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
+unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she
+saw Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps--for
+Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants might have heard.
+She saw Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and
+Lamhorn--tired of her--first evasive, then brutally letting her have the
+truth; and at last, infuriated, “swearing” to marry her rival. If Sibyl
+had not babbled out the word “swore” it might have been less plain.
+
+The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+“You see,” she said, more quietly, “whatever's going to be done ought to
+be done right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard
+about Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before
+Edith. I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because
+nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend
+would do. But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid
+to ever come right out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith
+can get anything she wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary
+indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel
+rock. If it's a question of his will against anybody else's he'd make
+his will rule if it killed 'em both! Now, he'd never in the world let
+Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew his reputation. So, you
+see, somebody's got to tell him. It isn't a very easy position for me,
+is it, Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“No,” said Mary, gravely.
+
+“Well, to be frank,” said Sibyl, smiling, “that's why I've come to you.”
+
+“To ME!” Mary frowned.
+
+Sibyl rippled and cooed again. “There isn't ANYBODY ever made such a hit
+with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL
+hope you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the
+family!” (This sally with another and louder effect of laughter). “And
+if it's MY duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too.”
+
+“No, no!” exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+
+“Listen,” said Sibyl. “Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this
+story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a
+good reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose
+(what's most likely) she loses her temper and says I invented it, then
+what am I going to do? Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and
+her daughter, and they're out of the question, anyway. But suppose I
+could say: 'All right, if you want proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came
+with me, and she's waiting in the next room right now, to--”
+
+“No, no,” said Mary, quickly. “You mustn't--”
+
+“Listen just a minute more,” Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
+ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. “You
+naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but
+if YOU take part in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what
+weight you carry over there, and no one would have the right to say you
+did it except out of the purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and
+his father would admire you all the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen!
+Don't you see we OUGHT to do it, you and I? Do you suppose Robert
+Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her? Do you suppose a man like
+him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for the money?” And again
+Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface. “I tell you he's after nothing on
+earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile, over there,
+next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to do it. Marry Edith?” she cried. “I tell
+you he'd marry their nigger cook for THAT!”
+
+She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too vehement,
+but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she had
+produced the effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was
+staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She
+became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+
+“After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+money-pile, over there, next door!” The voice was vulgar, the words were
+vulgar--and the plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary Vertrees's
+ears! The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly in the flawed
+one at last.
+
+Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her
+bargain. “Now don't you worry,” she said, sunnily, “about this setting
+Edith against you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she
+tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in
+over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a
+house, and Jim likes to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that
+way; she's too crazy to have you take her around with the smart crowd,
+but if she DID, you needn't worry. And another thing--I guess you won't
+mind Jim's own sister-in-law speaking of it. Of course, I don't know
+just how matters stand between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about
+as much alike as two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up
+his mind; sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD. Now, what
+I mean is, sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like
+that. There's lots of little things can be said, and lots--”
+
+She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and
+now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or
+any other kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of
+the room.
+
+Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered
+something neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and
+that she would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of
+absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her guest
+was talking. And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think
+this unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first considered it.
+There might have been more excuse for it, she thought, had she been
+speaking of matters less important--offering to do the girl all the
+kindness in her power, too!
+
+Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of
+her shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory
+of the furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and
+engravings. Then she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window
+and stood looking out upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair
+she had abandoned, and sat again. There was no sound in the house.
+
+A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her
+face, and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears. She
+looked at her watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since she
+had looked at it before.
+
+She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let
+herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her
+own house.
+
+Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. “Saw you from the window,”
+ he explained. “You must find a lot to say to that old lady.”
+
+“What old lady?”
+
+“Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the
+daughter come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk
+on up the street. Don't stand out on the porch,” he said, crossly.
+“Come in here. There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you
+about. Come in!”
+
+But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house
+and started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,
+staring fixedly. “Something's the matter over there,” he muttered, and
+then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, “What's the
+matter over there?”
+
+Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed,
+and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity,
+and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had
+followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she
+was crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+
+“By George!” gasped Roscoe. “I believe somebody's dead!”
+
+And he started for the New House at a run.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon,
+and at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from
+foreign parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with
+Sheridan and his colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name,
+was a gentleman of Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and
+Sheridan took pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's finest
+city. They got into an open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan
+Building, and were driven first, slowly and momentously, through the
+wholesale district and the retail district; then more rapidly they
+inspected the packing-houses and the stock-yards; then skirmished over
+the “park system” and “boulevards”; and after that whizzed through the
+“residence section” on their way to the factories and foundries.
+
+“All cray,” observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+
+“'Cray'?” echoed Sheridan. “I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?”
+
+“No white,” said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the
+long rows of houses on both sides of the street. “No white lace
+window-curtains; all cray lace window-curtains.”
+
+“Oh. I see!” Sheridan laughed indulgently. “You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
+ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones.”
+
+Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. “There are NO white ones,”
+ he said. “There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white
+window-curtains, no white house, no white peeble!” He pointed upward.
+“Smoke!” Then he sniffed the air and clasped his nose between forefinger
+and thumb. “Smoke! Smoke ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites.” He tapped
+his chest. “Smoke in your lunks!”
+
+“Oh! SMOKE!” Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+patently finding it delicious. “You BET we got smoke!”
+
+“Exbensif!” said Herr Favre. “Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in
+summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it.”
+
+Sheridan laughed uproariously. “They know it means new spring hats for
+'em!”
+
+“They must need many, too!” said the visitor. “New hats, new all things,
+but nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing
+peeble.”
+
+“Where's that?”
+
+“In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'”
+
+“Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip,
+and I tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty
+dirty and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin'
+right down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town
+than in Munich? I know you got more enterprise up there than the part of
+the old country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're
+associated with others like you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place,
+wouldn't you heap rather be here than over there?”
+
+“For me,” said Herr Favre, “no. Here I should not think I was living. It
+would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else.”
+
+“We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
+like it.”
+
+“Oh yes.” And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. “The first generation,
+they bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are
+Americans, like you.” He tapped his host's big knee genially. “You are
+patriot; so are they.”
+
+“Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+Farver!” Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. “You certainly stand up for your
+own town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would
+here. Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after you've seen
+our city! It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire
+you for it; every man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees
+the other fellow's got the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in
+your heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live right here than any place else
+in the world, if you had your choice. Man alive! this is God's country,
+Mr. Farver, and a blind man couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand
+where you do in a business way and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are.
+This is the big works, and I'll show you something now that'll make your
+eyes stick out!”
+
+They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+
+“Now I'll take you for a spin in the country,” said Sheridan, when at
+last they came out to the car again. “We'll take a breezer.” But, with
+his foot on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out
+of the office smiling a greeting. “Hello, young fellow!” Sheridan said,
+heartily. “On the job, are you, Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of
+it very often, I guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in
+the country sometimes with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside
+you!” He roared with laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder.
+“That's all right with me--if it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we
+goin' to move into your new warehouses? Monday?”
+
+“Sunday, if you want to,” said Jim.
+
+“No!” cried his father, delighted. “Don't tell me you're goin' to keep
+your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
+contractor yet didn't want more time.”
+
+“They'll be all ready for you on the minute,” said Jim. “I'm going over
+both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I
+guess they'll pass inspection, too!”
+
+“Well, then, when you get through with that,” said his father, “you go
+and take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell
+her you stand high with ME!” He stepped into the car, waving a waggish
+farewell, and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his
+companion a broad face literally shining with pride. “That's my boy
+Jimmie!” he said.
+
+“Fine young man, yes,” said Herr Favre.
+
+“I got two o' the finest boys,” said Sheridan, “I got two o' the finest
+boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and
+I tell you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM
+in bed! My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's
+a wizard. You saw them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?
+Well, JIM built 'em. I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver.” And he
+recited this history, describing the new process at length; in fact, he
+had such pride in Jim's achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it
+more than once.
+
+“Fine young man, yes,” repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an
+hour later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+
+“He is that!” said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: “I got a fine
+family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her
+and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.
+There's culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,
+and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it--her and my
+daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.
+I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and
+you'll see--and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been holdin'
+their own with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for much
+o' that kind o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern;
+and my daughter she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem
+she wrote when I get you up at the house. She wrote it in school and
+took the first prize for poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em
+any smarter'n that girl, Mr. Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're
+a pretty happy family; yes, sir. Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet,
+and I haven't ever spoke to him and his wife about it--it's kind of
+a delicate matter--but it's about time the wife and I saw some
+gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker for about
+four or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys, I
+hope, o' course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard
+me joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods
+here, and I guess it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER! She's one
+these girls that stand right up and look at you! And pretty? She's
+the prettiest thing you ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good
+sense. Jim'll be just right if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME
+to think o' the way that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder. Four
+months and a half! Yes, sir--”
+
+He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain
+the stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they
+reached the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan
+allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were
+shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+
+“Now, good night, Mr. Farver,” said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+shake hands with his guest. “Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and
+take you up to--Go on away, boy!”
+
+A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, “Extry!
+Secon' Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!”
+
+“Get out!” laughed Sheridan. “Who wants to read about accidents? Get
+out!”
+
+The boy moved away philosophically. “Extry! Extry!” he shrilled. “Three
+men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
+Extry!”
+
+“Don't forget, Mr. Farver,” Sheridan completed his interrupted
+farewells. “I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be
+here for you about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed
+the drive much as I have. Good night--good night!” He leaned back,
+speaking to the chauffer. “Now you can take me around to the Central
+City barber-shop, boy. I want to get a shave 'fore I go up home.”
+
+“Extry! Extry!” screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+bats in the dusk. “Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!” It
+struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many “Extras”; they printed
+“Extras” for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake,
+he decided, critically. Crying “Wolf!” too often wouldn't sell the
+goods; it was bad business. The papers would “make more in the long
+run,” he was sure, if they published an “Extra” only when something of
+real importance happened.
+
+“Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!” a boy squawked under his
+nose, as he descended from the car.
+
+“Go on away!” said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see
+the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+
+But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus
+cried his wares.
+
+“Say, Yallern,” said this second, hoarse with awe, “'n't chew know who
+that IS?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“It's SHERIDAN!”
+
+“Jeest!” cried the first, staring insanely.
+
+At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+and Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was
+their habit to give him a “reception,” his entrance being always the
+signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses
+of briskness and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
+
+The shop was crowded. Copies of the “Extra” were being read by men
+waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. “Extras” lay upon
+vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+
+There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
+the door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
+of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
+turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing
+silence in the shop.
+
+The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
+left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section
+of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above
+it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's
+closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber
+remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or just after
+it--under which a man does not need to be shaved.
+
+He stepped forward, profoundly grave. “I be through with this man in the
+chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan,” he said, in a hushed tone. “Yessuh.”
+ And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, “You goin'
+RESIGN?” he demanded in a fierce undertone. “You goin' take Mist'
+Sheridan's coat?” He sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,
+taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of
+subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+
+“You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan,” said the head barber, gently.
+“I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Sheridan. “Go on get through with your man.”
+
+“Yessuh.” And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+
+Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know
+what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand
+for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been
+imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd
+look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+
+Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the
+shop, and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly
+shifted, furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after
+wondering if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the
+night before; but there was no vacancy in either line.
+
+The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of
+the “Extra” there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The
+first of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims--
+
+Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the
+print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,
+pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+
+“I've come for you, father,” said Bibbs. “Here's the boy with your coat
+and hat. Put them on and come home.”
+
+And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
+strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
+
+Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,
+but as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his
+son's sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood
+face to face.
+
+“What--what--” His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it, he
+was so frightened.
+
+“Extry!” screamed a newsboy straight in his face. “Young North Side
+millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!”
+
+“Not--JIM!” said Sheridan.
+
+Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+
+“And YOU come to tell me that?”
+
+Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
+first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered
+cry of accusation:
+
+“Why wasn't it you?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
+days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
+in his mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs
+wondered how many million times that had happened since men first made a
+word to name the sons of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his
+strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead
+son. He had nothing to help him meet the shock, neither definite
+religion nor “philosophy” definite or indefinite. He could only beat his
+forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed with an ax, while his wife
+was helpless except to entreat him not to “take on,” herself adding a
+continuous lamentation. Edith, weeping, made truce with Sibyl and saw to
+it that the mourning garments were beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed,
+and he shirked, justifying himself curiously by saying he “never had
+any experience in such matters.” So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who
+became, during this dreadful little time, the master of the house; for
+as strange a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He
+met the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time
+for the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and
+he selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other
+things. Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the
+rites with a picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs
+wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection--he
+divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely a
+consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So the Knights led the
+procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way to the
+cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines, plumed
+hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the carriages pass
+between.
+
+“Mighty fine-lookin' men,” said Sheridan, brokenly. “They all--all liked
+him. He was--” His breath caught in a sob and choked him. “He was--a
+Grand Supreme Herald.”
+
+Bibbs had divined aright.
+
+“Dust to dust,” said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
+shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to “Dust to dust.” Bibbs stood
+passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a
+familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long
+time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between
+himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if
+he had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close--as
+Dr. Gurney predicted--that no one would be able to tell the difference
+between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would
+be all the more determined to “make a man” of him, now that there was
+a man less in the family. To Bibbs's knowledge, no one and nothing had
+ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans, once he had
+determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing that any
+plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His nature
+unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence,
+and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would
+hold to that way of “making a man” of Bibbs, who understood very well,
+in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
+make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
+
+He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The
+truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so
+thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that
+no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them,
+especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
+feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange
+to his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that
+Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would
+bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was
+to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the
+big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid
+hands upon Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering;
+Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her
+husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+
+It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and
+Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line
+of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the
+grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over
+the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the
+carriages filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs
+gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking
+back as he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not
+want to see. But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels
+or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had
+gone. A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
+
+The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about
+it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood
+looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming
+hillock beneath the darkening November sky. “It's too bad!” he half
+whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was
+too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was
+his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees
+standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.
+
+She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a
+slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the
+barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:
+urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and
+shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in
+unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such
+a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so
+long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
+undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
+box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without
+hope and without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque
+setting--she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a
+graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.
+
+She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and
+confused than Bibbs. In “Edith's” poem he had declared his intention of
+hiding his heart “among the stars”; and in his boyhood one day he had
+successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade
+of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were
+only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All
+his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker in
+the world. Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the
+unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her
+unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the
+little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive
+outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than
+those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started
+and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers
+fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.
+
+“Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, “I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
+you. I--” She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
+
+“Why--why--yes,” Bibbs stammered. “I'll--I'll be de--Won't you get in?”
+
+In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then
+Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing
+the door.
+
+“You're very kind,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I should have had
+to walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It--it is beginning to get dark. I--I noticed that.”
+
+“I ought to tell you--I--” Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat
+silent a moment, then spoke with composure. “It must seem odd, my--”
+
+“No, no!” Bibbs protested, earnestly. “Not in the--in the least.”
+
+“It does, though,” said Mary. “I had not intended to come to the
+cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came
+and whispered to me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your sister
+sent him. So I came. But when we reached here I--oh, I felt that perhaps
+I--”
+
+Bibbs nodded gravely. “Yes, yes,” he murmured.
+
+“I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,” she continued. “I mean
+opposite from--from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in
+the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time it takes.
+From where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at least I didn't
+notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here.
+I didn't know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course
+they didn't think to wait for me. That's why--”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, “I--” And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+
+Mary looked out through the dusty window. “I think we'd better be going
+home, if you please,” she said.
+
+“Yes,” Bibbs agreed, not moving. “It will be dark before we get there.”
+
+She gave him a quick little glance. “I think you must be very tired,
+Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,” she said, gently. “If
+you'll let me, I'll--” And without explaining her purpose she opened the
+door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+
+Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+
+“Driver!” she called, in her clear voice, loudly. “Driver! We'd like to
+start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+please.” The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs
+once more. “I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,” she said. “I
+suppose they have a great deal of night work.”
+
+Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.
+“I've never been able to apologize quickly,” he said, with his
+accustomed slowness, “because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe
+whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil.
+It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I
+did.”
+
+Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle
+voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state
+of their vehicle was an “accident.” She had formed a casual impression
+of him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was
+unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she
+saw a picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy
+hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not
+that picture alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a
+glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new
+to her experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little;
+and then, with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat
+so long, after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had
+not started. What she did not realize, however, was that she had made
+no response to his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates,
+neither having spoken again.
+
+Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was
+silence. The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a
+rich presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the
+two could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither
+had any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling
+presently on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance,
+of the plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible,
+coughing asthmatically, or saying, “You, JOE!” with a spiritless flap of
+the whip upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps
+at street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and,
+thinning rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness.
+And yet neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral
+broke the silence.
+
+It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late. Abruptly she
+realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+companion and not talking to him. “Mr. Sheridan,” she began, not knowing
+what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized
+the queerness of this drive--“Mr. Sheridan, I--”
+
+The coupe stopped. “You, JOE!” said the driver, reproachfully, and
+climbed down and opened the door.
+
+“What's the trouble?” Bibbs inquired.
+
+“Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir.”
+
+Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+
+“What?” Bibbs demanded.
+
+“We're there, sir,” said the driver, sympathetically. “Next house north
+of Mr. Sheridan's.”
+
+Bibbs descended to the curb. “Why, yes,” he said. “Yes, you seem to
+be right.” And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front
+windows of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+
+“Let me help you,” said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she
+was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+
+“Oh no,” she murmured. “I think I can--” She meant that she could get
+out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already
+accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+
+“You, JOE!” cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he
+rumbled away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
+
+“Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, stiffly. She
+did not offer her hand. “Good night.”
+
+“Good night,” Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked
+beside her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran.
+Realization of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her,
+beginning to shock her; she stepped aside from the light that fell
+through the glass panels of the door and withheld her hand as it touched
+the old-fashioned bell-handle.
+
+“I'm quite safe, thank you,” she said, with a little emphasis. “Good
+night.”
+
+“Good night,” said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the
+street he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+
+Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
+
+“Where are your eyes, Bibbs?” demanded Roscoe. “Sleep-walking, as
+usual?”
+
+But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. “Come over to our house for a
+little while, Bibbs,” she urged. “I want to--”
+
+“No, I'd better--”
+
+“Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet
+over there--all worn out. Just come for a minute.”
+
+He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with
+real feeling: “'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And
+I don't wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get
+down sick again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy.”
+
+He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and
+was grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed
+Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted,
+she went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
+
+“Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you.
+How did you happen to be there?”
+
+“I had only been to the door,” he said. “Good night, Sibyl.”
+
+“Wait,” she insisted. “We saw you coming out.”
+
+“I wasn't,” he explained, moving to depart. “I'd just brought Miss
+Vertrees home.”
+
+“What?” she cried.
+
+“Yes,” he said, and stepped out upon the porch, “that was it. Good
+night, Sibyl.”
+
+“Wait!” she said, following him across the threshold. “How did that
+happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled
+the--the--” She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+
+“I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there,” he said, reluctantly. “She
+had walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were
+leaving. When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one
+left.”
+
+Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow
+breathlessness. “And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!”
+
+Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually
+over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the
+door shut behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.
+The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it
+seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and
+that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had
+she wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement?
+He found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he
+wished that he had not encountered her.
+
+At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering
+about the house, several mournfully admiring the “Bay of Naples,” and
+others occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for
+trains. Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but
+Bibbs interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives
+summoned to the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon
+Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of
+him. He ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last
+by accident. Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard
+a murmurous sound, and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a
+quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
+
+“The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that;
+we got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin'
+along, and I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son the Lord
+give me, and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord
+takuth away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the
+Shuhite says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people,
+nor any remaining in his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite--”
+
+Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in
+his underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging
+backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard
+and gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but
+Uncle Gideon paid no attention.
+
+“Bildad the Shuhite spake and he says, 'If thy children have sinned
+against Him and He have cast them away--'”
+
+There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows
+rattled. The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but
+Uncle Gideon leaped from his chair. “My God!” he cried. “What's that?”
+
+There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy
+of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+“flash-lights” of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the
+Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded
+him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing
+the door of his father's room.
+
+He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing
+several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs;
+and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile
+was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.
+They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing
+to his own room.
+
+He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to
+the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where
+Mary Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small
+note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+
+  Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, “Darktown is Out To-night.”  That
+  is natural--but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.
+
+  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady--
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
+
+Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
+period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
+and slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door.
+Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the
+evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was
+untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
+There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
+bed.
+
+In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little
+pause--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is
+a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person
+experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or
+sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation. It is the
+moment, as we say, before we “remember”; and for the first time in
+Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a vague happiness. He woke to a
+sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday.
+But when the next moment brought him his memory, he found nothing that
+could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under the circumstances
+it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief visitation
+and was gone before he had finished dressing. It left a little trail,
+the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained
+unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually
+the result of a drive home from a funeral. No wonder the sequence evaded
+Bibbs Sheridan!
+
+His father had gone when he came down-stairs. “Went on down to 's
+office, jes' same,” Jackson informed him. “Came sat breakfas'-table, all
+by 'mself; eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat
+a thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I
+reckon putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do.”
+
+It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
+passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried
+a little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be
+seen. Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved
+herself able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving
+calls in the earliest stages of “mourning.” Lunch was as usual--for Jim
+and his father had always lunched down-town--and the afternoon was as
+usual. Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother went with him, as she
+sometimes did when the weather was pleasant. Altogether, the usualness
+of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
+
+During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.
+“But you wouldn't remember about that,” she said, after narrating an
+episode. “You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that.
+And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon
+it'll just about kill your father to put somebody in his place as
+president of the Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe
+over; he told me last week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any
+one man could handle and not go crazy. Oh, it's a pity--” She stopped
+to wipe her eyes. “It's a pity you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and
+kind o' pick up his ways. Think what it'd meant to papa now! You never
+did run with either Roscoe or Jim any, even before you got sick. Of
+course, you were younger; but it always DID seem queer--and you three
+bein' brothers like that. I don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit
+down together for a good talk in my life.”
+
+“Mother, I've been away so long,” Bibbs returned, gently. “And since I
+came home I--”
+
+“Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs,” she said. “Jim ain't been home
+much of an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin'
+and goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house for
+dinner. Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some
+miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'
+the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he
+told papa he would. I reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if
+there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you
+scarcely really knew him right well.”
+
+“I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't
+much to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know
+much about them.”
+
+“It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!” she moaned. “And you'll have to learn to
+know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it
+was all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will
+just kill him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this!
+You mustn't LET him, Bibbs--you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved
+over you, and now he can't stand any more--he just can't! Whatever he
+says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise
+me you will.”
+
+“I would if I could,” he said, sorrowfully.
+
+“No, no! Why can't you?” she cried, clutching his arm. “He wants you to
+go back to the machine-shop and--”
+
+“And--'like it'!” said Bibbs.
+
+“Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it wouldn't
+hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said that himself,
+Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for your father?
+You ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a beautiful house
+to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur coats and warm
+clothes; you been taken care of all your life. And you don't KNOW how
+he worked for the money to give all these things to you! You don't DREAM
+what he had to go through and what he risked when we were startin' out
+in life; and you never WILL know! And now this blow has fallen on him
+out of a clear sky, and you make it out to be a hardship to do like he
+wants you to! And all on earth he asks is for you to go back to the work
+in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you! That's all he asks. Look,
+Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we get there I want you
+to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to. Promise me!”
+
+In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see
+him better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her
+before he spoke.
+
+“I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother,” he said.
+
+“There!” she exclaimed, satisfied. “That's a good boy! That's all I
+wanted you to say.”
+
+“Don't give me any credit,” he said, ruefully. “There isn't anything
+else for me to do.”
+
+“Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!”
+
+“No, no,” he soothed her. “We'll have to begin to make the spirit a
+cheerful one. We may--” They were turning into their own driveway as
+he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was
+visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the
+door open behind her. She bowed gravely.
+
+“'We may'--what?” asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+
+“What is it, mother?”
+
+“You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'.”
+
+“Did I?” said Bibbs, blankly. “Well, what WERE we saying?”
+
+“Of all the queer boys!” she cried. “You always were. Always! You
+haven't forgot what you just promised me, have you?”
+
+“No,” he answered, as the car stopped. “No, the spirit will be as
+cheerful as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like--”
+
+His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she
+failed to hear his final words.
+
+“Behave like who, Bibbs?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+But she was fretful in her grief. “You said it wouldn't do to behave
+like SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?”
+
+“It was just nonsense,” he explained, turning to go in. “An obscure
+person I don't think much of lately.”
+
+“Behave like WHO?” she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell
+Dr. Gurney about it.
+
+“Like Bildad the Shuhite!” was what Bibbs said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was
+Sheridan's custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the
+library, while his wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit)
+or allowed herself to be repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms
+of solitaire. To-night she did neither, but sat in her customary chair,
+gazing at the fire, while Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his
+lap, though now and then he lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall
+back upon his knees again. Bibbs came in noiselessly and sat in a
+corner, doing nothing; and from a “reception-room” across the hall an
+indistinct vocal murmur became just audible at intervals. Once, when
+this murmur grew louder, under stress of some irrepressible merriment,
+Edith's voice could be heard--“Bobby, aren't you awful!” and Sheridan
+glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+
+She rose at once and went into the “reception-room”; there was a flurry
+of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith and her
+suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned
+to her chair in the library.
+
+“They won't bother you any more, papa,” she said, in a comforting voice.
+“She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening,
+and I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd
+already told him he could.” She paused, then added, rather guiltily: “I
+got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used
+to. Maybe--maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa.” And as Sheridan nodded
+solemnly, she concluded, in haste: “Don't say I said to. I might be
+wrong about it, anyway.”
+
+He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+brought tears. “That Miss Vertrees was a good girl,” she said. “SHE was
+all right.”
+
+Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of
+thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+
+“Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?” she
+faltered. “Did you--”
+
+He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.
+“I fixed it,” he said, in a husky voice. “I moved Cantwell up, and put
+Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the
+four men with salaries high enough to take it.” He went to her, put
+his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath.
+“It's my bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up.” He dropped the hand from her
+shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped
+and spoke again, without turning to look at her. “The Realty Company'll
+go right on just the same,” he said. “It's like--it's like sand, mamma.
+It puts me in mind of chuldern playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks
+his finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of 'em'll pat the
+place with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill
+it up and settle against one another; and then, right away it's flat on
+top again, and you can't tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty
+Company'll go on all right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I
+reckon, that wouldn't go right on--just the same.”
+
+And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread
+upon the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+“It's so forlone,” she said, chokingly. “That's the first time he spoke
+since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to
+hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come,
+right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She
+just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what
+Sibyl said the other day, and--and you heard what--what--”
+
+“What Edith said to Sibyl?” Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+
+“We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!” she wailed. “Oh, it looks as
+if movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares
+me!” She put both her hands over her face. “Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you
+only wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son!
+I don't know what we're all comin' to!” And, weeping, she followed her
+husband.
+
+Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man
+who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called
+“the smoking-room”--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up in
+no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a
+less conspicuous adjacency.
+
+“Good evening,” said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a
+leather easy-chair near them.
+
+“What is it?” asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+
+“Nothing,” he returned, smiling.
+
+She frowned. “Did you want something?” she asked.
+
+“Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't
+be going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left
+for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn.”
+
+“'CHAT with'!” she echoed, incredulously.
+
+“I can talk about almost anything,” said Bibbs with an air of
+genial politeness. “It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about
+business--if that's what you happened to be talking about. But you
+aren't in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn?”
+
+“Not now,” returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+
+“I'm not, either,” said Bibbs. “It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
+to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised.”
+
+He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of
+which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he
+sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if
+implying that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with
+a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was
+obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in
+presenting the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had
+nothing in his mind at any time except “personalities”--he could talk
+about people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous,
+offered the weather.
+
+Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for
+the rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would
+move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+
+“I was just going,” he said, rising.
+
+“Oh NO!” Edith cried, sharply.
+
+“Yes. Good night! I think I--”
+
+“Too bad,” said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard
+Bibbs offering to “help” Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather
+curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed
+by the closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
+
+“What's the matter with you?” she cried, furiously. “What do you MEAN?
+How did you dare come in there when you knew--”
+
+Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up,
+a few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+
+“Oh, Bibbs,” she said, shaking her head woefully, “you'd oughtn't to
+distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the
+house. You'd ought to been more considerate.”
+
+Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+naive shadow motionless across its threshold. “Yes,” he said. “He
+doesn't appear to be much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of
+one.”
+
+Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: “You call yourself one?”
+
+“No, no,” he answered. “I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't
+claim--” But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+
+“There,” he said, sighing. “That's almost the first time in my life I
+ever tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in
+what I tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!”
+
+“You hurt her feelin's,” she groaned. “You must 'a' gone at it too
+rough, Bibbs.”
+
+He looked upon her wanly. “That's my trouble, mother,” he murmured. “I'm
+a plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man.”
+
+For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. “Hush your
+nonsense!” she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+appearing. “You go to bed.”
+
+He kissed her and obeyed.
+
+
+Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+
+“You mustn't do that under a misapprehension,” he warned her, when they
+were alone in the dining-room.
+
+“Do what under a what?” she asked.
+
+“Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'” he
+told her, gravely. “I have a prejudice against that young man.”
+
+She laughed. “I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+prejudices against!” In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+implores. “Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence
+with papa against him!” And she laughed louder.
+
+“Listen,” he said, with peculiar earnestness. “I'll tell you now,
+because--because I've decided I'm one of the family.” And then, as
+if the earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further, he
+continued, in his usual tone, “I'm drunk with power, Edith.”
+
+“What do you want to tell me?” she demanded, brusquely.
+
+“Lamhorn made love to Sibyl,” he said.
+
+Edith hooted. “SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat
+between us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and said
+something like that to you afterward--”
+
+“No,” he said, gravely. “I KNOW.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+Lamhorn--”
+
+Edith screamed with laughter. “You were with ROSCOE--and you heard
+Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!”
+
+“No. I heard them quarreling.”
+
+“You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!” she cried. “You say he made love to
+her because you heard them quarreling!”
+
+“That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by the
+way they quarrel.”
+
+“You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?”
+
+“Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!--it's
+always certain--”
+
+Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. “You ought
+to know. You've had so much experience, yourself!”
+
+“I haven't any, Edith,” he said. “My life has been about as exciting as
+an incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things.”
+
+“Well, then,” she said, “if you look out through the glass you must know
+what effect such stuff would have upon ME!” She rose, visibly agitated.
+“What if it WAS true?” she demanded, bitterly. “What if it was true a
+hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to
+giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about
+Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think
+it matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'?
+What if I understood WHY she--” She broke off with a violent gesture, a
+sweep of her arm extended at full length, as if she hurled something to
+the ground. “Do you think a girl that really cared for a man would pay
+any attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!”
+
+He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.
+She met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she
+had spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+
+“Ah, yes,” he said. “I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm
+sorry, Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see
+until you see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of
+it--especially me!”
+
+“That's sensible,” she responded, curtly. “You're most surprising of all
+when you're sensible, Bibbs.”
+
+“Yes,” he sighed. “I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith.”
+
+Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and
+George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting
+there, he announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch
+upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+
+Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over
+fifty, in spite of Sheridan's habitual “ole Doc Gurney.” He was gray,
+however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+
+“Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs,” he said, not
+rising. “Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of
+me--between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you.”
+
+“You mean you're too sleepy to move,” returned Bibbs, complying. “I
+think you'll notice that I'm getting worse.”
+
+“Taken on about twelve pounds,” said Gurney. “Thirteen, maybe.”
+
+“Twelve.”
+
+“Well, it won't do.” The doctor rubbed his eyelids. “You're so much
+better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
+where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down--all
+the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know.”
+
+Bibbs nodded. “Machine-shop.”
+
+“Still hate it?”
+
+Bibbs nodded again.
+
+“Don't blame you!” the doctor grunted. “Yes, I expect it'll make a lump
+in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've
+got the old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?”
+
+“What's the use?” Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. “My kind of writing!”
+
+“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I suppose if you broke away and lived on
+roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of
+editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred
+dollars a year by the time you're fifty.”
+
+“That's about it,” Bibbs murmured.
+
+“Of course I know what you want to do,” said Gurney, drowsily. “You
+don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise and
+jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.' You'd
+like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask on a
+balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it and
+have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I
+can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another
+of his boys if you don't go to Sicily?”
+
+“I don't want to go to Sicily,” said Bibbs. “I want to stay right here.”
+
+The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his
+patient a sharp glance. “It's a risk,” he said. “I think we'll find
+you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.
+Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as
+you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as
+it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs.”
+
+He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. “Well, when we go over
+you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?”
+
+“Tell him I'm ready,” said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+
+“Oh no,” Gurney laughed. “Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll
+see. Don't forget I said to walk down.”
+
+And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.
+“Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce,” he said, gloomily, to
+his next patient when Bibbs had gone. “Doctor tells a man he's well, and
+that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!”
+
+Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon
+this point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any
+point, so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy
+afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to
+his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with
+the smell they could no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked
+hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than half aware
+of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under a vague yet
+constant strain. They were all lightly powdered, inside and out, with
+fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of
+that also. They did not even notice that they saw the smoke, though the
+thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new
+“Sheridan Apartments,” now almost completed, he observed that the marble
+of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like his gloves, which
+were new.
+
+That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way
+from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which
+continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by
+a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his
+preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that,
+having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the
+north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's
+daughter emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the
+path to the old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the
+pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the
+gate and he was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she
+saw him she started visibly. And if this thing had happened to
+Robert Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of
+faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts. Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his
+thought. He would have said: “You jumped because you were thinking of
+me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand
+closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction
+Bibbs was walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they
+should walk together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had
+paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either
+spoke or moved--it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each
+to seem to say, by look and attitude, “Why, it's YOU!”
+
+Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's
+name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to
+a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began
+to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
+
+“I--I--hate a frozen fish myself,” he said. “I think three miles was too
+long for you to put up with one.”
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. “Mr. Sheridan, you're
+lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's
+turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know
+each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for
+me to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I
+decided I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the
+car-line. I never thought of it!”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, earnestly. “I didn't, either. I might have said
+something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must
+remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though
+it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I
+ever met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what
+it said. I--”
+
+She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one
+which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, “a cripple
+would crawl five miles to hear.” And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's
+father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. “I'll be any
+kind of idiot,” he said, “if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be
+difficult for me.”
+
+She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the
+first time. “Rather tragic and altogether impossible.” It seemed to her
+now that she must have been blind.
+
+They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
+possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of one of
+them.
+
+“I'll keep on talking,” Bibbs continued, cheerfully, “and you keep on
+laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
+making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
+bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes
+me bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what
+I'll think of myself later if I don't keep talking--talking now, I
+mean--and I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides
+these two things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as
+much as this more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always
+in me to do it, though, the first time I met any one who didn't know me
+well enough not to listen.”
+
+“But you're not really talking to me,” said Mary. “You're just thinking
+aloud.”
+
+“No,” he returned, gravely. “I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
+subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,
+but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't
+know how to manage it.”
+
+“You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan,” she said.
+“Not even if you really talked about yourself.” She turned her
+face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was
+pathetically amazed by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look,
+warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was
+an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like
+that.
+
+“I--you--I--I'm--” he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks grew
+almost vivid.
+
+She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came
+into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how
+“queer” many people might think him; but he did not seem “queer” to Mary
+Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+
+He waited, and became coherent. “YOU say something now,” he said. “I
+don't even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny
+man's solo! You--”
+
+“No,” she interrupted. “I'd rather play your accompaniment.”
+
+“I'll stop and listen to it, then.”
+
+“Perhaps--” she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were
+approaching. “Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?”
+
+“I suppose I could,” he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+“But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better
+say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason
+I don't want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where
+you're going, and where I'll be sent back.”
+
+She shook her head in cheery negation. “Not unless you want to be. Would
+you like to come with me?”
+
+“Why--why--yes,” he said. “Anywhere!” And again it was apparent that he
+spoke in simple truthfulness.
+
+“Then come--if you care for organ music. The organist is an old friend
+of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had
+a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up
+everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like
+Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a
+little. I hope so.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. “I think Beethoven
+would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people.”
+
+“I haven't kept you?” Mary said to the organist.
+
+“No, no,” he answered, heartily. “I would not mind so only you should
+shooer come!”
+
+“This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me.”
+
+The organist looked bluntly surprised. “Iss that SO?” he exclaimed.
+“Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink.
+He iss musician himself, then, of course.”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. “I--I played
+the--I tried to play--” Fortunately he checked himself; he had been
+about to offer the information that he had failed to master the
+jews'-harp in his boyhood. “No, I'm not a musician,” he contented
+himself with saying.
+
+“What?” Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. “Young man, you are fortunate!
+I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You
+are the first one EVER!”
+
+They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees
+in a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though she stopped
+as he did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking away from
+them toward the front of the church, shaking his white Beethovian mane
+roguishly.
+
+“It's false pretenses on my part,” Bibbs said. “You mean to be kind to
+the sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back
+to work in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't
+I?”
+
+“No,” said Mary, beginning to walk forward. “Not unless you don't like
+great music.”
+
+He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they
+covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,
+reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician
+ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain to overwhelm
+him.
+
+“This afternoon some Handel!” he turned to shout.
+
+Mary nodded. “Will you like that?” she asked Bibbs.
+
+“I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
+about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
+pretend, I would.”
+
+“No,” said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, “you wouldn't.”
+
+She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;
+the huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with
+it. The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about them,
+while the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a
+tiny star of light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it
+rhythmically, or lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist
+thrusting, but he was magnificently the master of his giant, and it sang
+to his magic as he bade it.
+
+Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
+unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike
+the tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the
+enchanted cave, and that--for Bibbs--was what made its magic dazing. It
+seemed to him a long, long time since he had been walking home drearily
+from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him that he had set out upon a
+happy journey since then, and that he had reached another planet, where
+Mary Vertrees and he sat alone together listening to a vast choiring of
+invisible soldiers and holy angels. There were armies of voices about
+them singing praise and thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was
+incredible that the walls of the church were not the boundaries of
+the universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky
+street just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in evening papers
+from front steps and where children were taking their last spins on
+roller-skates before being haled indoors for dinner.
+
+He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew
+it could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,
+saying: “You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream
+that these sounds bring to me?” And it seemed to him as though she
+answered continually: “I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new
+one that you are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring
+to you. Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear--together!”
+
+And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except
+the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white
+head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting
+beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in
+the darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting
+of the organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be
+chorusing of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing
+for him the world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she
+was so kind to him. It all meant Mary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+walking slowly.
+
+“I'll tell you what it meant to me,” she said, as he did not immediately
+reply. “Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all
+others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+infinitesimal--it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+infinitesimal.”
+
+“Yes,” he said. “It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering
+every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town
+to-morrow. And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to.
+They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing
+the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss
+and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework
+has to be done, but the people who do it have been so overpaid that
+they're confused and worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet,
+poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of
+course, when the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that will be
+different.”
+
+“Do you mean 'communism'?” she asked, and she made their slow pace a
+little slower--they had only three blocks to go.
+
+“Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for
+all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak
+ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even
+on the stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all
+cross the winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody--if
+he sees the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead
+of other people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel.
+And that,” he added, “is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see,
+if I keep talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you
+what it did mean.”
+
+“Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?” she asked. “Triumph and
+praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me.”
+
+“Yes, they were all there,” Bibbs said. “I don't know the name of what
+he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that
+makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the
+name he puts to it can't make much difference--except to himself and
+people very much like him, I suppose.”
+
+“I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that.”
+
+“I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of
+the people who hear it,” Bibbs went on, musingly, “according to their
+own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might
+compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail,
+and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some
+would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of
+himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding
+a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the
+music, he'd think of a circus.”
+
+They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did
+not open it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her
+kindnesses--not to be prompt in leaving him.
+
+“After all,” she said, “you didn't tell me whether you liked it.”
+
+“No. I didn't need to.”
+
+“No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you
+were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean.”
+
+“I can't keep from telling it any longer,” he said. “The music meant to
+me--it meant the kindness of--of you.”
+
+“Kindness? How?”
+
+“You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--”
+
+“No,” she said, decidedly. “I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr.
+Kraft play. And you did.”
+
+“It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+playing.”
+
+Mary laughed. “I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin--Grieg--Chaminade. You
+wouldn't listen!”
+
+Bibbs drew a deep breath. “I'm frightened again,” he said, in an
+unsteady voice. “I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--” He paused,
+and the words sank to a murmur.
+
+“Oh, if you want ME to play for you!” she said. “Yes, gladly. It will be
+merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
+thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
+listen, and if you--” She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
+and laughed ruefully. “But my piano won't be here after to-night. I--I'm
+sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to
+you you'd have to come this evening.”
+
+“You'll let me?” he cried.
+
+“Certainly, if you care to.”
+
+“If I could play--” he said, wistfully, “if I could play like that old
+man in the church I could thank you.”
+
+“Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
+but--”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.”
+
+It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
+and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
+especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
+was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. “You'll come after
+dinner, then?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, not moving. “Would you mind if I stood here until time
+to come in?”
+
+She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
+dinner.
+
+That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.
+
+  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.
+
+  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it--and ought to be.
+
+  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the “Greek profile.”  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a “Greek profile”; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.
+
+  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+
+  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be “sent away.”  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  “Sent away” is a euphuism for “sent to prison.”  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos “sent away”--and where?
+
+  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing--ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.
+
+  Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
+
+  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+That “mystery about pianos” which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to
+Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs
+scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon
+Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until
+after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found
+not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and
+with every phase of everything that they discussed--no extraordinary
+state of affairs in a family which has always “held up its head,”
+ only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on
+helplessly at the processes of its own financial dissolution. For that
+was the point which this despairing couple had reached--they could do
+nothing except look on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and
+they knew it.
+
+“She needn't to have done that about her piano,” vapored Mr. Vertrees.
+“We could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
+consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with
+the--the dealer.”
+
+“She thought that it might be--annoying for you,” Mrs. Vertrees
+explained. “Really, she planned for you not to know about it until
+they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to
+mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this
+morning. She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--”
+
+“Well?” he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+
+“Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided, of
+course--it was about her furs.”
+
+“No!” he exclaimed, quickly. “I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
+rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her.”
+
+“I'll try not,” his wife promised. “Of course, they're very handsome.”
+
+“All the more reason for her to keep them!” he returned, irritably.
+“We're not THAT far gone, I think!”
+
+“Perhaps not yet,” Mrs. Vertrees said. “She seems to be troubled about
+the--the coal matter and--about Tilly. Of course the piano will take
+care of some things like those for a while and--”
+
+“I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to--”
+
+“You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way,” she said, comfortingly.
+“She arranged with the--with the purchaser that the men will come for it
+about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
+really quite winter.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” he agreed, moodily. “So far as that goes people have a
+right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I
+suppose, even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much
+attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early
+the morning after the funeral.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. “I don't believe
+that was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only
+because he felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed
+wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about
+most. He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a
+great deal about his--his actual money--though there was something about
+blades of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something
+about his energy--but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be
+not so much a personal vainglory as about his family and the greatness
+of this city.”
+
+“'Greatness of this city'!” Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+“It's nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who
+has the luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any
+YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows
+that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else
+gets the habit. But you have a different point of view if it's the
+city that got what it wanted out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's
+'great'.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. “I believe,” she
+began, timidly, “he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he has never
+seemed so interested in the--the other one.”
+
+Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon
+it; he looked more haggard than before. “'The other one',” he repeated,
+averting his eyes. “You mean--you mean the third son--the one that was
+here this evening?”
+
+“Yes, the--the youngest,” she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+almost a whisper.
+
+And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either
+look at the other during that silence.
+
+At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly.
+“What--ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she
+came in this afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but
+she answered in such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch it.”
+
+“She--she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she had
+enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful creature
+I've ever known.'”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he doesn't
+seem quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window when
+she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about him
+I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face.”
+
+“If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?”
+
+“Oh, nothing, of course,” she said, hurriedly. “Nothing definite, that
+is. Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we
+thought at first. It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their attitude
+about him. I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him--perhaps
+a little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself to anything--or
+perhaps does odd things. But, after all, of course, we only have an
+impression about it. We don't know--that is, positively. I--” She
+paused, then went on: “I didn't know just how to ask--that is--I didn't
+mention it to Mary. I didn't--I--” The poor lady floundered pitifully,
+concluding with a mumble. “So soon after--after the--the shock.”
+
+“I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him,” said Mr.
+Vertrees. “I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of
+him is--” He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. “I
+can't imagine her--oh, NO!” he gasped. And he began to pace the floor.
+“A half-witted epileptic!”
+
+“No, no!” she cried. “He may be all right. We--”
+
+“Oh, it's horrible! I can't--” He threw himself back into his chair
+again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply
+at his sides.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. “You mustn't give way so,” she said,
+inspired for once almost to direct discourse. “Whatever Mary might think
+of doing, it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if
+WE should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It
+isn't because we think of ourselves.”
+
+“Oh God, no!” he groaned. “Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but
+Mary can't be a stenographer!”
+
+Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. “Of course,” she
+murmured, “it all seems very premature, speculating about such things,
+but I had a queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in
+this--” She had almost said “in this one,” but checked herself. “In this
+young man. It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and well,
+and he is--he seems to be, that is--rather appealing to the--the
+sympathies.”
+
+“Yes!” he agreed, bitterly. “Precisely. The sympathies!”
+
+“Perhaps,” she faltered, “perhaps you might feel easier if I could have
+a little talk with some one?”
+
+“With whom?”
+
+“I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to
+be talking with somebody that knew the family--and then I might find
+a chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much,
+and--Something of that kind perhaps?”
+
+“You don't know anybody that knows the family.”
+
+“Yes. That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced little
+woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is interested
+about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more intimate with
+Mary, naturally. She's always looking over here from her house; she
+was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I
+noticed--though I don't think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't think
+it out of place to--to be frank about matters. She called the other day,
+and Mary must rather like her--she said that evening that the call had
+done her good. Don't you think it might be wise?”
+
+“Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible.”
+
+“Yes, so do I,” she returned, promptly. “It isn't really a thing we
+should be considering seriously, of course. Still--”
+
+“I should say not! But possibly--”
+
+Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the
+lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between
+them that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain
+definite information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and
+physical status of Bibbs. And if he were subject to attacks of lunacy,
+the unhappy pair decided to prevent the sacrifice they supposed their
+daughter intended to make of herself. Altogether, if there were spiteful
+ghosts in the old house that night, eavesdropping upon the woeful
+comedy, they must have died anew of laughter!
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness
+had fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano
+down the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway
+behind them, preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation;
+and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the
+light of the doorway.
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried. “It did give me a fright!”
+
+“It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?” Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+“Won't you come in?”
+
+“No. Oh no, thank you!” Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side.
+“You don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but
+your piano!” She laughed shrilly. “You know, since our tragedy coming
+so suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been--almost
+hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago,
+and saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,
+carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the
+way it looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in,
+next door, only such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your
+daughter start for a drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three
+o'clock--and-- They aren't back yet, are they?”
+
+“No. Good heavens!”
+
+“And the only thing I could think of was that something must have
+happened to them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!”
+ She broke into laughter again. “I suppose you're just sending it
+somewhere to be repaired, aren't you?”
+
+“It's--it's being taken down-town,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “Won't you come
+in and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I
+was--ah--” She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her invitation.
+“Won't you come in? I'd really--”
+
+“Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home
+about this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there.”
+
+“That's very sweet.” Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward
+the street with Sibyl. “It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't
+it? Almost like a May evening.”
+
+“I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano,” said Sibyl, watching
+the instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. “She plays
+wonderfully, Mrs. Kittersby tells me.”
+
+“Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her
+yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him.”
+
+“You mean Bibbs?” asked Sibyl.
+
+“The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?”
+
+“I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether
+he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your
+daughter expect the piano back soon?”
+
+“I--I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear
+her play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was to be
+removed this afternoon. He seems almost well again.”
+
+“Yes.” Sibyl nodded. “His father's going to try to start him to work.”
+
+“He seems very delicate,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “I shouldn't think he
+would be able to stand a great deal, either physically or--” She paused
+and then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness--“or
+mentally.”
+
+“Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right,” said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+
+“Entirely?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+
+“Yes, entirely.”
+
+“But has he ALWAYS been?” This question came with the same anxious
+eagerness.
+
+“Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it.”
+
+“And you think--”
+
+“Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor--” Sibyl choked, and pressed
+her handkerchief to her mouth. “Good night, Mrs. Vertrees,” she said,
+hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where
+the two ladies were standing.
+
+“Won't you come in?” urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound
+of a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare.
+“Do! There's Mary now, and she--”
+
+But Sibyl was half-way across the street. “No, thanks,” she called.
+“I hope she won't miss her piano!” And she ran into her own house
+and plunged headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her
+handkerchief over her mouth.
+
+The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the
+quiet house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of
+a decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the
+hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,
+holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+
+“What's your excitement?” he demanded. “What do you find to go into
+hysterics over? Another death in the family?”
+
+“Oh, it's funny!” she gasped. “Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
+THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!” Lying prone, she elevated her feet
+in the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+
+“Come through, come through!” said her husband, crossly. “What you been
+up to?”
+
+“Me?” she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+“Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!” She wiped her eyes. “They've had
+to sell their piano!”
+
+“Well, what of it?”
+
+“That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago,” said Sibyl.
+“They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as
+last winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and
+patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook
+had HERS! And the night of the house-warming I kind of got suspicious,
+myself. She didn't have one single piece of any kind of real jewelry,
+and you could see her dress was an old one done over. Men can't tell
+those things, and you all made a big fuss over her, but I thought she
+looked a sight, myself! Of course, EDITH was crazy to have her, and--”
+
+“Well, well?” he urged, impatiently.
+
+“Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING!
+Just absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn! The
+family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very
+distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's
+been wondering what WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to
+marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the
+men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and married other girls.
+Gracious! they were lucky! Marry HER? The man that found himself tied up
+to THAT girl--”
+
+“Terrible funny, terrible funny!” said Roscoe, with sarcasm. “It's so
+funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--”
+
+“Wait!” she begged. “You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little
+while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men
+go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute
+I got the idea they were moving out--the house has been foreclosed on,
+Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was
+out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over--and
+it was their PIANO! They'd sold it and were trying to sneak it out after
+dark, so nobody'd catch on!” Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but
+resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. “Wait a
+minute, can't you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all
+away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell
+all kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they
+can't. She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they'd sold it;
+and I hope they'll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last
+week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees.
+Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN
+she'd seen any money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that
+girl in your LIFE?”
+
+“What girl? Their cook?”
+
+“That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into
+this neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and
+out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll
+the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a
+Sheridan--she's GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she
+tries it on first with YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she
+was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married one,
+and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his feet.
+Oh, Jim was landed--there's no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky;
+he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for him!” Sibyl's
+mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity. “Well, she
+couldn't get you, because you were married, and she couldn't get Jim,
+because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what she
+did? Do you know what she's DOING?”
+
+“No, I don't,” said Roscoe, gruffly.
+
+Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity.
+“BIBBS! She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S
+FUNERAL! Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!”
+
+She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. “Bibbs!” she shrieked.
+“Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!”
+
+He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that.
+“And yesterday,” she continued, between paroxysms--“yesterday she came
+out of the house--just as he was passing. She must have been looking
+out--waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window!
+And she got him there last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave
+that away! And to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the
+cream of it is that they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or
+not--they thought maybe he was, but she went after him just the same!
+The old lady set herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord!
+BIBBS!”
+
+But Roscoe looked grim. “So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
+pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.”
+
+“Oh, it might,” she returned, sobering. “It might, if those people
+weren't such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to
+come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny,
+but to see 'em sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating
+dirt--well, I think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen
+Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until
+they get near enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old
+patched shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all right!--and then she powders up
+and goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!”
+
+“Look here,” said Roscoe, heavily; “I don't care about that one way or
+another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about.
+I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.”
+
+At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. “What
+is it?”
+
+“Well,” he began, frowning, “what I was going to say then--” He broke
+off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
+his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. “I never expected I'd have
+to say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask
+you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.”
+
+Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. “Well?”
+
+“I felt the time had come for me to know about it,” he went on. “You
+never told me anything--”
+
+“You never asked,” she interposed, curtly.
+
+“Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much,” said Roscoe. “It looks to
+me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
+many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down
+to work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed
+soon as I'd got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show
+in town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or
+so, I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it.”
+
+“Wrong?” she said. “What like?”
+
+“You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and
+excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then,
+Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long
+ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got
+to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see
+you'd been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.”
+
+“Do you object to that?” asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+
+“Yes--when it injures my wife's health!” he returned, with a quick lift
+of his eyes to hers. “You began to run down just about the time you
+began falling out with him.” He stepped close to her. “See here, Sibyl,
+I'm going to know what it means.”
+
+“Oh, you ARE?” she snapped.
+
+“You're trembling,” he said, gravely.
+
+“Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!”
+
+“That was all I was going to say the other day,” he said. “I was going
+to ask you--”
+
+“Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
+have you to say to-night?”
+
+“To-night,” he replied, with grim swiftness, “I want to know why you
+keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here.”
+
+She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, “And what
+else did Edith want you to ask me?”
+
+“I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn,” he said,
+fiercely.
+
+“Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in
+there on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you
+then what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?”
+
+“No, she didn't!” he vociferated, his voice growing louder. “She said,
+'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see
+her, because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want
+to know what it means. I intend--”
+
+A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. “Dinner is ready,” she
+said, and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the
+dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+
+“I intend to know exactly what has been going on,” he declared. “I mean
+to know just what--”
+
+Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+
+“Oh, you DO!” she cried, shrilly. “You mean to know just what's what, do
+you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your
+wife, and then you come home making a scene before the servants and
+humiliating me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't
+hear every word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go
+on! Go and eat your dinner alone--because I won't eat with you!”
+
+And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon
+her, and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room
+slam overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A
+window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his
+note-book on the sill--and the sheets were loose. The door was open, and
+when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two sheets
+had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting and
+put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George
+or Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them
+down-town with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and,
+having a little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them
+out, and glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were
+not epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a “private letter” that
+came into his possession in that way, though in a “matter of business”
+ he might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity
+afforded in any manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's
+scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred
+to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be
+justified in reading them.
+
+  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then--days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator--she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  “WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?”  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  --you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.
+
+  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.
+
+  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The “business man” feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.
+
+  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.
+
+  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.
+
+  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion--
+
+The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more.
+He crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a
+waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of
+Names, which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a
+volume now first put to use for the location of “Midas.” Having read the
+legend, Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office, exhaling
+the breath of contempt. “Dam' fool!” he mumbled. But this was no new
+thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's notes a surpise to him; and
+presently he dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long
+time he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a
+club luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went to a small
+restaurant near the Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes
+in the consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came
+for his father every day, at five minutes after twelve, and Sheridan
+was again in his office at five minutes before one. But now that Jim no
+longer came, Sheridan remained alone in his office; he had not gone out
+to lunch since Jim's death, nor did he have anything sent to him--he
+fasted until evening.
+
+It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes
+and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things
+were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far
+deeper. Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was
+a great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily
+perceived his own likeness. Jim was the one who would have been surest
+to keep the great property growing greater, year by year. Sheridan had
+fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what the growth would be
+under Jim. He had believed that Jim was absolutely certain to be one of
+the biggest men in the country. Well, it was all up to Roscoe now!
+
+That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
+question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe about
+it. However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for several
+days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no
+opportunity.
+
+He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower
+floor. He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer
+room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would
+find his son busy with others, and that his question would have to
+be postponed, but when he entered the door marked “R. C. Sheridan.
+Private,” Roscoe was there alone.
+
+He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and
+he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+
+“Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy,” said
+Sheridan. “What's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+
+“Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself!
+I just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll keep, if you're
+workin' something out in your mind!”
+
+Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused
+with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in
+the chair. Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the
+office. “You're all right, ain't you?” said Sheridan. “Not sick, are
+you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. “I
+wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn,” he said. “I guess your
+mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him
+longer'n any of us, so--”
+
+“I won't,” said Roscoe, thickly--“I won't say a dam' thing about him!”
+
+Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position
+near the window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were
+bloodshot and vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted,
+and he was deathly pale. The father stood aghast.
+
+“By George!” he muttered. “ROSCOE!”
+
+“My name,” said Roscoe. “Can' help that.”
+
+“ROSCOE!” Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
+nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe--the
+steady old wheel-horse--in this condition. “How'd you GET this way?” he
+demanded. “You caught cold and took too much for it?”
+
+For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. “Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
+lately. Firs' you notice it?”
+
+“By George!” cried Sheridan. “I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.
+Boh! To see you like a common hog!”
+
+Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+“Hog!” he repeated, chuckling.
+
+“Yes, a hog!” said Sheridan, angrily. “In business hours! I don't object
+to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor,
+if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one
+to baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe.
+It ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way
+on a grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them
+men out there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think
+you can come to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder
+how often this has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look
+over your books to-morrow, and I'll--”
+
+Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the
+heavy chair in which he had been sitting.
+
+“Hoo--hoorah!” he cried. “'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you
+want to--outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere
+business hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink! Die!
+L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!”
+
+Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling
+his own office, overhead. “Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's
+suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in
+room two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows
+on the Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over
+with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two.
+You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be
+disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a
+closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at
+Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!”
+
+Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. “Drunk in
+business hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk,
+mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours! All right any
+other time. Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business
+hours! Fine! Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your
+trouble 't home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business!
+Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere business! Don' let your wife
+innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness,
+an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die,
+go on die 't home--don' die round th' office! Might innerfere business!”
+
+Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his
+back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his
+father's significant posture.
+
+“You know wh' I think?” he went on. “I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly
+any 'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked,
+an' he got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at
+me, I ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to
+me! Fine!” He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable
+gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair
+and caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several
+minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to
+the newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+
+Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up
+by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having
+progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less
+volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+
+“What--what you ask me while ago?” he said.
+
+“Nothin'.”
+
+“Yes, you did. What--what was it?”
+
+“Nothin'. You better sit down.”
+
+“You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
+won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!”
+
+The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and
+said, “Right down.” Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and
+brought them to his son. “Get into this coat,” he said. “You're goin'
+home.”
+
+“All ri',” Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+
+They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the
+outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and
+told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached
+the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the
+automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his
+own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a
+word in the interval.
+
+Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room
+without meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he
+heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant
+fragments of song:
+
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound.
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-yay!
+
+It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected
+any musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him
+whistle--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool
+should be merry to-day.
+
+To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he
+did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked
+the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
+came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
+manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
+lunch had “disagreed” with him a little.
+
+Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had
+become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+white-jacket's salver. “Here's another difference between Midas and
+chicken,” Sheridan remarked, grimly. “Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
+can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
+had the advantage there.”
+
+Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
+his plate without dropping it and to respond, “Yes--he crows over it.”
+
+Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for
+he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
+pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
+jargon to her. “Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
+has!” she exclaimed. “I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right
+handsome!”
+
+“He's got to be such a gadabout,” Edith giggled.
+
+“I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+anybody was up,” said Sheridan. “I reckon if people lose things in this
+house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do.”
+
+“What was it he lost?” asked Edith.
+
+“He knows!” her father returned. “Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
+home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
+important, belongin' to a busy man like him.” He affected to search
+his pockets. “What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
+remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket.”
+
+“Good place for it,” Bibbs murmured, still red.
+
+Sheridan gave him a grin. “Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
+early enough to find things before I do!”
+
+It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
+
+“My time's here at last,” he said, as they sat together in the
+melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
+That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
+day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
+upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence
+of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
+
+“Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
+any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my
+face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
+Hard labor for life, I think.”
+
+Mary shook her head. “I don't think so. He's too kind.”
+
+“You think my father's KIND?” And Bibbs stared at her.
+
+“Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
+only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand
+any other way.”
+
+“Ah yes,” said Bibbs. “If that's what you mean by 'kind'!”
+
+She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. “It's
+going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?”
+
+“Oh--self-pity!” he returned, smiling. “This has been just the last
+flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
+There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he
+could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I
+have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer.”
+
+“What is it like--exactly?”
+
+“I get up at six,” he said. “I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
+which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
+buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
+and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and
+work again from one till five.”
+
+“But the work itself?”
+
+“It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a
+heavier job because I wasn't good enough.”
+
+“But what will you do? I want to know.”
+
+“When I left,” said Bibbs, “I was 'on' what they call over there a
+'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
+what I'll be sent back to.”
+
+“But what is it?” she insisted.
+
+Bibbs explained. “It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
+zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
+circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at
+a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it.”
+
+He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
+known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+
+“You do that all day long?” she asked, and as he nodded, “It seems
+incredible!” she exclaimed. “YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
+nine hours a day! No wonder--” She broke off, and then, after a keen
+glance at his face, she said: “I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
+hand at it'!”
+
+He laughed ruefully. “I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
+say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.”
+
+“How often is that?”
+
+“The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
+than one a second.”
+
+“And you're close to it?”
+
+“Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,” he said, turning to her more
+gaily. “The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
+have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and
+duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I
+was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
+back. They used to laugh at me all day long.”
+
+Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
+on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She
+was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+
+“It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you,” she said, in a
+low voice. “No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
+leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
+published for you--”
+
+“Can't you SEE him?” Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
+his voice. “If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
+imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
+posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a
+Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the use? I've
+never written anything worth printing, and I never shall.”
+
+“You could!” she said.
+
+“That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
+do.”
+
+“You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!”
+
+“It isn't,” said BIBBS, honestly. “I never could--but you're the kindest
+lady in this world, Miss Vertrees.”
+
+She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+“That sounds wrong,” she said, impulsively. “I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
+I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't
+you rather call me 'Mary'?”
+
+Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+
+“Wouldn't you?” she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+
+“If I CAN!” he said, in a low voice.
+
+“Ah, that's very pretty!” she laughed. “You're such an honest person,
+it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.” She
+became grave again immediately. “I hear myself laughing as if it were
+some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.”
+ She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall,
+facing him. “You've GOT to go back to that place?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“And the other time you did it--”
+
+“Just over it,” said Bibbs. “Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of
+a repetition so much as--”
+
+“So much as what?” she prompted, as he stopped.
+
+Bibbs looked up at her shyly. “I want to say it, but--but I come to a
+dead balk when I try. I--”
+
+“Go on. Say it, whatever it is,” she bade him. “You wouldn't know how to
+say anything I shouldn't like.”
+
+“I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say,” he
+returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he
+seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. “You see, all my life--until I met
+you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying
+things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to
+feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been
+of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself,
+except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--I'm still
+of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful,
+but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy
+experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've lived
+it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have,
+this strange, beautiful, happy little while!”
+
+He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had
+to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not
+speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had
+gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room
+was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and
+loud.
+
+And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. “If you
+think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make
+it last.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, as faintly.
+
+“You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?”
+
+“Yes,” he gulped.
+
+“But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.”
+
+He tried to evade her. “Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--”
+
+“No,” she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. “You said what you did
+because you think the shop's going to kill you.”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Yes, you do think that!” She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+before him. “Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm
+a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said--and you
+did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.
+The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!”
+
+And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall,
+splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+
+“If I mean THAT much to you,” she cried, “they can't harm you! Go
+back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
+machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
+that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!”
+
+He stumbled to his feet. “You say--” he gasped.
+
+“Every evening, dear Bibbs!”
+
+He could only stare, bewildered.
+
+“EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!” And she held
+out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. “If
+I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,”
+ she said. “But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
+remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is
+done--won't the night make up for the day?”
+
+Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance
+of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, “To think you're
+there--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--”
+
+And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what
+it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
+father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before
+him. “I'm cured, father,” he said. “When do I go back to the shop? I'm
+ready.”
+
+The desolate and grim old man did not relax. “I was sittin' up to give
+you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time!
+I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take
+you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you
+just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to
+the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the
+month. Think you can get up in time?”
+
+“Six o'clock,” Bibbs responded, briskly. “And I want to tell you--I'm
+going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!”
+
+“That's YOUR lookout!” his father grunted. “They'll put you back on the
+clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.”
+
+“More than I'm worth, too,” said Bibbs, cheerily. “That reminds me, I
+didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--”
+
+“Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!”
+
+“I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.”
+
+“G'night!”
+
+The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat
+staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could
+be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique
+expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who,
+after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for
+burglars.
+
+“Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily. “Why'n't you go to bed? It must be
+goin' on 'leven o'clock!”
+
+She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
+the fire. “What's the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+sluggishly with each other in her voice. “I knew you were worried all
+dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
+taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?”
+
+“Nothin'.”
+
+She jeered feebly. “N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
+you?”
+
+“He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.
+
+“Just the same as he did before?”
+
+“Just pre-CISELY!”
+
+“How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.
+
+“Until he KNOWS something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together,
+then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
+talked. “He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
+in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
+it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to
+learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went
+there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine we got--and he stuck
+there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole
+business if he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there
+to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's
+whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against
+everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be
+worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what
+it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles,
+the man that can manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.
+Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE
+set himself to balk on the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's
+lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with
+him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything,
+anyhow!”
+
+“I knew there was something else,” said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
+a yawn. “You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less
+you'll tell me?”
+
+“Suppose something happened to Roscoe,” he said. “THEN what'd I have to
+look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
+lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
+groove!”
+
+“Roscoe?” she yawned. “You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
+strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
+he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better
+go up to bed, papa.”
+
+“Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
+means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let
+alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
+away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves
+come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off
+for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night
+and day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen
+a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--there wasn't even
+a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again.
+My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like
+I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
+have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
+to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's
+got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd
+make you think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll
+hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
+'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
+goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose,
+but it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been
+fillin' up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and
+the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it
+used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the
+bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's
+an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin'
+to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
+bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
+loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and
+the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And
+the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto:
+'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's
+built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and made good things
+grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide
+in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what's
+the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin'
+to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
+business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in
+the ground?”
+
+He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
+the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
+thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. “You think this is
+a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never
+was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard
+is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
+eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till
+he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
+soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
+Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--and you got to go out and
+live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a dead
+man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son Bibbs
+has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out and
+do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe--”
+
+“Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. “There isn't anything
+goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
+nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?”
+
+Sheridan halted. “All right, mamma,” he said, with a vast sigh. “Let's
+go up.” And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy
+glow of the fire.
+
+“Did you speak to Roscoe?” she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+drowsiness. “Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?”
+
+“No. I will to-morrow.”
+
+
+But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the
+fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine
+in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+
+“They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me.”
+
+“Sit down,” said Sheridan, rising.
+
+Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and
+then walked away, smiling bitterly. “Boh!” he exclaimed. “Still at it!”
+
+“Yes,” said Roscoe. “I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What
+about it?”
+
+“I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,” his father returned.
+“I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I
+would!”
+
+“Better do it,” Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+
+“When'd you begin this thing?”
+
+“I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.”
+
+“Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.”
+
+“Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the
+other day.”
+
+Sheridan began cutting. “It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
+office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him,
+and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You
+been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three
+weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't
+done any work, to count, in a month.”
+
+“All right,” said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. “It's all true.”
+
+“What you goin' to do about it?”
+
+Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. “I can't stand very much
+talk about it, father,” he said, pleadingly.
+
+“No!” Sheridan cried. “Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?”
+ He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. “I can't stand to
+talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
+what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!”
+
+Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+
+“You can't straighten me out.”
+
+“See here!” said Sheridan. “Can you go back to your office and stay
+sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple
+o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand
+if they see you tryin' to take it?”
+
+“You needn't worry about that,” said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+resentment. “I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst.”
+
+“Well, what have you got?”
+
+“Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.”
+
+“We'll see about that!” said Sheridan, harshly. “Now I can't fool with
+you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
+office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last
+Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the
+women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober
+till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie
+down to your office every little while, and he'll let me know.”
+
+Roscoe paused at the door. “You told Abercrombie about it?” he asked.
+
+“TOLD him!” And Sheridan laughed hideously. “Do you suppose there's an
+elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?”
+
+Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  “WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!”
+
+So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that
+the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the
+afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the
+swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling
+improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash
+with vocal imitations:
+
+  Fearless and bold,
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound,
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
+      NIGHT'S on the way
+      EACH time I say,
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+
+The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the
+air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually;
+everything was implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the
+dizzied eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become
+dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea
+to faintness. But he felt neither now. “ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY
+THOUGHTS TO YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS
+BESIDE YOU.” He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place
+became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop;
+he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
+
+      Away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!
+    Wild are his eyes,
+    Fiercely he dies!
+      Hi-YAH!
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!
+    Ready to fling
+    Our gloves in the ring--
+
+He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded
+to those nearest him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of
+them--but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily,
+never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical
+programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+
+“Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if
+you don't try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's
+right--YOU'LL never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a
+nice, shiny one.”
+
+The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: “Talkin' to himself! By George!”
+
+Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+
+Bibbs returned to song:
+
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+    Fearless and bo--
+
+His father grasped him by the arm. “Here!” he shouted. “Let ME show you
+how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n
+you used to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way and let me
+show you once.”
+
+“Better be careful,” Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+
+“Careful? Boh!” Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. “What
+you talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so
+abused you're goin' wrong in the head?”
+
+“'Abused'? No!” shouted Bibbs. “I was SINGING--because I 'like it'! I
+told you I'd come back and 'like it.'”
+
+Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply,
+but began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it
+awkwardly--and with bad results.
+
+“Here!” he shouted. “This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin'
+to it, if you put your mind on it.” By his own showing then his mind was
+not upon it. He continued to talk. “All you got to look out for is to
+keep it pressed over to--”
+
+“Don't run your hand up with it,” Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+
+“Run nothin'! You GOT to--”
+
+“Look out!” shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and
+the zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers.
+He swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops
+over himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+
+“Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch
+my bag. It's in my machine, outside.”
+
+And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor
+still grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin.
+Sheridan had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at
+his son as the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+
+“You go on back to your work,” he said. “I've had worse snips than that
+from a pencil-sharpener.”
+
+“Oh no, you haven't!” said Gurney.
+
+“I have, too!” Sheridan retorted, angrily. “Bibbs, you go on back to
+your work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc
+Gurney tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs
+a little court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back
+on your job.”
+
+“All right,” said Bibbs.
+
+“HERE!” Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door.
+“You watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I
+slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get your
+whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!”
+
+“Yes, sir.” And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+
+Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+outside, where conversation was possible. “I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
+have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you
+for a drive and leave you at home.”
+
+“Can't,” said Bibbs. “Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows.”
+
+“No, you don't,” the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. “He wants me to
+take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much
+harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks
+have got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your
+house! But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half
+shut--”
+
+“Yes,” Bibbs interrupted, “that's what they are.”
+
+“I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's
+made the difference?”
+
+“I like the machine,” said Bibbs. “I've made a friend of it. I serenade
+it and talk to it, and then it talks back to me.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed? What does it say?”
+
+“What I want to hear.”
+
+“Well, well!” The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+repeatedly. “Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take
+the time off that he allowed for the examination, and--”
+
+“Not at all,” said Bibbs. “I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till
+five o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!”
+
+“Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” Bibbs said, thoughtfully; “but the zinc-eater
+doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being
+in business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be
+content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days.”
+
+“You do beat the devil!” exclaimed Gurney. “Your father's right when he
+tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing
+when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm
+off. Go on back to your murdering old machine.” He climbed into his car,
+which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately
+in motion. “Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him
+not to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he
+didn't pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show
+you how to do something you were already doing a great deal better
+than he could. You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the
+dressing to-morrow morning. Good-by.”
+
+But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than
+change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of
+its kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was
+rebellious and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability
+only by means of horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he
+appeared at the dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which
+he seemed to regard as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon
+the subject evidently struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan,
+having been unable to contain her solicitude several times during the
+day, and having been checked each time in a manner that blanched her
+cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to
+omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the sling
+if they possibly could.
+
+The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
+arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour;
+and the members of the family were all seated at the table within two
+minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+
+It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
+awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression,
+as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was
+that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent.
+Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and
+explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and there was a
+strange brightness, like a light, upon his face. It was curious to see
+anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.
+
+Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never
+once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance,
+heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like
+Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself
+with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting
+it to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father
+gazed heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and
+between Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed
+continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing
+during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+
+“Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?” his mother asked, in the
+effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+
+“What did you say, mother?”
+
+“Didn't you go to church this morning?”
+
+“I think so,” he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+
+“You THINK so! Don't you know?”
+
+“Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!”
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“Just down the street. It's brick.”
+
+“What was the sermon about?”
+
+“What, mother?”
+
+“Can't you hear me?” she cried. “I asked you what the sermon was about?”
+
+He roused himself. “I think it was about--” He frowned, seeming to
+concentrate his will to recollect. “I think it was about something in
+the Bible.”
+
+White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and
+lean upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. “He don't know they
+WAS any suhmon!” he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue.
+“All he know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!” George was right.
+
+“Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?” Sibyl asked.
+
+“No,” he answered. “No, I didn't go alone.”
+
+“Oh?” Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry,
+and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. “OH!”
+
+Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that
+completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+
+Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to
+other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the
+library, but was not well received.
+
+“YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks,” Sheridan
+commanded.
+
+Bibbs retreated. “Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!” he
+said.
+
+However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her
+feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room,
+examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs.
+Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively
+of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that
+she thought it “right pretty,” and followed it with one of the former
+and the same remark.
+
+As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead,
+he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left
+the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then
+disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy.
+He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions
+and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the
+letter.
+
+Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+
+“What's that?” she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+
+“Here's another right pretty record,” said Mrs. Sheridan,
+affecting--with patent nervousness--not to hear. And she unloosed the
+music.
+
+Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a
+little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold
+chair, with his eyes closed.
+
+“Where did Edith go?” she asked, curiously.
+
+“Edith?” he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. “Is she gone?”
+
+Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing,
+still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was
+suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp
+excitement. She listened intently.
+
+When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+husky: “I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well
+let me alone!”
+
+But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started
+another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of
+Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+
+Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
+instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+
+But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so
+white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences
+became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and
+contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+
+“Sit just as you were--both of you!” she said. And then to Edith: “Did
+you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?”
+
+“You march out of here!” said Edith, fiercely. “March straight out of
+here!”
+
+Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+
+“Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?”
+
+“Oh, good God!” Lamhorn said. “Hush!”
+
+“You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?” she cried. “You knew
+that!”
+
+“HUSH!” he begged, panic-stricken.
+
+“That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
+come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say!
+You were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand times
+before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!” she stormed. “You wouldn't
+even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And SHE
+told my husband! You're a MAN!”
+
+Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way
+to her feelings. “Get out of this house!” she shrieked. “This is my
+father's house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!”
+
+“No! No! I mustn't SPEAK--”
+
+“Don't you DARE!”
+
+Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled
+and rose and cracked--they screeched. They could be heard over the noise
+of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could
+be heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could
+have been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
+
+“You told my husband!” screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+Edith's. “You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike
+me with! HE did!”
+
+“I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's
+TIME your husband--”
+
+They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. “Do you want the neighbors
+in?” Sheridan thundered.
+
+There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his
+mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved
+slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the
+hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily,
+his eyes on the ground.
+
+“NOW THEN!” said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+
+The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the
+vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the
+direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of
+George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs.
+Sheridan. They fled lightly.
+
+“Papa, papa!” wailed Mrs. Sheridan. “Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't
+to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!”
+
+There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips
+of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. “Now then!”
+ he repeated. “You goin' to leave my house?”
+
+“He will NOT!” sobbed Edith. “Don't you DARE order him out!”
+
+“Don't you bother, dear,” said Lamhorn, quietly. “He doesn't understand.
+YOU mustn't be troubled.” Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very
+handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught
+eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his
+heels--the rabble being enacted by her father.
+
+“Don't come back, either!” said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+impersonation. “Keep off the premises!” he called savagely into the
+hall. “This family's through with you!”
+
+“It is NOT!” Edith cried, breaking from her mother. “You'll SEE about
+that! You'll find out! You'll find out what'll happen! What's HE done?
+I guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's
+HE done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you
+s'pose he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there,
+and he flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it
+was before he met ME! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything,
+anyway--he never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be
+serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long
+ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and--”
+
+“Yes,” said Sheridan, sternly; “that's HIS side of it! That'll do! He
+doesn't come in this house again!”
+
+“You look out!” Edith cried.
+
+“Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on
+the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie
+look up this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count
+on earth! He's no good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was
+George Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!”
+
+“But, papa,” Mrs. Sheridan began, “if Edie says it was all Sibyl's
+fault, makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--”
+
+“'S enough!” he roared. “He keeps off these premises! And if any of you
+so much as ever speak his name to me again--”
+
+But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her
+mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined
+her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw
+her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+
+“She locked her door,” said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully.
+“She wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room.”
+
+“Well,” said her husband, “she can settle her mind to it. She
+never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her
+to-morrow--Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say
+it's my orders. No, you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself.”
+
+“Better not,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+His father glared at him.
+
+“It's no good,” said Bibbs. “Mother, when you were in love with
+father--”
+
+“My goodness!” she cried. “You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+that--”
+
+“Edith feels about him just what you did about father,” said Bibbs. “And
+if YOUR father had told you--”
+
+“I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!” she declared, angrily.
+
+“So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?” said Sheridan.
+“What is it?”
+
+“Let her see him all she wants.”
+
+“You're a--” Sheridan gave it up. “I don't know what to call you!”
+
+“Let her see him all she wants,” Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. “You're
+up against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling
+you'd have a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your
+determination, father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll
+beat you. You can't keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about
+him the way she does now. You can't make her think less of him, either.
+Nobody can. Your only chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if
+you give her time and go easy she probably will. Marriage would do it
+for her quickest, but that's just what you don't want, and as you DON'T
+want it, you'd better--”
+
+“I can't stand any more!” Sheridan burst out. “If it's come to BIBBS
+advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that
+nigger George? Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family.
+Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'!
+Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's--”
+
+“Bibbs,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “if you haven't got anything to do, you
+might step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall. I
+don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now.”
+
+“All right.” And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and
+delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only,
+“Forgot these,” and, “Good night, Roscoe,” cordially and cheerfully, and
+returned to the New House. His mother and father were still talking in
+the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his
+own room, and there he proceeded to write in his note-book.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love--nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?
+
+   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!
+
+   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.
+
+   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.
+
+   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.
+
+   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.
+
+   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning “Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted.”  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting--always there--for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?
+
+   Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+
+Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own
+(and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to
+sleep soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+
+His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of
+affairs of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote,
+“Who would wake from such a dream as this?” Bibbs was a sympathetic
+person, easily touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all
+things outside of it were veiled and remote--for that is the way of
+youth in a dream. And Bibbs, who had never before been of any age,
+either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
+
+He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of
+soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile
+at the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr.
+Gurney's, but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist. And when
+he was once more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater he whistled
+and sang to it, as other workmen did to their own machines sometimes,
+when things went well. His comrades in the shop glanced at him amusedly
+now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at noon with a group
+of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked of electing him to
+their association.
+
+The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles
+blew. When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested
+himself of his overalls--his single divergence from the routine of his
+fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water copiously. This
+was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail
+young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the
+pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the
+point of elegance.
+
+The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and
+boys and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many
+hurried and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one
+another, and Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+
+Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught
+sight of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost
+passed her, for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not
+recognize her, though his shoulder actually touched hers. He would have
+gone by, but she laughed delightedly; and he stopped short, startled.
+Two boys, one chasing the other, swept between them, and Bibbs stood
+still, peering about him in deep perplexity. She leaned toward him.
+
+“I knew YOU!” she said.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Bibbs. “I thought it was your voice coming out of
+a star!”
+
+“There's only smoke overhead,” said Mary, and laughed again. “There
+aren't any stars.”
+
+“Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!”
+
+She took his arm, and they went on. “I've come to walk home with you,
+Bibbs. I wanted to.”
+
+“But were you here in the--”
+
+“In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!”
+
+Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold
+her.
+
+“But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have--you ought
+to know better. What did--”
+
+“I only waited about twelve seconds,” she laughed. “I'd just got here.”
+
+“But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--”
+
+“I was in this part of town already,” she said. “At least, I was only
+seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd
+have had to go home alone--and I preferred going home with you.”
+
+“It's pretty beautiful for me,” said Bibbs, with a deep breath. “You'll
+never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then
+to--to see you standing there! Oh, it was like--it was like--how can I
+TELL you what it was like?” They had passed beyond the crowd now, and
+a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again she
+was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
+vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
+had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
+was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his
+solicitude for her took another turn. “I think you ought to have a car,”
+ he said, “especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in
+winter, anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?”
+
+“No,” said Mary. “I don't think I'd care for one particularly.”
+
+“I wish you would.” Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. “I think in
+winter you--”
+
+“No, no,” she interrupted, lightly. “I don't need--”
+
+“But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
+for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--”
+
+“A girl likes to walk, too,” said Mary. “Let me tell you where I've been
+this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
+home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
+He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
+mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
+I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see
+more of them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever
+painted; I don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in
+his life. He gives drawing-lessons to keep alive.”
+
+“How do you mean he paints the smoke?” Bibbs asked.
+
+“Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the
+street--anywhere. He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful.”
+
+“The smoke?”
+
+“Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs
+of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and
+smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow
+columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing
+with the hazy light in the distance; and he has others with the broken
+sky-line of down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of
+vapor that have colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take
+you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs.”
+
+“You're showing me the town,” he said. “I didn't know what was in it at
+all.”
+
+“There are workers in beauty here,” she told him, gently. “There are
+other painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of
+things.”
+
+“I didn't know.”
+
+“No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of
+it that shows.”
+
+“The beauty-workers seem buried very deep,” said Bibbs. “And I imagine
+that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest
+of all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one
+of your friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't
+get one of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he
+could use it for an advertisement.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, thoughtfully. “And really he's the town. They ARE
+buried pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs.”
+
+“And yet it's all wonderful,” he said. “It's wonderful to me.”
+
+“You mean the town is wonderful to you?”
+
+“Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city
+is only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than
+the horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater
+all day long, helping me. Mary--” He stopped with a gasp. “That's the
+first time I've called you 'Mary'!”
+
+“Yes.” She laughed, a little tremuously. “Though I wanted you to!”
+
+“I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk
+home with me. That must be it.”
+
+“Women like to have things said,” Mary informed him, her tremulous
+laughter continuing. “Were you glad I came for you?”
+
+“No--not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+and up--over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way
+most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person
+I was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at
+all. It seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly--somebody
+else--somebody I don't understand now, a coward afraid of
+shadows--afraid of things that didn't exist--afraid of my old
+zinc-eater! And now I'm only afraid of what might change anything.”
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, “You're happy, Bibbs?” she asked.
+
+“Ah, don't you see?” he cried. “I want it to last for a thousand,
+thousand years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I
+wouldn't have one thing different--nothing, nothing!”
+
+“Dear Bibbs!” she said, and laughed happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
+after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
+decided that he was “a member of the family”; but he appeared to have
+relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he
+was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days
+in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he
+seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly
+aware that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
+imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
+Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the
+sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer
+wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again
+unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith
+and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+
+Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
+not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
+days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
+frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or
+no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
+information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
+Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and
+why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as
+of yore.
+
+Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
+shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of
+that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling
+mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
+hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
+end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+
+“You ought to let me die!” she wailed. “It's cruel not to let me die!
+What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
+Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and
+look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this
+town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't
+even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!
+I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted to have a good
+time--and how could I? Where's any good time among these Sheridans? They
+never even had wine on the table! I thought I was marrying into a rich
+family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and
+go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did
+the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every
+woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were
+just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen
+crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
+have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was
+getting him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with
+money can do that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what
+could I do? What can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but
+try to stand it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that
+Vertrees girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't
+have hurt her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT
+little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take
+the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!”
+
+Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
+whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half
+upright, and the nurse restrained her. “I'd get up out of this bed to
+show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and
+she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after
+Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground, and she thinks she's
+landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able
+to walk across the street again I'll show her how to treat a woman in
+trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't have hurt her any--it
+wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what she told
+Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I
+bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done
+it! He needn't--needn't--” Her voice grew fainter, for that while,
+with exhaustion, though she would go over it all again as soon as her
+strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing
+disheveled in the doorway, “Don't come in, Roscoe,” she murmured. “I
+don't want to see you.” And as he turned away she added, “I'm kind of
+sorry for you, Roscoe.”
+
+Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
+and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the
+disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
+husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to
+telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into
+a momentary distraction over a counter.
+
+Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
+whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
+the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan,
+like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly
+fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool,
+and thus set her on fire.
+
+Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
+father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence
+had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing
+fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she
+went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not
+think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.
+She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in
+apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring
+peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and
+she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and
+having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have
+kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure
+had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that
+evening, to find her gone. “I suppose they'll be maried there,” he said,
+casually.
+
+Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+fuming. “Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!” he snorted. “I
+don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
+are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept
+away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.
+For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!”
+
+Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
+sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
+excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
+wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
+had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had
+the habit of gesture; he could not “take time to remember,” he said,
+that he must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his
+hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
+
+The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
+the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before
+the appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an
+anteroom--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's
+office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
+latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
+
+“No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!” he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+breaking into thunder, “I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick!
+You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his
+hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what
+if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to
+keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide
+your nickels in a crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a
+little skeery! You listen to every street-corner croaker and then
+come and set here and try to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on
+this--understand? I tell you there never WAS better times. These are
+good times and big times, and I won't stand for any other kind o' talk.
+This country's on its feet as it never was before, and this city's on
+its feet and goin' to stay there!” And Gurney heard a series of whacks
+and thumps upon the desk. “'Bad times'!” Sheridan vociferated, with
+accompanying thumps. “Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!
+We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all,
+gentlemen. The loan goes!”
+
+The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
+in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his
+right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage
+as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of
+Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile
+reception. But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic
+command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the
+New House.
+
+“Gurney says your wife's able to travel,” Sheridan said brusquely, as he
+came in.
+
+“Yes.” Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
+which had become his habit. “Yes, she is.”
+
+“Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!”
+
+“Oh, I wouldn't put it that way,” Roscoe protested, drearily.
+
+“No, I hear YOU wouldn't!” There was a bitter gibe in the father's
+voice, and he added: “It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
+stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
+least of all!”
+
+“It's no use your talking that way,” said Roscoe. “You won't do any
+good.”
+
+“Well, when are you comin' back to your office?” Sheridan used a
+brisker, kinder tone. “Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
+When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
+foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a
+lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself
+out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone.”
+
+“It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
+you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!”
+
+“Wait a minute before you talk that way!” Sheridan began his sentry-go
+up and down the room. “I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good
+men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin'
+right again, down in your office?”
+
+“They must be good men.” Roscoe nodded indifferently. “I thought I was
+doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
+it.”
+
+“Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty
+men drive harder'n I do, and--”
+
+“Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with
+'em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
+the rest of their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
+domestic difficulties'!”
+
+“You set there and tell me you give up?” Sheridan's voice shook, and
+so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
+despondent figure. “Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
+down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
+more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
+you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
+fastened on you yet. Don't say--”
+
+“It's no use on earth,” Roscoe mumbled. “No use on earth.”
+
+“Look here! If you want another month's vacation--”
+
+“I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?”
+
+“Gurney!” Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. “It's Gurney, Gurney,
+Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
+doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get
+its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
+blattin'--'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
+NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
+emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
+chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's
+the matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and
+Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her.”
+
+“Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?”
+
+“Shut up!” Sheridan bellowed. “I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel
+like shootin' anybody that says it to me!” He fumed and chafed, swearing
+indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. “Look here; do you
+think you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?”
+
+“I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.”
+
+“It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at
+your age?”
+
+“No. But it's mine, and it's enough.”
+
+“My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
+there! I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket,
+and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right
+here, you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and
+what would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from
+now? Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd
+either get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be
+split up and--” He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room,
+and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly: “Listen. If you go
+out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth
+to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is. I've depended on
+you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor,
+and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that
+certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
+a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
+you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and
+a little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into
+MOVING businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
+won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if
+you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were.” He cleared
+his throat and finished quietly: “Roscoe, will you take a month's
+vacation and come back and go to it?”
+
+“No,” said Roscoe, listlessly. “I'm through.”
+
+“All right,” said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
+table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
+“Good-by.”
+
+Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
+“Best I can do,” he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. “I
+figure it out a good deal like this,” he said. “I didn't KNOW my job
+was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what
+I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and
+the--the trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I
+am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on
+whiskey--and that put the finish to me! I--I'm not hitting it as hard as
+I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a
+little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I don't know. I'm all
+in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a
+few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know
+it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
+I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your
+daughter-in-law and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything
+wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had
+done--encouraging that fellow to hang around her after he began trying
+to flirt with her, and losing her head over him the way she did. I don't
+deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll
+never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's
+nature.” Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.
+“A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive people, and
+traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can give her
+the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or
+New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman has to have
+something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I was. I
+never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I
+believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's
+all. I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was
+so busy with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her,
+I was so busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us
+to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do
+when anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me
+dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had
+to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the
+floor, deathly sick. You talk about a 'month's vacation'--and I get just
+as sick. I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't make
+any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
+I can--and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we--”
+
+His father rustled the paper. “I said good-by, Roscoe.”
+
+“Good-by,” said Roscoe, listlessly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then
+he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
+
+“Has Bibbs got home from work?”
+
+“Mist' Bibbs? No, suh.”
+
+“Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes.”
+
+“Yessuh.”
+
+Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon
+the newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond
+their explanatory rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to
+concentrate his attention:
+
+  “Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides.”
+   “Burglars Make Big Haul.”
+   “Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension.”
+   “Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured.”
+   “Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court.”
+   “Plan New Eighteen-story Structure.”
+   “School-girl Meets Death under Automobile.”
+   “Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead.”
+   “Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes
+    Action by Coroner.”
+   “Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to
+    Governor in Church Rioting Case.”
+   “Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug.”
+   “Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work.”
+   “Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No
+    European City Holds Candle.” (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
+
+Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+“Well, father, did you want me?”
+
+“Yes. Sit down.” Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire,
+holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+
+“I came within seven of the shop record to-day,” he said. “I handled
+more strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest
+to me is sixteen behind.”
+
+“There!” exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. “What'd I tell you?
+I'd like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you
+there--I would just like to hear him! And you--ain't you ashamed of
+makin' such a fuss about it? Ain't you?”
+
+“I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time,” Bibbs said,
+smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. “I didn't
+know the difference it meant to like a thing.”
+
+“Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
+HAVE! I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
+hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+Ain't that so?”
+
+“Looks like it!” Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+
+“Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead
+o' hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically. You're a good
+inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am
+if you'd get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little.
+Physically, it's started you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole
+family. Now, then, mentally--that's different. I don't say it unkindly,
+Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like
+what's begun physically. And I'm goin' to help you.”
+
+Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his
+son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. “I got
+plans for you, Bibbs,” he said.
+
+Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. “I--I'm all
+right now, father.”
+
+“Listen.” Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone
+of a reasonable man reasoning. “Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow
+to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been
+expectin' it some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll
+be frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever
+called you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of
+your life. Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to
+use it. You got will-power, I'll say that for you. I never knew boy or
+man that could be stubborner--never one in my life! Now, then, you've
+showed you could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop,
+in no time at all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other
+things. I don't deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't deny
+that, at all. Well, that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as
+it looks. You're all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't
+as poor material as I thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within
+seven strips of the shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin'
+information brought in at just about the right time. Now, then, I'm
+goin' to give you a raise. I wanted to send you straight on up through
+the shops--a year or two, maybe--but I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now
+I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's laid down on me. If he ever comes back
+at all, he'll be a long time pickin' up the strings, and, anyway, he
+ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count on him. I got to have
+SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to this: you're my last
+chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got and see if
+we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin' to put my time
+in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I won't be
+hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin' to do the
+big thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the big
+thing for me, in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the
+shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over
+ahead of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal
+to your ambition that'll make you dizzy!” He tapped his son on the knee
+again. “Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm goin' to
+make you a director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to make you
+vice-president of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust
+Company!”
+
+Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. “Oh no!” he cried.
+
+Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. “Yes,
+sir! And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop--oh, I know
+you did!--but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so right
+now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you to,
+I deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger and
+bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand I deal
+you. I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!”
+
+“But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!” Bibbs stammered.
+
+“What'd you say?” Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+
+“I don't want it, father. I thank you--I do thank you--”
+
+Sheridan looked perplexed. “What's the matter with you? Didn't you
+understand what I was tellin' you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered--”
+
+“I know, I know! But I can't take it.”
+
+“What's the matter with you?” Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+“Your head feel funny?”
+
+“I've never been quite so sane in my life,” said Bibbs, “as I have
+lately. And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right
+life. I'm earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages
+are enough. I don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any--”
+
+“Damnation!” Sheridan sprang up. “You've turned Socialist! You been
+listening to those fellows down there, and you--”
+
+“No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't
+it.”
+
+Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+“Then what is it? What's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” his son returned, nervously. “Nothing--except that I'm
+content. I don't want to change anything.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. “I'll tell you,
+father, if I can. I know it may be hard to understand--”
+
+“Yes, I think it may be,” said Sheridan, grimly. “What you say usually
+is a LITTLE that way. Go on!”
+
+Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at
+every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a
+rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and
+made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his
+eyes lowered. “You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is,
+in one way you weren't, father.” He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan
+stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.
+“That's difficult to explain,” Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again,
+to follow the tracings of his finger. “I--I believe the shop might have
+done for me this time if I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh,
+not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it.
+I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I don't
+want, I don't want to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn
+into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM living. I have the
+healthful toil--and I can think. In business as important as yours I
+couldn't think anything but business. I don't--I don't think making
+money is worth while.”
+
+“Go on,” said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+
+“It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,” said Bibbs. “You
+think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being
+rich and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools
+because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they
+used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought
+the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been reading
+the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught anything
+except what would help them to make money. You said it was wasting the
+taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live. When I
+was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's the
+use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has
+meant really going ahead--it's just been getting bigger and dirtier and
+noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it
+was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an
+utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics
+just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman
+that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily
+and dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over
+it? And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all
+the time, and was always having additions built to her house when she
+couldn't keep clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she
+made the house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--”
+
+“Just one minute!” Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy,
+“If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?”
+
+“I don't quite--”
+
+“I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
+whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon
+any subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you
+mention one single time when you were proved to be right?”
+
+He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only,
+“If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm
+right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due
+to bring up my average.”
+
+“Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
+probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been
+balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do,
+you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't
+seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I
+said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of
+this country. Go on!”
+
+“I don't want to be a part of it,” said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.
+“I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went
+down there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money
+enough to--”
+
+“No,” his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. “You've never had
+to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me
+remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty
+fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these
+noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own
+housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?”
+
+“I'm earning nine dollars a week,” said Bibbs, sturdily. “It's enough. I
+shouldn't mind at all.”
+
+“Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?”
+
+“My work!” Bibbs answered. “And I've done so well on that
+clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty
+a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months,
+I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should,
+infinitely!”
+
+“You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!” But Sheridan
+struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+controlling it. “You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go to
+plumbing!”
+
+“All right,” said Bibbs, gently. “I can get along.”
+
+Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. “O God,” he said,
+“this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a
+week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for
+him?” Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture
+of dismissal. “Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a
+whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated
+the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick
+for over two years--and now, when I offer to take you out of it and give
+you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy! You're
+cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit, and
+one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had
+a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First
+morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass
+window out into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!'
+That's what you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look
+at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you
+bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you
+are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn
+you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out
+of you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while
+I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
+at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't
+let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked
+up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!”
+
+Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it,
+for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his
+father's last word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this
+storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place
+in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the
+presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading
+Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of
+the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose
+through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for
+Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights
+as these, all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve
+to break the spell.
+
+Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking;
+and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers,
+appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at
+him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that
+while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the
+time.
+
+When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+said: “There's something I want to read over. This:”
+
+   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....
+
+He stopped and looked at her.
+
+“You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.
+
+“Oh yes,” he returned. “But it's true--especially my knees!”
+
+“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read
+another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were
+looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it--I can give
+it to you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'”
+
+“I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one,
+unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”
+
+“No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what's beautiful and
+delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and
+have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful
+person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful for.”
+
+Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or
+two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I
+wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.”
+
+“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we're
+like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough
+Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and
+told everybody that the devil was dead.”
+
+“He isn't, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room
+began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets
+into the clock whenever I'm with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to
+go.
+
+“You're always very prompt about leaving me.”
+
+“I--I try to be,” he said. “It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you
+look tired--”
+
+“Have you ever?”
+
+“Not yet. You always look--you always look--”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about
+something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into
+people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that
+look--and I'd never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety
+might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite
+understand why it should be, either.” He smiled quizzically, looking
+down upon her. “Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have you?”
+
+For answer she only laughed.
+
+“No,” he said; “I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
+that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in
+your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
+happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours
+when I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel
+dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house, there's
+a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily
+dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really
+beginning another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But
+now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and so--good night.” And
+he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, “I hate
+it!”
+
+“Do you?” she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
+motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+
+“Mary! Your eyes are so--” He stopped.
+
+“Yes?” But she looked quickly away.
+
+“I don't know,” he said. “I thought just then--”
+
+“What did you think?”
+
+“I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+understand--and didn't.”
+
+She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. “My eyes are
+pleased,” she said. “I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go.”
+
+“But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it,” he
+said.
+
+She inclined her head. “Yes. I'll--'let it'!”
+
+“Going to church,” said Bibbs. “It IS going to church when I go with
+you!”
+
+She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
+formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
+speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
+doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
+looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
+the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway,
+but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to
+tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that
+friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were open for him to come
+back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came
+between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the
+beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol of
+herself and of her ineffable kindness.
+
+And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was
+strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that
+she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the
+storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she
+went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had
+spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he
+was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she
+caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two
+houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before,
+she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street.
+They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the
+front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper
+windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the
+shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night
+she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after
+Bibbs had gone.
+
+But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for
+his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
+already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
+lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.
+
+A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
+library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
+rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
+detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then
+Gurney, sharply imperious, “Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand
+in that sling, I say!”
+
+“LOOK!” George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
+tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which
+he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the
+eyes of Bibbs. “Look at 'at lamidal statue!”
+
+Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly
+Byzantine--painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso,
+appallingly human; and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn
+among ruinous palms like the spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had
+been a massacre in the oasis--the Moor had been hurled headlong from his
+pedestal.
+
+“He hit 'at ole lamidal statue,” said George. “POW!”
+
+“My father?”
+
+“YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's
+I kin telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't
+takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago.
+You done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what
+he was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!” He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a
+crumpled telegraph form. “Here what come,” he said. “I pick 'er up when
+he done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn
+'er ovuh to you soon's you come in.”
+
+Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to
+Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
+                                                     Edith Lamhorn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors
+of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just
+then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For
+that reason he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade
+room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan
+vociferously demanding his presence.
+
+“Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him
+in. Now you'll SEE!” And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into
+the hall, beckoned to her son.
+
+Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
+striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that
+he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot;
+his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken
+loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+
+“THERE'S our little sunshine!” he cried, as Bibbs appeared. “THERE'S the
+hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--”
+
+“Keep you hand in that sling,” said Gurney, sharply.
+
+Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. “For God's sake,
+sing another tune!” he cried. “You said you 'came as a doctor but stay
+as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize
+ME--”
+
+“Oh, talk sense,” said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. “What do
+you want Bibbs to say?”
+
+“You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,'
+oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'!
+You sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many
+another man you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!” He
+swung toward the quiet figure waiting in the doorway. “Bibbs, will you
+come down-town with me Monday morning and let me start you with two
+vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you.”
+
+“No, father,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+
+“Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+instead of takin' up my offer?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're
+too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my
+shop?”
+
+“Find other work,” said Bibbs.
+
+“There! You hear him for yourself!” Sheridan cried. “You hear what--”
+
+“Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him.”
+
+Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+broke, piping into falsetto: “He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to
+be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he
+wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!”
+
+He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+“There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance
+to live,” he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
+throat. “That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway
+yonder!”
+
+Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
+and tossed it into the open bag. “What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
+chance to live?” he said, coolly. “I would if I were you. You've had TWO
+that went into business.”
+
+Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. “Joe Gurney,”
+ he said, when he could command himself so far, “are you accusin' me of
+the responsibility for the death of my son James?”
+
+“I accuse you of nothing,” said the doctor. “But just once I'd like
+to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
+too.” He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
+his back and smiling. “Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable,” he
+said. “You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
+and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at
+the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And
+he did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't
+you let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he
+couldn't do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some
+message--something to say that might make the world just a little
+bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be
+denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you,
+and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is
+likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the
+shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But
+I tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill
+something that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his
+physical body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so
+why not let it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old
+fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
+chance?”
+
+Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. “What 'fighting?'”
+
+“Yours--with nature.” Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
+antagonist equably. “You don't seem to understand that you've been
+struggling against actual law.”
+
+“What law?”
+
+“Natural law,” said Gurney. “What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
+Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
+powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
+against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
+grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken
+Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
+wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
+could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
+Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want
+him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
+twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together.”
+
+“WHAT!” Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+
+“Your son Bibbs,” said the doctor, composedly, “Bibbs Sheridan has
+the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
+anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain
+asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life
+you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT
+to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's
+obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
+knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell
+you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
+thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than
+your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
+very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim
+from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very
+self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
+The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
+the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to
+wield it and twist it--”
+
+The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. “Yes! And by
+God, I will!”
+
+“So Ajax defied the lightning,” said Gurney.
+
+“I've heard that dam'-fool story, too,” Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+“That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
+tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half
+a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the
+lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A
+man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!”
+
+“Well, what about Bibbs?” said Gurney. “Will you be a really big man now
+and--”
+
+“Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!” Sheridan began to walk to and
+fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
+his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but
+the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
+
+“I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder,” Sheridan
+went on, “and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
+don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
+mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!”
+
+“Oh, put your hand back!” said Gurney, wearily.
+
+There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand
+in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table
+and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
+Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+
+“Let it lay!” he shouted, fiercely. “Let it lay!” And, weeping, she
+obeyed. “Yes, sir,” he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the
+sudden hush he put upon it. “I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's
+wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you
+remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
+messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
+built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there
+from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he
+died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used
+to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't
+stingy--he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or
+automobiles--he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty
+near bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole
+man used to pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants
+cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak
+to him? God! he wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him
+clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin'
+in FRONT the bank he'd 'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy
+was doin' every day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!
+Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and
+his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.
+It was every bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in
+harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for
+that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T
+EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
+him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his
+old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy bank
+any more! And now”--his voice rose again--“and now I got a cigarette
+son-in-law!”
+
+Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+
+“My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,” Sheridan went on. “That's
+good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be
+there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear
+it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got
+me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't
+give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's
+got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before
+this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette
+behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there
+ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there
+ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein',
+nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll
+be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that
+cigarette, but--”
+
+“By the way,” interposed Gurney, “didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
+Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?”
+
+Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed
+and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his
+wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively,
+sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away,
+tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
+
+“Fool!” he panted, choking. “If he's shown gumption enough to guess
+right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
+him on!” And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
+thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. “My name
+ain't Tracy, I tell you!” he screamed, hoarsely. “You give in, you
+stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my way
+with you now!”
+
+Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+“splendid look” of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage
+in a struggle, so that he would “never give up.”
+
+“No. You can't have your way,” he said. And then, obeying a significant
+motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
+husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
+darkened chamber. At the “old” house they had shared a room, but the
+architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had not known
+how to formulate an objection, although to both of them something seemed
+vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.
+
+Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
+aperture when he spoke.
+
+“Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door.”
+
+She came and sat by the bed. “I woke up thinkin' about it,” she
+explained. “And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
+be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
+so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
+goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like.”
+
+“You BET I ain't!” he grunted.
+
+“Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works,” she continued.
+“He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
+say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
+right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
+time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
+company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
+look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold
+o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all--and the rest
+of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do in
+that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold, and everything went off
+all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's
+got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right considerable
+of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such a large
+practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what
+he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
+amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You
+heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what
+Jim and Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't
+that exactly what he says?”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
+“Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
+true--what of it?”
+
+“Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.
+You know where he goes all the time--”
+
+“Oh, Lord, yes!” Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. “You
+better go back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute she'll let
+him, I suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it.”
+
+“WHY ain't there?” she urged. “I know better--there is, too! You wait
+and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest
+young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he
+is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it
+into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and
+chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll
+see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you--moony, no-'count young
+men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or something;
+and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings 'em right
+down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is
+Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister
+exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I know
+this is goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say
+that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be
+talkin' that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for
+him to live on. But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you
+want to hand him out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll
+want all the salary and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to
+keep gettin' more. That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes
+crazy to give things to! She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look
+nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the
+next. And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll
+be pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at
+the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their
+cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one. He
+says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now
+they're doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that
+unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o'
+stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice anything
+like that for himself. They've never asked him to a meal in the house,
+but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of innocent. Now I was
+thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly mentioned the girl's
+name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe if--”
+
+Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+“You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!”
+
+“Why am I?” she demanded, crossly. “Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?”
+
+“Because you are. There's nothin' in it.”
+
+“I'll bet you,” she said, rising--“I'll bet you he goes to church with
+her this morning. What you want to bet?”
+
+“Go back to bed,” he commanded. “I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+nothin' in it, I tell you.”
+
+She shook her head perplexedly. “You think because--because Jim was
+runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?”
+
+“No. Nothin' to do with it.”
+
+“Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?”
+
+“Yes, I do,” he grunted. “Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
+ain't had any yet!”
+
+“Well--” She went to the door, her expression downcast. “I thought
+maybe--but--” She coughed prefatorily. “Oh, papa, something else I
+wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night
+when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants
+to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants to
+say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to
+sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened.
+They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to
+feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's
+what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't
+disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all
+along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that
+foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought
+was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a
+good deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.
+You'll--you'll be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?”
+
+He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had
+pulled over his head.
+
+“What?” she said, timidly. “I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl
+all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?”
+
+He threw the coverlet off furiously. “I presume so!” he roared.
+
+She departed guiltily.
+
+But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to
+church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.
+Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's
+house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and
+they had no other. They meant to go to church.
+
+But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation
+as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and
+Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with
+Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other
+at this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled
+among groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this
+somewhat prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it,
+and they had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before
+they discovered their error. However, feeling that they might be
+embarrassingly late if they returned, they decided that a walk would
+make them as good. It was a windless winter morning, with an inch of
+crisp snow over the ground. So they walked, and for the most part they
+were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned back at noon,
+they began to be talkative again.
+
+“Mary,” said Bibbs, after a time, “am I a sleep-walker?”
+
+She laughed a little, then looked grave. “Does your father say you are?”
+
+“Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He
+has quite a list.”
+
+“You mustn't mind,” she said, gently. “He's been getting some pretty
+severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.
+I've always been sure he's very big.”
+
+“Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any
+consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow
+stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing.”
+
+“Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and
+his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see
+it--so great none of us could see it.”
+
+“No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--”
+
+“Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight,” she finished
+for him, cheerily.
+
+“Into the smoke,” said Bibbs. “Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the
+little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of
+soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well
+have thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have
+taken his chance of my whipping him for it if I could.”
+
+“IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+rhetorically? IS there?”
+
+“Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each. One
+landed since I mentioned the first.”
+
+She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
+entirely matter-of-course about it.
+
+An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary
+for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the
+soot. “There!” said the elderly wife. “You're always wrong when
+you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't
+honeymooners at all--they've been married for years. A blind man could
+see that.”
+
+
+“I wish I did know who threw that soot on you,” said Bibbs, looking up
+at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. “They arrest children for
+throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but--”
+
+“But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in
+the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make.
+I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year.
+Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have
+money to pay or none.”
+
+“Who is it gets the pay?” said Bibbs.
+
+“Not I!” she laughed.
+
+“Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some
+of the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to
+get.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, smiling to him, and nodding. “And you don't want it,
+and you don't need it.”
+
+“But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?” He had told her of his
+father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+picturesqueness of their setting forth. “You think I'm right?”
+
+“A thousand times!” she cried. “There aren't so many happy people in
+this world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy. If
+it's a dream--keep it!”
+
+“The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as
+I never hated the shop!” he said. “I hate it! And the city itself, the
+city that the money shuffle has made--just look at it! Look at it in
+winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the
+ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting
+dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the
+unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise
+aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and
+noise MEAN--that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but
+they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind embryo of a spirit, not
+yet a soul--oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense! Oughtn't it
+all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I could--I'd
+want to help the other fellow to keep up with me.”
+
+“I read something the other day and remembered it for you,” said Mary.
+“It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint:
+'In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of
+a great city, full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers
+walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths of
+a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide open,
+letting in a space of green field and cornfield in harvest; and all
+round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from a
+little walled graveyard.”
+
+“And if I painted,” Bibbs returned, “I'd paint a lady walking in the
+street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile
+life--children being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying
+to get richer, and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows
+clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and
+slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a
+great rain of swirling soot--” He paused, adding, thoughtfully: “And yet
+I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were
+your brother--the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for
+you. Still, Edith never--”
+
+“Didn't she?” said Mary, as he paused again.
+
+“No. And I--” He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were
+passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. “Mary, our walk's
+almost over.”
+
+She looked as blank. “So it is, Bibbs.”
+
+They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly
+to a stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with
+Sibyl, who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her
+illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not
+taking his arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary
+and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary
+gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+
+“Mary,” he said, “you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?”
+
+“No, Bibbs.” And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him
+instantly unreasonably happy.
+
+“I know you want to go in--” he began.
+
+“No. I don't want to.”
+
+“I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I
+just wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning,
+grumbling about soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think
+it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.
+And--I don't know just why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd
+always remember. And you,” he added, falteringly, “you look so--so
+beautiful to-day!”
+
+“It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs.”
+
+“Mary, will you tell me something?” he asked.
+
+“I think I will.”
+
+“It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them
+ever just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much
+colder, you don't--you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?”
+
+Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
+“Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+questions?”
+
+“Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?”
+
+“Because I found I'd be warmer without them!” She caught his hand
+quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into
+the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative
+warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual
+“living-room” of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed.
+Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers,
+business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon
+bric-a-brac or crocheting--when he was at home, and not abed or eating,
+he was in the library.
+
+He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the
+far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he
+exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest,
+as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his
+Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp,
+was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations
+was his keeping his hand in his sling.
+
+Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking
+at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were
+nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.
+There was a deadly silence.
+
+But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she
+was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil
+them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something
+committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for
+that.
+
+“Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to
+me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the
+way I acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that
+night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it
+will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson;
+and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a
+daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask
+you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings
+toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life.
+I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return
+for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a
+good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not
+to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur
+again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to
+excuse it this time.”
+
+He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
+agitation of her hands within the muff.
+
+“All right,” he said at last.
+
+She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
+heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+
+“Thank you,” she said. “There's something else--about something
+different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it,
+too.”
+
+“She's up-stairs in her room,” said Sheridan. “Roscoe--”
+
+Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and
+begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived
+the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+
+“No, let me go,” she said. “I want to speak to her a minute first,
+anyway.”
+
+And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
+Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
+room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for
+bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed
+her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with
+the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her own
+experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by words
+they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl
+intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not
+hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
+in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
+say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
+girl who had affronted her.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's
+mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of
+emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) “have
+a fit right there.” She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting
+a touch to her hair before a mirror.
+
+“I was just coming down,” she said, as the door opened.
+
+“Yes, he wants you to,” said Sibyl. “It's all right, mother Sheridan.
+He's forgiven me.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
+daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+
+“And I hope Edith will be happy,” Sibyl added, inciting more
+applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+
+“Yes, yes,” murmured the good woman. “We mustn't make the worst of
+things.”
+
+“Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear
+it, too,” said Sibyl. “We better go down, mother Sheridan.”
+
+She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came
+to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. “I want to tell you
+about it first,” she said, abruptly. “It isn't a secret, of course, in
+any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the
+whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT
+for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.
+But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help
+me to see I got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it
+except the good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the
+other, of course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I
+did that night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help
+the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way.
+Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from
+being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of
+and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than
+so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as
+Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
+you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way.”
+
+Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
+wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
+write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun
+the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to
+fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
+to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the
+beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
+dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor. For he had
+his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he
+could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to
+the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of
+home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
+His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced
+the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He
+could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when
+he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and
+on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least
+he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate
+vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself,
+but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could
+think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on,
+he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+
+“I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but
+this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
+all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
+little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
+been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he
+could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about
+it, mother Sheridan?”
+
+“Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while
+back,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “And now they're doin' the cookin', too.”
+
+Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. “I hope they find
+something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”
+
+Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy--of
+all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
+would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
+happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
+heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to
+him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically--and that
+something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent,
+but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
+
+“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said
+Sibyl, sharply. “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!
+They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and
+Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took
+the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs.
+Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the
+room.
+
+“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+“It's the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly. “Oh, of course we were all
+crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up
+here, and we thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read
+her! Her family were down and out when it came to money--and they had to
+go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
+she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around
+to Jim--and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
+if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as
+I stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well--when Jim was
+left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
+Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
+but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
+him.”
+
+The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
+in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
+with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+
+“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn't to be allowed to go
+on. It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made
+such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of!
+I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd
+have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall
+in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he
+WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like
+men with some GO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever
+looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd
+tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got
+desperate that she--”
+
+Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door.
+He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
+screamed.
+
+“Oh, good heavens!” cried Sibyl. “Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--”
+ She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. “Come
+on, mother Sheridan!” she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
+obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: “Good gracious! Oh,
+I wouldn't--too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
+feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But,
+good heavens--”
+
+She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of
+the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+following; he had gone back into his room.
+
+“He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan. “I--I
+wish--”
+
+“Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl. “I
+shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
+Come on!”
+
+And completing their descent to the library, the two made their
+appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and
+truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks,
+and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had
+overheard them.
+
+“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn
+out for the very best that he did hear--just that way. Don't you think
+so, father Sheridan?”
+
+He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top
+of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no
+sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
+character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom
+she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
+
+“I'm sure it was all for the best,” she said. “It's over now, and
+he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just
+hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I
+haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the
+family.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
+the stairway. “I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin',” she said. “He
+did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him
+that was--I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did.
+He looked--so queer. It was like you'd--” She called down the hall,
+“George!”
+
+“Yes'm?”
+
+“Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?”
+
+“Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil'
+him nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.” He departed.
+
+“What do you expect he wants a fire for?” she asked, turning toward her
+husband. “The house is warm as can be, I do wish I--”
+
+“Oh, quit frettin'!” said Sheridan.
+
+“Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
+meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
+harm if--”
+
+“Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
+family? Why, she--”
+
+“I don't know, I don't know,” the troubled woman quavered. “If he liked
+her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't
+ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there
+was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If
+she wants to marry him--”
+
+Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don't!” he said.
+“You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a
+girl.”
+
+“But, father Sheridan, didn't she--”
+
+He cut her short. “That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
+wrong. So do you, mamma.”
+
+Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--”
+
+“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
+down cold.”
+
+“But that's impossi--”
+
+“It's not. I KNOW she did.”
+
+Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+
+“And YOU needn't worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won't have
+any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
+D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take
+JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
+but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
+think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at
+me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
+on. There's nothin' in it--and I've got the same old fight with him on
+my hands I've had all his life--and the Lord knows what he won't do
+to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
+stubborn, but--”
+
+“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That's his
+step--he's comin' down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if
+she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I--I wonder--” she said, almost in a
+whisper--“I wonder what he's goin'--to do.”
+
+Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose,
+frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved
+toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as
+the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+
+Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
+slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
+father. Then he came and stood before him.
+
+“I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,” he said, gently. “You
+won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.”
+
+Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs
+had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he
+went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went
+nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had
+gone from the house.
+
+Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her
+mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been
+done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
+room.
+
+The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
+large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
+note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given
+up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and that he had
+given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have
+done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a
+little before she went down-stairs.
+
+So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of
+passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face;
+a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual
+anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a
+perambulator containing the third--and all three were newly cleaned,
+Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
+
+“How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?” the husband
+whispered. “He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now.”
+
+The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. “Well, I don't know,” she returned.
+“He looks to me like he had his own troubles.”
+
+“I expect he has, like anybody else,” said the young husband, “but I
+guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money.”
+
+“Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed
+as the Sheridans. You can't tell.” She glanced back at Bibbs, who had
+turned north. “He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.”
+
+“So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,” said the young
+husband, with bitter admiration.
+
+Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at
+the door.
+
+“Bibbs!” she cried. “What is the matter? I saw something was terribly
+wrong when I--You look--” She paused, and he came in, not lifting his
+eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with
+his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. “Ah, poor boy!” she said,
+with a gesture of understanding and pity. “I know what it is!”
+
+He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a
+chair.
+
+“You needn't tell me,” she said. “They've made you give up. Your
+father's won--you're going to do what he wants. You've given up.”
+
+Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+
+She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. “Bibbs,”
+ she said. “I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be
+glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come
+because you were happy.” She did not speak again for a little while;
+then she said: “Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about it? Do you want
+to?”
+
+Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her
+a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood
+his words.
+
+“Mary,” he said, “could you marry me?”
+
+“What did you say, Bibbs?” she asked, quietly.
+
+His tone and attitude did not change. “Will you marry me?”
+
+Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
+She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
+in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
+strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each other.
+At last she said:
+
+“What made you say that?”
+
+He did not answer.
+
+“Bibbs, look at me!” Her voice was loud and clear. “What made you say
+that? Look at me!”
+
+He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+
+“What was it that made you?” she said. “I want you to tell me.”
+
+She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+intensity of wonder. “You've given up--to your father,” she said,
+slowly, “and then you came to ask me--” She broke off. “Bibbs, do you
+want me to marry you?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, just audibly.
+
+“No!” she cried. “You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it
+that's happened?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Wait,” she said. “Let me think. It's something that happened since our
+walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
+that--” She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and
+dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
+House.
+
+Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, “I do--I do want you
+to--marry me, if--if--you could.”
+
+She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. “Bibbs, do you--” Her
+voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. “Do you think
+I'm--in love with you?”
+
+“No,” he said.
+
+Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it
+did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it.
+“Why?”
+
+“I've had nothing but dreams,” Bibbs said, desolately, “but they weren't
+like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me.” He smiled faintly,
+though still he did not look at Mary. “And when I first came home Edith
+told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
+meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed
+either of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as
+particularly captivating!”
+
+Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. “Those two!” she
+exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: “Lamhorn!
+That's like them!” She turned away, went to the bare little black
+mantel, and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: “WHEN did Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?”
+
+“To-day.”
+
+Mary drew a deep breath. “I think I'm beginning to understand--a
+little.” She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and
+in her voice. “Answer me once more,” she said. “Bibbs, do you know now
+why I stopped wearing my furs?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?”
+
+“I--I heard her say--”
+
+“I think I know what happened, now.” Mary's breath came fast and her
+voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. “You 'heard her say' more than that.
+You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I
+tried first to marry your brother--and then--” But now she faltered, and
+it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. “And
+then--that I tried to marry--you! You 'heard her say' that--and you
+believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for
+you--but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you--
+And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you--except
+for my 'extremity'--you took your father's offer and then came to ask
+me--to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you--”
+
+Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon
+the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+
+“Mary, Mary!” he cried, helplessly. “Oh NO--you--you don't understand.”
+
+“I do, though!” she sobbed. “I do!”
+
+He came and stood beside her. “You kill me!” he said. “I can't make it
+plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
+always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent--I did nothing
+but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my
+idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful
+being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You
+seemed to lean down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never
+dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need
+anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that
+you--”
+
+“You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money,” she
+sobbed. “And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I
+had--”
+
+“No!” he said, quickly. “I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing
+for me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except
+generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!” he cried,
+despairingly.
+
+“Wait!” She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously,
+like a child. “Help me up, Bibbs.” Then, when she was once more upon her
+feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but
+reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had
+not meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so
+faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered
+them no more.
+
+“Let me tell you what you want to tell me,” she said. “You can't,
+because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me
+and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You
+didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--”
+
+“Never! Never for an instant!”
+
+“You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--”
+
+“No, no, no!”
+
+“I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I
+cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
+But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you
+because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--”
+
+“Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--”
+
+“Were desperately poor,” she said. “You can't even say that! Bibbs, it
+was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!” And she sank
+down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
+
+“Mary,” he groaned, “I didn't know you COULD cry!”
+
+“Listen,” she said. “Listen till I get through--I want you to
+understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had
+been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was
+plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the
+town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well, just about the time
+your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything.
+People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in
+comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't
+anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything.
+You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder
+myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the
+daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a
+wave of the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be
+either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not
+to marry. The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all
+there--and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how
+to be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and
+I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been
+raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I
+did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your
+brother I had meant to fascinate him and that I was not in love with
+him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I
+did mean to marry him. I had never cared for anybody, and I thought
+it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited
+fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to
+marry him I never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage
+is--it's sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop
+me; it was your sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was
+horrible, and she put what I was doing into such horrible words--and
+they were the truth--oh! I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable
+compact with me--and I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with
+her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I
+WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a
+quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I
+said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it.
+That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know
+what I did--and you know--ME!” She pressed her clenched hands tightly
+against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
+
+Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. “Couldn't
+you--Isn't there--Won't you--” he stammered. “Mary, I'm going with
+father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without--”
+
+She gave a choked little laugh.
+
+“You gave me something to live for,” he said. “You kept me alive, I
+think--and I've hurt you like this!”
+
+“Not you--oh no!”
+
+“You could forgive me, Mary?”
+
+“Oh, a thousand times!” Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture,
+and just touched his own for an instant. “But there's nothing to
+forgive.”
+
+“And you can't--you can't--”
+
+“Can't what, Bibbs?”
+
+“You couldn't--”
+
+“Marry you?” she said for him.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“No, no, no!” She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she
+did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a
+little. “I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?”
+
+“Mary--”
+
+“No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--”
+
+“MARY--”
+
+“Never, never, never!” she cried, in a passion of tears. “You mustn't
+come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!”
+
+Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
+got himself to the door and out of the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to
+the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but
+so that the others might hear.
+
+“When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would
+be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,” he said. “I
+thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me.
+It proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
+refused.”
+
+And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
+had entered it.
+
+“He's SO queer!” Mrs. Sheridan gasped. “Who on earth would thought of
+his doin' THAT?”
+
+“I told you,” said her husband, grimly.
+
+“You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--”
+
+“I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+didn't I?”
+
+Sibyl was altogether taken aback. “Do you supose it's true? Do you
+suppose she WOULDN'T?”
+
+“He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed
+up fine with his girl,” said Sheridan. “Not to me, he didn't!”
+
+“But why would--”
+
+“I told you,” he interrupted, angrily, “she ain't that kind of a girl!
+If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with,
+though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about
+my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him,
+and it was a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he
+never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt.”
+
+“I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,” said
+Roscoe. “Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I was waiting
+for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was
+just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
+and called me.”
+
+Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down,
+for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they
+were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after
+some further fragmentary discourse--visibly elated. After all, the
+guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the
+less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a
+contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe
+crossed the street.
+
+When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
+she said, uneasily, “Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
+about that letter?”
+
+“I don't know,” he answered, walking moodily to the window. “I been
+thinkin' about it.” He came to a decision. “I reckon I will.” And he
+went up to Bibbs's room.
+
+“Well, you goin' back on what you said?” he inquired, brusquely, as he
+opened the door. “You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs.
+
+“Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't
+know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the
+Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!” Sheridan
+was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
+unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
+abuse went on in spite of him. “I can't say I expect much of you--not
+from the way you always been, up to now--unless you turn over a new
+leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do
+THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the
+whole office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any,
+you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.”
+
+“Yes--I'll try.”
+
+“You better, if it's in you!” Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
+always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
+bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
+angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
+like a drudge-driver. “You better come down there with your mind made
+up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you,
+or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get
+ahead--and you better set it down in your books--the way to get ahead is
+to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But
+you don't know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand
+around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home
+and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty
+different proposition now, and if you're worth your salt--and you never
+showed any signs of it yet--not any signs that stuck out enough to bang
+somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice--well, I want
+to say, right here and now--and you better listen, because I want to say
+just what I DO say. I say--”
+
+He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a
+hopeless blank.
+
+Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look. “Yes, father; I'm
+listening.”
+
+“That's all,” said Sheridan, frowning heavily. “That's all I came to
+say, and you better see't you remember it!”
+
+He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him
+with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure.
+He stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more.
+Then abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead
+liberally covered with perspiration.
+
+“Look here,” he said, crossly. “That girl over yonder wrote Jim a
+letter--”
+
+“I know,” said Bibbs. “She told me.”
+
+“Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--” The door
+closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence
+was nevertheless audible--“if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either.”
+
+And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin'
+and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to
+inquire what Bibbs “said,” but after a second thought she decided not
+to speak at all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal
+communication was given over between them for the rest of that
+afternoon.
+
+Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next
+morning, and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she
+worried about what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She
+felt that everything depended on how Bibbs “took hold,” and upon her
+husband's return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity
+to ask him how things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody
+tell by the first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right
+at the start and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair
+the first day or so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as
+it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe
+had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position
+in the Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
+
+But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed
+remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small
+restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and
+she took this to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon
+as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative after
+reading his paper.
+
+She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of
+business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and
+only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.
+Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on the
+first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an opinion
+which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
+
+“I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+father,” he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. “Abercrombie
+agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him.”
+
+“You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen,” Sheridan returned, “but
+you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof
+fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather
+conditions. I want that building put just the way Jim planned it.”
+
+“You can't have it,” said Bibbs. “You can't, because Jim planned for the
+building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one--the one that
+didn't fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage.
+It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both buildings
+down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and cheapest
+in the long run for that type.”
+
+Sheridan looked sarcastic. “Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?”
+
+“Rent,” Bibbs returned, promptly. “We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter
+your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount of
+stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until
+we could patch up those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on
+it for us this morning.”
+
+Sheridan's expression was queer. “Look here!” he said, sharply. “Did you
+go and do that without consulting me?”
+
+“It didn't cost anything,” said Bibbs. “It's only until to-morrow
+afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then.”
+
+“Oh, you did?” Sheridan's tone was sardonic. “Well, just suppose you
+couldn't convince me.”
+
+“I can, though--and I intend to,” said Bibbs, quietly. “I don't think
+you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up.”
+
+“Now, see here,” said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; “suppose I had my
+mind set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was--well,
+kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right.”
+
+Bibbs looked at him compassionately. “I'm sorry if you have a sentiment
+about it, father,” he said. “But whether you have or not can't make a
+difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and
+that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want
+one that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend
+sentiment in this particular kind of affair.”
+
+“Oh, you don't?”
+
+“No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it.”
+
+Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. “Why are you 'sorry'?” he asked,
+curiously.
+
+“Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon,” said Bibbs,
+“and I had him condemn both those buildings.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid you'd
+see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them--they've got to come
+down now.”
+
+Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+Finally he said, “How long did they give you on that option to convince
+me?”
+
+“Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+“All right,” said Sheridan, not relaxing. “I'm convinced.”
+
+Bibbs jumped up. “I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch
+agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle
+it this evening.”
+
+Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that
+startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything
+resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound--although it was grim and
+dry--bore that resemblance.
+
+She brightened eagerly. “Looks like he was startin' right well don't it,
+papa?”
+
+“Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I
+wanted--that's why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat
+before we even started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't
+reasonably defend SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option
+for Us'! 'Stuff piled up on Us'!”
+
+There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. “I don't just like the way
+he looks, though, papa.”
+
+“Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you
+start to frettin' about IT!”
+
+“No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--”
+
+“I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then,” said
+Sheridan. “You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I
+expect.”
+
+“Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And
+he'd begun to fill out some, but--”
+
+Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
+her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
+still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. “That's the
+way it is with you, mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you
+don't another!”
+
+“No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he
+begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some
+way.”
+
+“Yes, he may 'a' lost something,” said Sheridan. “I expect he's lost a
+whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
+poetry and--”
+
+“No,” his wife persisted. “I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
+when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
+readin'.”
+
+“Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?”
+
+“He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+believe.”
+
+“Look, here!” said Sheridan. “Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there
+the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did
+one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had
+to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over
+there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty
+fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get
+over worries like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin'
+to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me,
+mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a
+year from now I'll bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as
+poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could
+'think'! What he meant was, think about something useless. Well, I guess
+he's keepin' his mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes,
+sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but
+it certainly did the business.” He patted his wife's shoulder again, and
+then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+
+“Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But
+no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness,
+and the changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The
+priests wore that “settish” look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning
+to develop about his mouth and eyes--a wary look which she could not
+define, but it comes with service at the temple; and it was the more
+marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to the necessities of that
+service.
+
+He did as little “useless” thinking as possible, giving himself no time
+for it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work
+when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his
+work. But he did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people
+were not allowed to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of
+hideous uproar--they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the
+thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they
+could walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or
+screeching, as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with
+business; though street musicians were not tolerated, being considered
+a nuisance and an interference. A man or woman who went singing for
+pleasure through the streets--like a crazy Neopolitan--would have been
+stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen
+is allowed to do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The
+streets were dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing!
+and the Motor Federation issued public warnings declaring that the
+pedestrian's life was in his own hands, and giving directions how to
+proceed with the least peril. However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to
+sing in the streets, or anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy
+that, for the start, at least, was bitter, and there was no song left in
+him.
+
+He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among
+them he found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period
+of neighborliness, “pioneer stock,” usually; and there were
+men--particularly among the merchants and manufacturers--“so honest they
+leaned backward”; reputations sometimes attested by stories of heroic
+sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some instances of generosity
+even nobler. Here and there, too, were book-men, in their little
+leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men. And these, with the others,
+worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake and
+for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the
+beneficence and glory of their god.
+
+To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in
+life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the
+dangerous illness of a wife or child. In the way of “relaxation” some of
+the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took “shows”--a mixture
+of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some took
+an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards; and some took
+nothing. The high priests were vigilant to watch that no “relaxation”
+ should affect the service. When a man attended to anything outside his
+business, eyes were upon him; his credit was in danger--that is, his
+life was in danger. And the old priests were as ardent as the young
+ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as the thousand; seventy was
+as busy as seventeen. They strove mightily against one another, and
+the old priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the most
+dangerous. Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these--he must wear
+a thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+
+And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves
+and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but
+these were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had
+a good guide to point them out to him. They were useful sometimes,
+he learned, and many of them served as go-betweens in matters where
+business must touch politics. He learned also how breweries and
+“traction” companies and banks and other institutions fought one another
+for the political control of the city. The newspapers, he discovered,
+had lost their ancient political influence, especially with the knowing,
+who looked upon them with a skeptical humor, believing the journals
+either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else striving to
+forward the personal ambitions of their owners. The control of the city
+lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of
+negroes gin-money, and by other largesses. The revenues of the people
+were then distributed as fairly as possible among a great number of men
+who had assisted the winning side. Names and titles of offices went with
+many of the prizes, and most of these title-holders were expected to
+present a busy appearance at times; and, indeed, some among them did
+work honestly and faithfully.
+
+Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known
+and customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment
+of forgetting that he was done with writing--he thought that if he had
+known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation
+of them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and
+sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it--it was a permeation; the
+newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning to
+stammer a few words of the local language. Everywhere the people shouted
+of the power, the size, the riches, and the growth of their city. Not
+only that, they said that the people of their city were the greatest,
+the “finest,” the strongest, the Biggest people on earth. They cited no
+authorities, and felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus
+celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that
+there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and
+supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the
+critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him,
+for they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with
+them, harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them.
+For the voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+
+
+Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs,
+and the door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had
+established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was
+alone, Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his
+hand.
+
+“Bibbs,” he said, “I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when
+I do I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have you been
+buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?”
+
+Bibbs leaned back from his desk. “For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+dollars. That's all it cost.”
+
+“Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to
+know that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader'n Adam's cat!”
+
+“It might be worth something--some day.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“It mightn't be so dead--not if we went into it,” said Bibbs, coolly.
+
+“Oh!” Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, “Who'd you buy it
+from?”
+
+“A broker--Fansmith.”
+
+“Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?”
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?”
+
+“It belonged to Mr. Vertrees,” said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to
+his desk.
+
+“So!” Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. “Excuse me,” he said.
+“Your business.” And he went back to his own room. But presently he
+looked in again.
+
+“I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day”--he was shuffling
+himself into his overcoat--“because I just thought I'd go up to the
+house and get THIS over with mamma.” He glanced apologetically toward
+his right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The
+bandages had been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three
+fingers--the forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated.
+“She's bound to make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than
+her dinner. I'll be back about two.”
+
+But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately
+that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from
+the lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his
+overcoat in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+
+“What's the matter, papa?” she asked, quickly. “Has anything gone wrong?
+You ain't sick?”
+
+“Me!” He laughed loudly. “Me SICK?”
+
+“You had lunch?”
+
+“Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffee, though.”
+
+She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn
+she said querulously, “I just know there's something wrong.”
+
+“Nothin' in the world,” he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the
+head of the table. “I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you,
+that's all. It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's,
+anyhow.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--”
+
+“To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?”
+
+“Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. “I guess it's time you had him,
+too. I KNEW Bibbs--”
+
+“Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances
+with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole
+Gurney had a talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on
+me what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then
+I thought he must want to get something out o' me, he got so
+flattering--for a minute! 'Bibbs couldn't help havin' business brains,'
+he says, 'bein' YOUR son. Don't be surprised,' he says--'don't be
+surprised at his makin' a success,' he says. 'He couldn't get over his
+heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business success--once you got him
+into it. It's in his blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH
+brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but
+it does need a special KIND o' brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire.
+I mean,' he says, 'when a man's given a start. If nobody gives him a
+start, why, course he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains.
+The only miracle about Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind
+o' brains--the brains you made him quit usin' and throw away.'”
+
+“But what'd he say about his health?” Mrs. Sheridan demanded,
+impatiently, as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband.
+Sheridan helped himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+
+“I'm comin' to that,” he returned, placidly. “See how easy I manage this
+cup with my left hand, mamma?”
+
+“You been doin' that all winter. What did--”
+
+“It's wonderful,” he interrupted, admiringly, “what a fellow can do with
+his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could
+with my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I
+believe I RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write,
+anyway--just the signature. Rest's all dictatin'.” He blew across the
+top of the cup unctuously. “Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole
+Gurney says he believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o'
+mind he was in about the machine-shop--that is, if he could some way get
+to feelin' about business the way he felt about the shop--not the poetry
+and writin' part, but--” He paused, supplementing his remarks with a
+motion of his head toward the old house next door. “He says Bibbs
+is older and harder'n what he was when he broke down that time, and
+besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was then--and I should
+say he AIN'T! I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age that's any wider
+awake! But he says Bibbs's health never need bother us again if--”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. “I don't see any help THAT way. You know
+yourself she wouldn't have Jim.”
+
+“Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him
+LOOK at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that
+she won't let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy,
+and some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the
+Bible, but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o' thinkin' that if
+she'd let him come back and set around with her an evening or two
+sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I just thought I'd see
+what YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk about it to Bibbs
+himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but I thought maybe you
+could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a
+little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land
+lays, and ask her--”
+
+“ME!” Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. “No.” She shook
+her head decidedly. “It wouldn't do any good.”
+
+“You won't try it?”
+
+“I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
+believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T--and,
+what's more, it'd only make things worse. If people find out you're
+runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as
+much for you as if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and
+I couldn't do it if it was.”
+
+He sighed with resignation. “All right, mamma. That's all.” Then, in a
+livelier tone, he said: “Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more.”
+
+“Why, that's splendid, papa!” she cried, beaming. “I was afraid--Let's
+see.”
+
+She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket.
+“Wait a minute,” he said, smiling. “Now it may give you just a teeny bit
+of a shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl
+came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'--it was the day
+after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's telegram came--”
+
+“Let me see your hand!” she cried.
+
+“Now wait!” he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+“The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning,
+when you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd told
+me to, you see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything.” And he held
+out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. “You see, these days when
+it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple o'--”
+
+He had to jump for her--she went over backward. For the second time in
+her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own
+room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat
+that the “fuss” she was making irked him far more than his physical
+loss. He permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his
+office, but when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in
+attendance to await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he
+himself proceeded on foot.
+
+Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as
+manna in the wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did
+not particularly question. The broker informed him that “parties were
+interested in getting hold of the stock,” and that later there might
+be a possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his
+client. It might go “quite a ways up” within a year or so, he said, and
+he advised “sitting tight” with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.
+
+He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and
+his wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her
+piano, and as for furs--spring was on the way, she said. But they paid
+the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook
+once more. It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and
+presently assured him that Miss Vertrees would “be down.”
+
+He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed
+and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the
+cook. She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second,
+but it vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes
+by a soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+
+“Don't be surprised,” he said. “Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+business I looked in here. It'll only take a minute, I expect.”
+
+“I'm sorry,” said Mary. “I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors.”
+
+He chuckled. “Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so--lately.”
+
+“You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?”
+
+“I guess I could manage that much.” And they sat down, facing each other
+and not far apart.
+
+“Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly,” he said, more
+gravely. “Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed
+to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it
+myself and explain how I happened to have it. It's this--this letter you
+wrote my boy.” He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left hand,
+and she took it gently from him. “It was in his mail, after he was hurt.
+You knew he never got it, I expect.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.
+
+He sighed. “I'm glad he didn't. Not,” he added, quickly--“not but what
+you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other way
+when it came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you--you
+were above-board all through.”
+
+Mary said, “Thank you,” almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed
+low.
+
+“You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all
+his mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it
+all--once I got started.”
+
+“I'm glad you did.”
+
+“Well”--he leaned forward as if to rise--“I guess that's about all. I
+just thought you ought to have it.”
+
+“Thank you for bringing it.”
+
+He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might
+have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this
+glance, and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+
+“Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office,” he said, rising
+desperately. “I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock,
+and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind
+time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days--with
+THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!”
+
+Mary rose with him. “I've always heard YOU were the hard driver.”
+
+He guffawed derisively. “Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
+couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end
+o' the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some
+day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is--once he
+goes AT a thing!”
+
+“No,” she smiled. “I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard--”
+
+He laughed, looking away from her. “It's just my way o' speakin' o' that
+boy o' mine, Bibbs.”
+
+He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, “How
+IS Bibbs?” but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the
+silence became embarrassing.
+
+“Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there,” he said, at last. “He
+might worry.”
+
+“Good-by--and thank you,” said Mary.
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For the letter.”
+
+“Oh,” he said, blankly. “You're welcome. Good-by.”
+
+Mary put out her hand. “Good-by.”
+
+“You'll have to excuse my left hand,” he said. “I had a little accident
+to the other one.”
+
+She gave a pitying cry as she saw. “Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!”
+
+“Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.” He laughed
+jovially. “Did anybody tell you how it happened?”
+
+“I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how.”
+
+“It was this way,” he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down
+again. “You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the
+youngest o' my boys--the one that used to come to see you sometimes,
+after Jim--that is, I mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my partner;
+and the truth is that's what it's just about goin' to amount to, one o'
+these days--if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I expect, I
+had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd kind o'
+sneak in there and see how he was gettin' along. Take a doctor with me
+sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole Doc
+Gurney--I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy--”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook
+to show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I
+wouldn't listen, and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand
+hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and
+I didn't. Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS
+hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical
+measures with me. He's a right good doctor, too. Don't you think so,
+Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Yes, he is so!” Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and
+gossip with all day on his hands. “Take him on Bibbs's case. I was
+talkin' about Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to
+hear the way ole Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a
+friend as he is doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if
+he was in the family. He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and
+he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if--well, this is
+what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees--honest it
+would!” He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing
+straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and--visibly--she
+was breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing
+furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went
+on, determined now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his
+voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still
+maintained a tone which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only
+a joke he shared with her. “Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed!
+Why, that ole man thinks YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to
+blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel like startin' out
+to whip somebody! He's actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to
+gettin' better while he worked over there at the shop because you kept
+him cheered up and feelin' good. And he says if you could manage to
+just stand him hangin' around a little--maybe not much, but just
+SOMEtimes--again, he believed it'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good.
+'Course, that's only what the doctor said. Me, I don't know anything
+about that; but I can say this much--I never saw any such a MENTAL
+improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect
+you'd find him a good deal more entertaining than what he used to
+be--and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing to suggest after the
+way he piled in over here that day to ask you to stand up before the
+preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc GURNEY, he's got you on his
+brain so bad--”
+
+Mary jumped. “Mr. Sheridan!” she exclaimed.
+
+He sighed profoundly. “There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I
+didn't--”
+
+“No, no, no!” she cried. “But I don't understand--and I think you don't.
+What is it you want me to do?”
+
+He sighed again, but this time with relief. “Well, well!” he said.
+“You're right. It'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could
+with you, all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you
+sometimes, once more. Could you?”
+
+“You don't understand.” She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+gesture. “Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make
+your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and
+asked me to marry him--because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him
+any more,” she cried in distress. “I CAN'T!”
+
+Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You mean because he thought
+that about you?”
+
+“No, no! What he thought was TRUE!”
+
+“Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of you--”
+ The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue; he seemed
+to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he
+bravely repeated them. “You mean he thought so much of you that you just
+couldn't stand him around?”
+
+“NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+respected me--too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and
+he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he
+knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,” she said. “But the cheap,
+bad things one has done seem always to come back--they wait, and pull
+you down when you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he
+wasn't 'in love' with me at all.”
+
+“He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to
+do--it was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just
+threw it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never
+would--just for you. And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that
+must think quite a heap o' the girl he does it for! You say it was only
+because he was sorry, but let me tell you there's only ONE girl he could
+feel THAT sorry for! Yes, sir!”
+
+“No, no,” she said. “Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything
+for anybody.”
+
+Sheridan grinned. “Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays,” he
+said. “For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in
+'sentiment in business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he
+wanted was, just plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was
+afraid his thinkin' so much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him--the
+way it does sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that
+ain't the trouble.” He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. “Now
+here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell you--because you see things
+easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to
+make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for the sake o'
+my business and on his own account, too--and I expect you got some idea
+how it hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in
+half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way! But there isn't anything
+in it to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead
+with dust in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's
+got nothin' to work FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your
+friendship, and I believe--honest--that's what hurt him the worst. Now
+you said we'd talk plain. Why can't you let him come back?”
+
+She covered her face desperately with her hands. “I can't!”
+
+He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+
+“Well, I mustn't press you,” he said, gently.
+
+At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face.
+“Ah! He was only sorry for me!”
+
+He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty,
+and it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear
+that even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a
+change came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
+
+“Don't! Don't” she cried. “You mustn't--”
+
+“I won't tell him,” said Sheridan, from the doorway. “I won't tell
+anybody anything!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
+sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
+liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon
+their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was
+visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke
+than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more
+noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker in spite of that. The
+traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent--they
+retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross
+the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more
+frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
+motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
+nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves
+were killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main
+trouble was that they could not make the citizens realize that it was
+actually and mortally perilous to go about their city. It was strange,
+for there were probably no citizens of any length of residence who had
+not personally known either some one who had been killed or injured in
+an accident, or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others.
+And yet, perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of
+the faces--the people had something on their minds; they could not stop
+to bother about dirt and danger.
+
+Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
+with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
+department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
+Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
+some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
+into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy
+and repellent; it had nothing but strength and size--but in that
+consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty.
+Sheridan had made some of the things he said emphatic enough to remain
+with her. She went over and over them--and they began to seem true:
+“Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!” “Gurney says he's got you
+on his brain so bad--” The man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.
+The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+
+She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the
+passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from
+the crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore
+black; one was tall and broad and thick, and the other was taller, but
+noticeably slender. And Mary caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and
+his father. They did not see her, and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's
+mellow voice, which had taken a crisper ring: “Sixty-eight thousand
+dollars? Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!” It startled her queerly,
+and as there was a glimpse of his profile she saw for the first time a
+resemblance to his father.
+
+She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead
+of his father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of
+a truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country
+women who were in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs,
+and shoved backward upon him violently. To extricate himself from them
+he stepped back, directly in front of a moving trolley-car--no place for
+absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still absorbed in thoughts concerned
+with what he had been saying to his father. There were shrieks and
+yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and then Mary saw the heavy figure
+of Sheridan plunge straight forward in front of the car. With
+absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a
+football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed
+that they both went down together. But that was all she could
+see--automobiles, trucks, and wagons closed in between. She made out
+that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and she saw a policeman breaking
+his way through the instantly condensing crowd, while the traffic came
+to a standstill, and people stood up in automobiles or climbed upon
+the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a chance of seeing anything
+horrible.
+
+Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to
+help the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again.
+The crowd became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon the
+ground, and no ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by
+the clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+
+“What IS the matter, lady?”
+
+“Where are they?” Mary cried.
+
+“Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!”
+
+“His SON--”
+
+“Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him--oh, he's not bad
+off, I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The
+fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook
+up. They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse
+me, lady.”
+
+Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+ascending. “Whisk-broom up in the office,” Sheridan was saying. “You got
+to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got
+any call to blow, though--because I tried to cross after you did. That's
+how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out
+after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand
+flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather
+take it that way, and I don't know but--”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; “he won't get
+it. Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you
+in five minutes.” He followed his father into the office anteroom--and
+convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color,
+Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.
+
+He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his
+side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he
+wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again.
+He knew that his father had not “happened” to run into him; he knew that
+Sheridan had instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own
+life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir. Bibbs
+had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan,
+just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside--as of no importance,
+since all was well--reverting immediately to business.
+
+Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he
+had never perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and
+indomitable--and lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's
+very self; laughing at the lightning and at wounds and mutilation;
+conquering, irresistible--and blindly noble. For the first time in his
+life Bibbs began to understand the meaning of being truly this man's
+son.
+
+He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said,
+Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He
+had given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary
+Vertrees in her need. And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking
+how he had gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him--with his
+head on his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had
+not known her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his
+real awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein
+he dreamily celebrated the superiority of “friendship”! The sleep-walker
+had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a
+failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the
+sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for
+him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in
+that, though it was indeed no more than “dust in his mouth.” If there
+had been anything “to work for--”
+
+He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast,
+foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly
+against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam,
+while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings
+would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
+
+But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here,
+where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and
+how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had
+begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them
+that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity
+might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well,
+their posterity was here--and there was only turmoil. Where was the
+promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it
+had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the
+very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and
+sacrificing in turn--for what?
+
+The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in
+it--a broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like
+a titanic voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of
+the god, Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its
+servants.
+
+“Come and work!” it seemed to yell. “Come and work for Me, all men! By
+your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
+summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
+your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
+your hope of children I summon you!
+
+“You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
+Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
+You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
+worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
+children shall perish knowing no other god!”
+
+And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
+voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but
+the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
+hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of
+Bigness to some visitor from out-of-town.
+
+And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But
+with the old, old thought again, “What for?” Bibbs caught a glimmer of
+far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled
+and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
+conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served
+blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not
+he who had been in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired
+before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble
+in a day.
+
+Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
+some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. “Ugly I am,” it
+seemed to say to him, “but never forget that I AM a god!” And the voice
+grew in sonorousness and in dignity. “The highest should serve, but so
+long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man
+who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him,
+I should be beautiful!”
+
+Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
+the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
+figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
+disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
+with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still a
+little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that up
+over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his hands
+in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--
+
+It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
+
+He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
+inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
+violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
+been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
+kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.
+
+“Who?” he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
+
+“Mary.”
+
+He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: “IS IT?”
+
+There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+“Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--”
+
+“Yes--Mary?”
+
+“I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs.
+They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for
+myself.”
+
+“No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer it.
+He saved me.”
+
+“Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
+you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW.”
+
+“Mary--would you--have minded?” he said.
+
+There was a long interval before she answered.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then why--”
+
+“Yes, Bibbs?”
+
+“I don't know what to say,” he cried. “It's so wonderful to hear your
+voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything
+except that I AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?”
+
+“Yes, Bibbs!”
+
+“Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
+I--since then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like a man
+chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary. Mary, won't
+you--let me see you again--near? I think I could make you really forgive
+me--you'd have to--”
+
+“I DID--then.”
+
+“No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
+more.”
+
+“That wasn't the reason.” The voice was very low.
+
+“Mary,” he said, even more tremulously than before, “I can't--you
+COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--care?”
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“Mary?” he called, huskily. “If you mean THAT--you'd let me see
+you--wouldn't you?”
+
+And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but
+if it did, the words were, “Yes, Bibbs--dear.”
+
+But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so light,
+so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came from the
+air.
+
+Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining
+eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.
+
+Mary stood upon the threshold.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1098 ***
diff --git a/1098-h/1098-h.htm b/1098-h/1098-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de92de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1098-h/1098-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,12333 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+div.blok {margin:2% 15% 2% 15%;}
+.c {text-align:center;}
+div.poetry {text-align:center;}
+div.poem {font-size:90%;margin:1em auto 1em auto;text-indent:0%;
+display: inline-block; text-align: left;}
+.rt {text-align:right;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1098 ***</div>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE TURMOIL
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A NOVEL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Booth Tarkington
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      1915.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      To Laurel.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+      wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
+      must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
+      him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
+      it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better loved
+      than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently tended
+      streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked and grimy
+      citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of dust, and if he
+      should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has the meager
+      alternative of suicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+      riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+      prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained to
+      one tune: &ldquo;Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
+      Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
+      dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean&mdash;but I
+      will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall be
+      dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!&rdquo; And yet it is
+      not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is hasty
+      riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for wealth
+      is in the smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+      heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+      people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much of
+      the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place&mdash;&ldquo;homelike,&rdquo; it
+      was called&mdash;and when the visitor had been taken through the State
+      Asylum for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from
+      a little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
+      were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for a
+      family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the air
+      was clean, and there was time to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+      elsewhere&mdash;a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+      and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+      mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+      American hearts&mdash;Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound longing
+      for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became an
+      accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
+      Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became a
+      mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax them
+      here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get them!
+      Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of people; all
+      kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the
+      fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is patriotism
+      and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is Money! We
+      want Bigness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+      slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
+      years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people and
+      yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
+      thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than they
+      could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came, the broken
+      and the unbroken, the tame and the wild&mdash;Germans, Irish, Italians,
+      Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes, Norwegians,
+      Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians, Rumanians, Servians,
+      Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and every hybrid that these
+      could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos nor Patagonians, what other
+      human strain that earth might furnish failed to swim and bubble in this
+      crucible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
+      roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the
+      tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the
+      faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to
+      emerge discernibly&mdash;a cynical young mongrel barbaric of feature,
+      muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned apparently in
+      imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians. The female of his
+      kind came with him&mdash;a pale girl, shoddy and a little rouged; and they
+      communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and elisions. Nay, the
+      common speech of the people showed change: in place of the old midland
+      vernacular, irregular but clean, and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky
+      dialect of coined metaphors began to be heard, held together by GUNNAS and
+      GOTTAS and much fostered by the public journals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,
+      and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its vitals,
+      like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body of a man,
+      missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to the saloons and
+      all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation and ruin were
+      ready commodities on the market for purchase by the venturesome;
+      highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimes killed; snatching
+      thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; while house-breakers were a
+      common apprehension and frequent reality. Life itself was somewhat safer
+      from intentional destruction than it was in medieval Rome during a faction
+      war&mdash;though the Roman murderer was more like to pay for his deed&mdash;but
+      death or mutilation beneath the wheels lay in ambush at every crossing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did not
+      matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+      Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+      Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+      dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!
+      They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke. They
+      made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; though sometimes
+      they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new laws that the old
+      laws should be enforced&mdash;and then forget both new and old. Wherever
+      enforcement threatened Money or Votes&mdash;or wherever it was too much to
+      bother&mdash;it became a joke. Influence was the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the place grew. And it grew strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:<br />
+  Power to get more power!<br />
+  Riches to get more riches!<br />
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!<br />
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,<br />
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And<br />
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+      Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+      biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He had
+      come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and he
+      had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; but each
+      time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally, after a
+      year of overwork and anxiety&mdash;the latter not decreased by a chance,
+      remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in the penitentiary&mdash;he
+      found himself on top, with solid substance under his feet; and thereafter
+      &ldquo;played it safe.&rdquo; But his hunger to get was unabated, for it was in the
+      very bones of him and grew fiercer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+      called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And
+      when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. &ldquo;It's
+      good! It's good!&rdquo; he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. &ldquo;Good, clean
+      soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!&rdquo; The smoke was one of his great
+      enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who called
+      to beg his aid against it. &ldquo;Smoke's what brings your husbands' money home
+      on Saturday night,&rdquo; he told them, jovially. &ldquo;Smoke may hurt your little
+      shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhal climate and the
+      adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makes the climate
+      better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people wash more. They have
+      to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You go home and ask your
+      husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' the pay-roll&mdash;and
+      you'll come around next time to get me to turn out more smoke instead o'
+      chokin' it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection
+      in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and
+      unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out he
+      believed it was the finest city in the world. &ldquo;Finest&rdquo; was his word. He
+      thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family; and
+      just as profoundly believed his city to be the finest city in the world,
+      so did he believe his family to be&mdash;in spite of his son Bibbs&mdash;the
+      finest family in the world. As a matter of fact, he knew nothing worth
+      knowing about either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered
+      the failure&mdash;the &ldquo;odd one&rdquo;&mdash;of the family. Born during that most
+      dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and the
+      father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and grew meagerly,
+      only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At his christening he was
+      committed for life to &ldquo;Bibbs&rdquo; mainly through lack of imagination on his
+      mother's part, for though it was her maiden name, she had no strong
+      affection for it; but it was &ldquo;her turn&rdquo; to name the baby, and, as she
+      explained later, she &ldquo;couldn't think of anything else she liked AT ALL!&rdquo;
+       She offered this explanation one day when the sickly boy was nine and
+      after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for his name's being
+      Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to be allowed to exchange
+      names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with the
+      oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being refused went down into the
+      cellar and remained there the rest of that day. And the cook, descending
+      toward dusk, reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he
+      was in the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing. Removed by
+      force and carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to
+      utter a syllable of explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing
+      was wholly a mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to
+      trace and connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and
+      mysterious fool, an impression not effaced as the years went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding of
+      a man, waiting for the building to begin inside&mdash;a long-shanked,
+      long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired and
+      dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at first
+      sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for he seemed
+      upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not grief, but
+      mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching scrutiny was
+      proportionately more puzzling&mdash;he seemed about to burst out crying or
+      to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but it was impossible
+      to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion of his life, either
+      laughed aloud or wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a &ldquo;disappointment&rdquo; to his father. At least that was the parent's
+      word&mdash;a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to
+      make a &ldquo;business man&rdquo; of the boy. He sent Bibbs to &ldquo;begin at the bottom
+      and learn from the ground up&rdquo; in the machine-shop of the Sheridan
+      Automatic Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician
+      sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a
+      sanitarium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't worry, mamma,&rdquo; Sheridan told his wife. &ldquo;There's nothin' the
+      matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put
+      him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well
+      as the next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.
+      Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He
+      makes me tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease
+      was incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack of
+      physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some
+      subtle weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or
+      slyness. He understood typhoid fever, pneumonia, and appendicitis&mdash;one
+      had them, and either died or got over them and went back to work&mdash;but
+      when the word &ldquo;nervous&rdquo; appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly
+      suspicious: he had the feeling that there was something contemptible about
+      it, that there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
+      twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin' wood&mdash;yes!
+      and out in the dark and the snow&mdash;to build a fire in a country
+      grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't&mdash;Pho!
+      it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paced the bedroom&mdash;the usual setting for such parental discussions&mdash;in
+      his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his
+      bedded spouse. &ldquo;My Lord!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If a little, teeny bit o' work like
+      this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything! It's nine-tenths
+      imagination, and the rest of it&mdash;well, I won't say it's deliberate,
+      but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs didn't want the doctor,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;It was when he was
+      here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
+      Honey, you better come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
+      imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for
+      that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice about
+      good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs. Sheridan:
+      busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick. You just
+      think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the sick
+      people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honey,&rdquo; she said again, drowsily, &ldquo;you better come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the other boys,&rdquo; her husband bade her. &ldquo;Look at Jim and Roscoe.
+      Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies. Work
+      never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my shoulders
+      already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter business man in
+      this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me something to push
+      AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look at Roscoe; just LOOK
+      at what that boy's done for himself, and barely twenty-seven years old&mdash;married,
+      got a fine wife, and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I
+      put up the New House for you and Edie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;You better
+      come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl,&rdquo; he continued, emphatically,
+      &ldquo;as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good
+      wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in the
+      United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school and took
+      the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and she'd never
+      even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I ever read, and R.
+      T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough literary judge for
+      me&mdash;turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city. I
+      tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise
+      the New House&mdash;and I guess you had your finger in that, too, mamma!
+      This old shack's good enough for me, but you and little Edie 'll have to
+      have your way. I'll get behind her and push her the same as I will Jim and
+      Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them three chuldern! But Bibbs&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He paused, shaking his head. &ldquo;Honest, mamma, when I talk to men that got
+      ALL their boys doin' well and worth their salt, why, I have to keep my
+      mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. &ldquo;You did the best
+      you could, papa,&rdquo; she said, impatiently, &ldquo;so come to bed and quit
+      reproachin' yourself for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared at her indignantly. &ldquo;Reproachin' myself!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I ain't
+      doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want to
+      reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was the
+      best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was in him and
+      make a man of himself&mdash;and here he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia'
+      on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and
+      muttered his way morosely into bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More like hook-worm, I said,&rdquo; he explained, speaking louder. &ldquo;I don't
+      know what to do with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+      course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and &ldquo;zwieback&rdquo; as the basis
+      of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was
+      considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and
+      a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and
+      the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode of Bigness that
+      Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was found sufficient
+      to his support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith met him at the station. &ldquo;Well, well, Bibbs!&rdquo; she said, as he came
+      slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.
+      She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick
+      glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. &ldquo;Do
+      you think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I certainly do look better,&rdquo; he returned, in a voice as slow as his
+      gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly
+      he stammered. &ldquo;Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me. They
+      had to get me in a line between 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
+      quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
+      troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some obligation
+      of business to visit a &ldquo;bad&rdquo; ward in a hospital. She was nineteen, fair
+      and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness of color and a
+      brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close upon beauty. Her
+      movements were eager and restless: there was something about her, as kind
+      old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was something that was
+      hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change
+      since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her a steady, whimsical
+      scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an automobile across the
+      street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the new car,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everything's new. We've got four now,
+      besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith, you look&mdash;&rdquo; he began, and paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, WE're all well,&rdquo; she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his
+      tone had caught her as significant, &ldquo;Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look&mdash;&rdquo; He paused again, taking in the full length of her&mdash;her
+      trim brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
+      and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
+      mode&mdash;all suited to the October day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I look?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look,&rdquo; he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch
+      of platinum and enamel at her wrist, &ldquo;you look&mdash;expensive!&rdquo; That was
+      a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
+      preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance
+      away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+      intimacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect I am!&rdquo; she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
+      glance. &ldquo;Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime&mdash;it's an
+      evening thing, for the theater&mdash;but my day wrist-watch is out of
+      gear. Bobby Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do
+      you want Claus to help you in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I'm alive.&rdquo; And after a fit of panting subsequent to
+      his climbing into the car unaided, he added, &ldquo;Of course, I have to TELL
+      people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We only got your telegram this morning,&rdquo; she said, as they began to move
+      rapidly through the &ldquo;wholesale district&rdquo; neighboring the station. &ldquo;Mother
+      said she'd hardly expected you this month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They seemed to be through with me up there in the country,&rdquo; he explained,
+      gently. &ldquo;At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep me any
+      longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They told me
+      to go home&mdash;and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
+      right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; She laughed nervously. &ldquo;Of course we're all of us glad to have
+      you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?&rdquo; She did not turn
+      to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;father hasn't written.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed a little. &ldquo;I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one of
+      the boys&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; that was all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often planned
+      to write&mdash;and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up.
+      And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of course we
+      knew mamma was writing often and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; he said, readily. &ldquo;There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
+      glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
+      forgotten how sooty it is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been having very bright weather this month&mdash;for us.&rdquo; She blew
+      the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a
+      cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a decoration.
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It's very gay.&rdquo; A few moments later, as they passed a
+      corner, &ldquo;Aren't we going home?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. This is right. We're going straight home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we've passed the corner. We always turned&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know
+      we were in the New House?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no!&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: &ldquo;Of course, mamma's
+      never been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but
+      keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's
+      got some of his business friends and people from around the OLD-house
+      neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and 'house-warming'&mdash;dreadful
+      kind of people&mdash;but mamma's got it all on her hands. She's never sat
+      down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa would have her up again before&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Do you like the new place, Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
+      finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa bought
+      one thing I like&mdash;a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's perfectly
+      beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and
+      it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old fruit picture we had in
+      the Murphy Street house hung up in the new dining-room. You remember it&mdash;a
+      table and a watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and
+      some shiny lemons, with two dead prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it
+      at a furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer
+      picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to
+      Europe. But it's horribly out of date to have those things in
+      dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made
+      fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about
+      its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on
+      having it where he wanted it. She makes me tired! Sibyl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+      awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full gaze
+      always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation of her
+      sister-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SIBYL!&rdquo; she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed to
+      strike fire on her lips. &ldquo;I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
+      married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good! He could
+      have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and Bobby'd
+      have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of that he
+      had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully nice people from
+      her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last spring, and not one
+      had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even HEARD of 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were great friends with Sibyl,&rdquo; Bibbs said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the time I found her out!&rdquo; the sister returned, with continuing
+      vehemence. &ldquo;I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan lately&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's only lately?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. &ldquo;Of course, I
+      always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
+      ROSCOE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems,&rdquo; said Bibbs, in laconic protest, &ldquo;that she married him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+      laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: &ldquo;Why, she'd have
+      married YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;she couldn't be that bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean&mdash;&rdquo; she began, distressed. &ldquo;I only meant&mdash;I didn't
+      mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, Edith,&rdquo; he consoled her. &ldquo;You see, she couldn't have married
+      me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as mercenary as all
+      that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even had to lend me the
+      money for my ticket home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU,&rdquo; Edith babbled. &ldquo;I only
+      meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to marry
+      somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;it's all straight.&rdquo; And, perceiving that his
+      sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters
+      perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her,&rdquo; she continued, a moment later. &ldquo;Too
+      lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
+      MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Behave'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere,&rdquo; said Edith, characteristically
+      evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and
+      in this not unique of her sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. &ldquo;Business is
+      crawling up the old streets,&rdquo; he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating
+      a vasty structure in course of erection. &ldquo;The boarding-houses come first
+      and then the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That isn't for shops,&rdquo; she informed him. &ldquo;That's a new investment of
+      papa's&mdash;the 'Sheridan Apartments.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+      known here already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!&rdquo; she said, impatiently. &ldquo;I guess there
+      isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't know who we
+      are. But we aren't in with the right people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Who's all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's all what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The 'right people.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean: the best people, the old families&mdash;the people
+      that have the real social position in this town and that know they've got
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. &ldquo;I
+      thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it
+      didn't know it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've always understood that it was very
+      unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and if
+      you had it you didn't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just bosh,&rdquo; she retorted. &ldquo;They know it in this town, all right! I
+      found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out
+      in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
+      society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't
+      all belong to any one club&mdash;they're taken in all sorts into all their
+      clubs&mdash;but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan
+      feeling and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read
+      about anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came,
+      and the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, gravely. &ldquo;Their ancestors fled together from
+      many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I always
+      understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of
+      Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to
+      these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. &ldquo;You mustn't repeat that story,
+      Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and of
+      course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before Mary
+      Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement.
+      He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there YET&mdash;some
+      of the best people in Lynn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there are other old families like the Vertreeses,&rdquo; she went on, not
+      heeding him; &ldquo;the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange names to me,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;Poor things! None of them have my
+      acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, that's just it!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;And papa had never even heard the name
+      of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him,
+      and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages
+      from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I thought I
+      just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr. Vertrees has
+      always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of course. They're
+      the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And to crown it all,
+      papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion&mdash;it's
+      in the very heart of the best new residence district now, and that's where
+      the New House is, right next door to them&mdash;and I must say it makes
+      their place look rather shabby! I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the
+      Mission Service Helpers, but she never did any more than just barely bow
+      to me, and since papa's break I doubt if she'll do that! They haven't
+      called.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing
+      Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him understand
+      that,&rdquo; said Edith, demurely, &ldquo;and he's promised to try and meet Mr.
+      Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM,
+      it's practically no use in our having built the New House; and if we DO
+      know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people.
+      They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going
+      to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and
+      I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not to know us,
+      I'm darn sure Mrs Lamhorn'll never come. That's ONE thing Sibyl didn't
+      manage! She SAID Bobby offered to bring his mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?&rdquo; Bibbs asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's a friend of the whole family,&rdquo; she returned, with a petulance
+      which she made an effort to disguise. &ldquo;Roscoe and he got acquainted
+      somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night. Sibyl
+      has him to lunch, too, and keeps&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off with an angry
+      little jerk of the head. &ldquo;We can see the New House from the second corner
+      ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you know.
+      Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes&mdash;the way she
+      pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets anything
+      in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him behind his
+      back&mdash;yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She got him to give
+      her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it was&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and
+      the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. &ldquo;Is that the
+      New House?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. What do you think of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he drawled, &ldquo;I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+      bigger; I can't be certain till I measure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+      &ldquo;But it's beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect who
+      loved the milder &ldquo;Gothic motives&rdquo; had built what he liked: it was to be
+      seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
+      picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
+      time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
+      accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look of
+      newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at least
+      one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was thinner
+      in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart of the town,
+      it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather could be
+      malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and corn had
+      been growing not ten years gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
+      successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing of
+      the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses that
+      cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every inch of
+      mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house&mdash;no matter
+      what be done to it&mdash;is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the old
+      name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind to
+      change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places of its
+      type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides; rich families,
+      one after another, take title and occupy such houses as fortunes rise and
+      fall&mdash;they mark the high tide. It was impossible to imagine a child's
+      toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New House, and yet it was&mdash;as
+      Bibbs rightly called it&mdash;&ldquo;beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What the architect thought of the &ldquo;Golfo di Napoli,&rdquo; which hung in its
+      vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
+      be conjectured&mdash;perhaps he had not seen it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith, did you say only eleven feet?&rdquo; Bibbs panted, staring at it, as the
+      white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
+      overcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eleven without the frame,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;It's splendid, don't you
+      think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No gloom now!&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This statue in the corner is pretty, too,&rdquo; she remarked. &ldquo;Mamma and I
+      bought that.&rdquo; And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a grove of
+      tubbed palms, a &ldquo;life-size,&rdquo; black-bearded Moor, of a plastic composition
+      painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his chocolate head he
+      wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped spear; and for the
+      rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallelujah!&rdquo; was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
+      saying she would &ldquo;find mamma,&rdquo; left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
+      after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood waiting,
+      Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. &ldquo;What do YOU think of it?&rdquo; Bibbs asked,
+      solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran'!&rdquo; replied the servitor. &ldquo;She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
+      'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect she must be,&rdquo; said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively to
+      the black bull beard for a moment. &ldquo;Is there a place anywhere I could lie
+      down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
+      staihs, suh. Nice room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to rest,
+      and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the exodus from
+      the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the patently
+      nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly enjoying
+      his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,&rdquo; Bibbs's
+      guide explained, chuckling. &ldquo;Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
+      doin's!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in every
+      particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it pleasant&mdash;though,
+      indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed pleasant to him after
+      his journey. He stretched himself flat immediately, and having replied
+      &ldquo;Not now&rdquo; to the attendant's offer to unpack the bag, closed his eyes
+      wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made an
+      exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket&mdash;the harassed
+      overseer&mdash;in the hall without. Said the emerging one: &ldquo;He mighty
+      shaky, Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all
+      black. Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I
+      change 'ith 'at ole boy&mdash;No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my
+      black skin an' keep out the ground!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. &ldquo;Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+      somebody awready laid out,&rdquo; he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
+      near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
+      pessimistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hech!&rdquo; said one, lamenting in a whisper. &ldquo;It give me a turn to see him go
+      by&mdash;white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
+      make ye kind o' sick to look at um?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like
+      drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her husband and
+      her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence she had was
+      given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in
+      the presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded. Edith
+      lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his
+      wife to her unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her
+      existence as a thing separate from his. She invariably perceived his
+      moods, and nursed him through them when she did not share them; and she
+      gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost spirit and purpose of his
+      being, even though she did not comprehend it and partook of it only as a
+      spectator. They had known but one actual altercation in their lives, and
+      that was thirty years past, in the early days of Sheridan's struggle,
+      when, in order to enhance the favorable impression he believed himself to
+      be making upon some capitalists, he had thought it necessary to accompany
+      them to a performance of &ldquo;The Black Crook.&rdquo; But she had not once referred
+      to this during the last ten years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
+      more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time and
+      to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down over some
+      unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+      withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+      rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go, mother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm not asleep.&rdquo; He swung his long legs over
+      the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
+      restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, &ldquo;I just come for a minute,
+      but I want to see how you seem. Edith said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Edith!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;She couldn't look at me. She&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came back
+      to the bedside. &ldquo;You look a great deal better than what you did before you
+      went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body can see that
+      right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't got much color&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I haven't much color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will have when you get your strength back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; he responded, cheerfully. &ldquo;THEN I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look a great deal better than what I expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith must have a great vocabulary!&rdquo; he chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's too sensitive,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, &ldquo;and it makes her exaggerate a
+      little. What about your diet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. They told me to eat anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;anything I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's good,&rdquo; she said, nodding. &ldquo;They mean for you just to build up your
+      strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you at the
+      sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's only a
+      little time ago. How long was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight months, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was longer'n
+      I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely even time to
+      write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin' along, but I told
+      Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked Jim to, too, and they
+      both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up pretty well on the home
+      news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I think you need,&rdquo; said the mother, gravely, &ldquo;is to liven up a
+      little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
+      morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
+      appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plans?&rdquo; Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light with
+      his hand, so that he might see her better. &ldquo;What&mdash;&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;What
+      plans is he making for me, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade. &ldquo;Well,
+      you better talk it over with HIM,&rdquo; she said, with perceptible nervousness.
+      &ldquo;He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any call, exactly,
+      to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway.&rdquo; She came and
+      stood by the bedside once more. &ldquo;But you must remember, Bibbs, whatever
+      papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and wants to do what's
+      right by ALL of 'em&mdash;and you'll always find he's right in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and she
+      rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it. &ldquo;You
+      get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you mean&mdash;he&mdash;&rdquo; Bibbs stammered, having begun to
+      speak too quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked,
+      quietly, &ldquo;Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think he does,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You see, it's the 'house-warming,'
+      as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around
+      us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's just what he thinks
+      you need&mdash;to take an interest and liven up. You don't feel too bad to
+      come down, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a good look at me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, see here!&rdquo; she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. &ldquo;You're not so bad
+      off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
+      any harm to please your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't that,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;Honestly, I'm only afraid it might spoil
+      somebody's appetite. Edith&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you the child was too sensitive,&rdquo; she interrupted, in turn.
+      &ldquo;You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look like
+      you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all there
+      is to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
+      can!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It 'll do you good,&rdquo; she returned, rustling into the hall. &ldquo;Now take a
+      nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
+      dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something she
+      had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+      interminably. &ldquo;His plans for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;his plans
+      for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;&rdquo; And then, taking the place of &ldquo;his
+      plans for you,&rdquo; after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice
+      came back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: &ldquo;He loves his
+      chuldern&mdash;he loves his chuldern&mdash;he loves his chuldern&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;you'll
+      find he's always right&mdash;you'll find he's always right&mdash;&rdquo; Until
+      at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted
+      realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that
+      came out of the wall and stretched over his bed&mdash;it was a black wing
+      within the room, and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the
+      sky, bridging the whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black
+      smoke, and out of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over
+      and over, &ldquo;His plans for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;his plans for
+      you&mdash;&rdquo; And then there was nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly&mdash;as one might have a
+      care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic&mdash;and,
+      getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so
+      that it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the next
+      house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, &ldquo;the old Vertrees country
+      mansion.&rdquo; It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the Sheridans'
+      by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box of a house with
+      a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been spared for a long
+      time, and no one could have put a name to the color of it, but in spite of
+      that the place had no look of being out at heel, and the sward was as
+      neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window&mdash;for this wing
+      of the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot&mdash;and,
+      directly opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as
+      to make a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic &ldquo;summer-house.&rdquo; It
+      was almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and it
+      was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses in grievous
+      outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the juxtaposition of the
+      parvenu intruder. Probably the &ldquo;summer-house&rdquo; was pleasant and pretty in
+      summer. It had the look of a place wherein little girls had played for a
+      generation or so with dolls and &ldquo;housekeeping,&rdquo; or where a lovely old lady
+      might come to read something dull on warm afternoons; but now in the thin
+      light it was desolate, the color of dust, and hung with haggard vines
+      which had lost their leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship with
+      anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window
+      and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked
+      the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long
+      and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his
+      manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent
+      upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become
+      pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his
+      head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly are one horrible sight!&rdquo; he said, aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly, he was
+      vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of
+      the &ldquo;summer-house&rdquo; and staring full into his window&mdash;straight into
+      his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the
+      flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own. Composedly, she pulled
+      several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her action conveying a
+      message or proclamation to the effect that she was in the summer-house for
+      the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending, and that no gentleman
+      could suppose her presence there to be due to any other purpose
+      whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she had allowed her
+      attention to wander for one instant in the direction of things of which
+      she was in reality unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness&mdash;and at
+      the same time her disapproval&mdash;of everything in the nature of a
+      Sheridan or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with
+      maintained composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country
+      mansion of the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened
+      the door and came to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows,&rdquo; said Mary
+      Vertrees. &ldquo;I got caught at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; cried her mother. &ldquo;Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll go, just the same,&rdquo; the daughter returned. &ldquo;I suppose those women
+      would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But WHO saw you?&rdquo; insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
+      At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
+      about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
+      Then he looked out and caught me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a ghost in a blue suit,&rdquo; said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
+      street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who was
+      observing them from the window of his library. &ldquo;Rather tragic and
+      altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
+      their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who had
+      something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and began
+      to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was about
+      sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little sketch of an
+      elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache&mdash;relic of a forgotten
+      Anglomania&mdash;had been profoundly black, but now, like his smooth hair,
+      it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were
+      old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for greater spruceness
+      there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across
+      the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket, a fleck of color from a
+      button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling him the descendant of
+      patriot warriors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+      Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
+      marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
+      &ldquo;Eastlake&rdquo; bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
+      incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless &ldquo;woodwork&rdquo; everywhere, and
+      upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
+      sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
+      &ldquo;very fine things.&rdquo; They had been the first people in town to possess
+      Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
+      had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when Mr.
+      Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's houses he
+      thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he found an edition
+      of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final corroboration of
+      culture, he would say, inevitably, &ldquo;Those people know good pictures and
+      they know good books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
+      had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin to
+      grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody. Mr.
+      Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At about the
+      time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance, an
+      office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
+      winter; and he had a country place&mdash;a farm of four hundred acres&mdash;where
+      he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
+      home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit still
+      and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but, strangely
+      enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall down and
+      worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the role of
+      Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of the
+      prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and buying
+      bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and read
+      his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained milkers milked
+      her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and the house in
+      town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then he sold the farm,
+      except the house and the ground about it, to pay the taxes on the suburban
+      lots and to &ldquo;keep them up.&rdquo; The lots refused to stay up; but he had to do
+      something to keep himself and his family up, so in despair he sold the
+      lots (which went up beautifully the next year) for &ldquo;traction stock&rdquo; that
+      was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased to buy and sell. Thus he
+      disappeared altogether from the commercial surface at about the time James
+      Sheridan came out securely on top; and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees
+      called upon him with her &ldquo;anti-smoke&rdquo; committee, had never heard the name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+      &ldquo;managed somehow&rdquo; on the dividends, though &ldquo;managing&rdquo; became more and more
+      difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But there
+      came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took greedy
+      counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long after that
+      there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there was nothing
+      for Mr. Vertrees, because the &ldquo;traction stock&rdquo; henceforth was no stock at
+      all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help &ldquo;manage somehow&rdquo;
+       according to his conception of his &ldquo;position in life&rdquo;&mdash;one of his own
+      old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the completion of the New House
+      next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses and the worn Victoria and
+      &ldquo;station-wagon,&rdquo; to pay the arrears of his two servants and re-establish
+      credit at the grocer's and butcher's&mdash;and a pair of elderly
+      carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very ample barter, in
+      these days, for six months' food and fuel and service. Mr. Vertrees had
+      discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the buzzing city&mdash;he
+      could do nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come in
+      all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if his
+      feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight closed
+      round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round about
+      the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone of
+      firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
+      rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
+      ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
+      return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
+      the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
+      Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary, she
+      looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite certain
+      to agree with her, and regretted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa! Oh, oh!&rdquo; And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
+      her eyes. &ldquo;I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. &ldquo;I suppose I'm very dull,&rdquo; she said, gently.
+      &ldquo;I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the house is
+      altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; Mary cried, breaking in. &ldquo;They asked us to DINNER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm GOING!&rdquo; she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms. &ldquo;Think
+      of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the daughter&mdash;and
+      just BARELY met her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about you?&rdquo; interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
+      not agree with her. &ldquo;I couldn't!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's just&mdash;just the way she&mdash;she looked when they asked
+      her!&rdquo; cried Mary, choking. &ldquo;And then she&mdash;she realized it, and tried
+      to turn it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like&mdash;like
+      a squeal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, &ldquo;that Mary will have an
+      uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel and,
+      leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her shoe,
+      twinkling in the firelight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THEY didn't notice anything,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;So far as they were concerned,
+      mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who were 'they'?&rdquo; asked her father. &ldquo;Whom did you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the mother and daughter,&rdquo; Mary answered. &ldquo;Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy and
+      rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing&mdash;dresses by the
+      fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have their pictures
+      in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very successfully&mdash;partly
+      because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly because she began too
+      late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted plaster or something in the
+      hall, and the girl evidently thought it was to her credit that she
+      selected it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have oil-paintings, too,&rdquo; added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+      gentle pride at the Landseers. &ldquo;I've always thought oil-paintings in a
+      private house the worst of taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!&rdquo; said Mr. Vertrees, finishing the
+      implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. &ldquo;Go on, Mary. None
+      of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan or&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with the poker.
+      &ldquo;Or one of the sons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
+      He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
+      sons thoroughly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, most adroitly, too!&rdquo; laughed the girl. &ldquo;Only she couldn't help
+      unconsciously turning to look at me&mdash;when she did it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary Vertrees!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM could
+      help unconsciously turning to look at me&mdash;speculatively&mdash;at the
+      same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the oldest
+      son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is very
+      anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me that
+      'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one, caught
+      me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem to consider
+      him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan mentioned that
+      a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,' and had been to some
+      cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the subject back to 'Jim' and
+      his virtues&mdash;and to look at me! The other brother is the middle one,
+      Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house across the street, where that
+      young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert, goes so often. I saw a short,
+      dark young man standing on the porch with Robert Lamhorn there the other
+      day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim' still lurks in the mists, but I
+      shall meet him to-night. Papa&mdash;&rdquo; She stepped nearer to him so that he
+      had to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he did. There may have been
+      a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their surface merry with
+      laughter. &ldquo;Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and Bibbs&mdash;to the
+      best of our information&mdash;is a lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does
+      it have to be Jim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. &ldquo;You're outrageous! That's a
+      perfectly horrible way of talking!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm close to twenty-four,&rdquo; said Mary, turning to her. &ldquo;I haven't
+      been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
+      never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
+      my life&mdash;you and papa gave it all to me&mdash;and it's about time I
+      began to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything&mdash;but
+      something's got to be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you needn't talk of it like THAT!&rdquo; insisted the mother, plaintively.
+      &ldquo;It's not&mdash;it's not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I know that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did they happen to ask you to dinner?&rdquo; Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+      uneasily. &ldquo;'Stextrawdn'ry thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Climbers' hospitality,&rdquo; Mary defined it. &ldquo;We were so very cordial and
+      easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
+      old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who did
+      it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to&mdash;she's
+      in a dreadful hurry to get into things&mdash;and I fancied she had an idea
+      it might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort
+      of house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it&mdash;and
+      then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And mamma&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment. &ldquo;Mamma tried
+      to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed&mdash;I mean you
+      coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had promised to
+      go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her daughter would
+      be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am, and there's Mr. Jim
+      Sheridan&mdash;and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture of
+      flying grace as she sped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in the
+      hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through the
+      dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze was fond
+      and proud&mdash;and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded gaily,
+      and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least no one could suspect me to-night,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I LOOK rich, don't
+      I, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+      &ldquo;regal.&rdquo; A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
+      poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were like
+      her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and livelier
+      ancestor than either of her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I look too rich to be suspected?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look everything beautiful, Mary,&rdquo; he said, huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my dress?&rdquo; She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
+      of white and silver. &ldquo;Anything better at Nice next winter, do you think?&rdquo;
+       She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again. &ldquo;Two
+      years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do anything, Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more&mdash;a
+      significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if he
+      suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted her
+      hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he should
+      feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't worry,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice and gravely. &ldquo;I know exactly what
+      you want me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
+      was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room, and
+      after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to converse&mdash;necessarily
+      at the tops of their voices. The whole company of fifty sat at a great
+      oblong table, improvised for the occasion by carpenters; but, not
+      betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed a permanent continent of
+      damask and lace, with shores of crystal and silver running up to spreading
+      groves of orchids and lilies and white roses&mdash;an inhabited continent,
+      evidently, for there were three marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the
+      center and one at each end, white miracles wrought by some inspired
+      craftsman in sculptural icing. They were models in miniature, and they
+      represented the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump
+      Works. Nearly all the guests recognized them without having to be told
+      what they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
+      great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
+      then on each side came the neighbors of the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house, grading down to
+      vassals and retainers&mdash;superintendents, cashiers, heads of
+      departments, and the like&mdash;at the foot, where the Thane's lady took
+      her place as a consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the
+      thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how
+      anybody could look at him and eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+      wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended for
+      introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face, devised
+      by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked at Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+      enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting effort,
+      and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too fragmentary for
+      his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when each of his
+      neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health, turned to seek
+      livelier responses in other directions. For the talk went on with the
+      eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the orchestra and the
+      clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass, and there was a mighty
+      babble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Yellow flounces on the overskirt&mdash;&ldquo;...
+      &ldquo;I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger this year,' I
+      says.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one weeks.&rdquo;... &ldquo;One of the
+      biggest men in the biggest&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;The wife says she'll have to let
+      out my pants if my appetite&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Say, did you see that statue of a
+      Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Not a
+      dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I says, and
+      so he ups and&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost now.&rdquo;...
+      &ldquo;Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Yes, sir! Not a
+      dollar to his name, and look at what&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;You wait! The population
+      of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she stops.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Well,
+      if you can show me a bigger deal than&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+      continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+      sentence, &ldquo;Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+      just what'll do it for my boys&mdash;they got to make two blades o' grass
+      grow where one grew before!&rdquo; It was his familiar flourish, an old story to
+      Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary Vertrees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a great night for Sheridan&mdash;the very crest of his wave. He sat
+      there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
+      smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
+      simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health, of
+      good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none bought,
+      and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was thick, and
+      as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big beneath its vast
+      facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling
+      three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong, and he used them
+      freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat
+      at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the look of readiness and
+      activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at every
+      one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they were
+      noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure, and, of
+      course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
+      discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a band
+      and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out for a
+      band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra they
+      hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept time to the music continually&mdash;with his feet, or pounding on
+      the table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
+      or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
+      real business of eating and shouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!&rdquo; he would bellow down the length of the
+      table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the &ldquo;Toreador&rdquo;
+       song, perhaps. &ldquo;Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy Lee'!&rdquo; And when
+      the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer to an obedient
+      shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the &ldquo;Toreador&rdquo; continuing vehemently, Sheridan
+      would roar half-remembered fragments of &ldquo;Nancy Lee,&rdquo; naturally mingling
+      some Bizet with the air of that uxorious tribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's wife
+      a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee!
+      Oh, Na-hancy Lee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HAY, there, old lady!&rdquo; he would bellow. &ldquo;Tell 'em to play 'In the
+      Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee&mdash;Well, if
+      they don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'?
+      THAT'S good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs.
+      Callin, get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter
+      you folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What joy he feels, as&mdash;ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
+      watch, ahoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+      table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
+      conviction, it bore none now; though &ldquo;mineral waters&rdquo; were copiously
+      poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
+      wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
+      could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
+      Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
+      said, he had &ldquo;plans for Bibbs&rdquo;&mdash;plans which were going to straighten
+      out some things that had gone wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+      forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps, turning
+      to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the table at his
+      right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less naive than he had
+      paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired the
+      autobiographical impulse in every man who met her&mdash;it needed but the
+      sight of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund
+      host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund
+      king and the starry princess of this spectacle&mdash;they paid court to
+      each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the sugar Pump
+      Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and admiration.
+      &ldquo;Wonder who that lady is&mdash;makin' such a hit with the old man.&rdquo; &ldquo;Must
+      be some heiress.&rdquo; &ldquo;Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it to marry rich,
+      then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees with
+      an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect Sheridan's
+      pastoral gaieties&mdash;and other things&mdash;would have upon her, but
+      she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all. She
+      treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that she
+      understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he bragged&mdash;probably
+      his first experience of that kind in his life. It enchanted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he proclaimed to the table, she had &ldquo;a way with her.&rdquo; She had, indeed,
+      as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the feast began.
+      Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed upon him so
+      protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the look, his lovely
+      neighbor said&mdash;and it was her first speech to him&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; was all he managed to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a mystification
+      equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one, reflected Edith,
+      could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would &ldquo;really flirt&rdquo; with
+      married men&mdash;she was obviously the &ldquo;opposite of all that.&rdquo; Edith
+      defined her as a &ldquo;thoroughbred,&rdquo; a &ldquo;nice girl&rdquo;; and the look given to
+      Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and she was another whom
+      it puzzled&mdash;though not because its recipient was married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because!&rdquo; said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. &ldquo;And
+      also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead
+      for both of us if we don't get along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+      brought up to believe that when a man married he &ldquo;married and settled
+      down.&rdquo; It was &ldquo;all right,&rdquo; he felt, for a man as old as his father to pay
+      florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but for
+      himself&mdash;&ldquo;a young married man&rdquo;&mdash;it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+      even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
+      friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+      &ldquo;flirted&rdquo;&mdash;they were always very matter-of-fact with each other.
+      Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped
+      he was susceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;we're neighbors,&rdquo; he said, awkwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next-door neighbors in houses, too,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not exactly. I live across the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed, and seemed startled. &ldquo;Your mother told me this
+      afternoon that you lived at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&mdash;&rdquo; she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came
+      into her cheek. &ldquo;But I understood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year, but
+      that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I see,&rdquo; she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned
+      from him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
+      name, &ldquo;Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.&rdquo; And from that moment Roscoe had little
+      enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
+      coquetries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor to
+      &ldquo;get through with old Roscoe,&rdquo; as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a
+      chance. &ldquo;Old Roscoe&rdquo; was the younger, but he had always been the steady
+      wheel-horse of the family. Jim was &ldquo;steady&rdquo; enough, but was considered
+      livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for Jim's
+      liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
+      &ldquo;capable, hard-working young business men,&rdquo; and the principal difference
+      between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
+      bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of hair,
+      fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches taller
+      than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the father. Both
+      wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have sat for the
+      tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing &ldquo;rich suitings in
+      dark mixtures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+      color, which increased his approbation. &ldquo;What's that old Roscoe saying to
+      you, Miss Vertrees?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;These young married men are mighty forward
+      nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I blushing?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; And with that she gave him
+      ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
+      upon Roscoe. &ldquo;I think you must be mistaken,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;I think it's
+      your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
+      confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. &ldquo;By trying
+      to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
+      nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized that
+      he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly
+      snared by that realization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+      anything&mdash;yes, and get away with it, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed again&mdash;in her way, so that he could not tell whether she
+      was laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
+      she said: &ldquo;But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not. I
+      wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away with
+      YOU?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!&rdquo; Jim was inspired
+      to reply. &ldquo;Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making fun
+      of me like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,&rdquo; she said, regarding him with
+      sudden gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jim, in simple honesty, &ldquo;you're a funny girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her gravity continued an instant longer. &ldquo;I may not turn out to be funny
+      for YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+      manage to be satisfied.&rdquo; And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
+      turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, &ldquo;I can see
+      you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
+      means anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Laugh'!&rdquo; she cried, gaily. &ldquo;Why, it might be a matter of life and death!
+      But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once, considering
+      the mistake I made with your brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
+      nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it; he was
+      but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a consciousness
+      that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring lady, no matter how
+      long it pleased her to play with him. But he mightily wanted her to keep
+      on playing with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put what question?&rdquo; he said, breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,&rdquo; she returned,
+      speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, &ldquo;I think it would be
+      well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with any
+      young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO!&rdquo; she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+      proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
+      lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
+      Vertrees was &ldquo;starting rather picturesquely with Jim.&rdquo; And he added,
+      languidly, &ldquo;Do you suppose she WOULD?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+      interested in the clasp of a long &ldquo;rope&rdquo; of pearls, a loop of which she
+      was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
+      and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
+      clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty, but
+      hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
+      accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous&mdash;they may
+      emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,&rdquo;
+       repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you.&rdquo; There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her eyes,
+      no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just now she
+      did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. &ldquo;Starting any stronger than
+      you did with Edith?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, keep the peace!&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;That's off, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't been making her see it this evening&mdash;precisely,&rdquo; said
+      Sibyl, looking at him steadily. &ldquo;You've talked to her for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake,&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;keep the peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you just been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SH!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Listen to your father-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
+      begun to play &ldquo;The Rosary,&rdquo; to his vast content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,&rdquo; he roared, beating the measures
+      with his fork. &ldquo;EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM&mdash;What's
+      the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
+      thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, &ldquo;you
+      don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways, and
+      my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
+      something important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!&rdquo; the father
+      threatened, more delighted with her than ever. &ldquo;By gosh! if I was his age&mdash;or
+      a widower right NOW&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wait!&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
+      Sheridan to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd say the same,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+      couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must listen to your father,&rdquo; Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
+      had grown red again. &ldquo;He's going to tell us how, when he was your age, he
+      made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup&mdash;and you could
+      see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. &ldquo;Look here, young
+      lady!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you&mdash;or
+      I'm goin' to kiss you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed &ldquo;too awful,&rdquo; but Mary
+      Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Both! The one to make me forget the other!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But which&mdash;&rdquo; he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+      trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+      &ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; he roared, &ldquo;if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
+      you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Bibbs&mdash;down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+      watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
+      little girl in a garden&mdash;Bibbs heard. He heard&mdash;and he knew what
+      his father's plans were now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees &ldquo;sat up&rdquo; for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired after
+      a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his Landseers. Mary
+      had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for her and seeming
+      confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did the sequel prove her
+      confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a long vigil of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not the woman to make herself easy&mdash;no servant had ever seen
+      her in a wrapper&mdash;and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what
+      they had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
+      the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her own
+      room, which was directly over the &ldquo;front hall.&rdquo; There, book in hand, she
+      employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief that
+      she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+      deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought her&mdash;and
+      there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward because she did
+      not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward this troubled
+      couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which neither of them
+      could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they had talked it over,
+      day after day, from the very hour when they heard Sheridan was to build
+      his New House next door. For&mdash;so quickly does any ideal of human
+      behavior become an antique&mdash;their youth was of the innocent old days,
+      so dead! of &ldquo;breeding&rdquo; and &ldquo;gentility,&rdquo; and no craft had been more
+      straitly trained upon them than that of talking about things without
+      mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital difference between Mr.
+      and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor. Sheridan, though his youth
+      was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such matters. He had been chopping
+      wood for the morning fire in the country grocery while they were still
+      dancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+      clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+      Mary's laugh, and &ldquo;Yes&mdash;if you aren't afraid&mdash;to-morrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath of
+      cold and bracing air into her mother's room. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, before Mrs.
+      Vertrees could speak, &ldquo;he brought me home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+      rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light pat
+      upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that she
+      had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. &ldquo;Why don't you ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. &ldquo;I don't&mdash;&rdquo; she
+      faltered. &ldquo;Ask you what, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I got along and what he's like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it isn't distressing!&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And I got along so fast&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She broke off to laugh; continuing then, &ldquo;But that's the way I went at it,
+      of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what you mean,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+      plaintively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow afternoon,
+      and to the theater the next night&mdash;but I stopped it there. You see,
+      after you give the first push, you must leave it to them while YOU pretend
+      to run away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I don't know what to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What to make of anything!&rdquo; Mary finished for her. &ldquo;So that's all right!
+      Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and
+      tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures, but
+      I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned and
+      the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could manage at least twice as long
+      on the cost of the 'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone would have
+      lasted us a couple of months. There they were, before me, but I couldn't
+      steal 'em and sell 'em, and so&mdash;well, so I did what I could!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. &ldquo;It
+      seemed to be a success&mdash;what I could,&rdquo; she said, clasping her hands
+      behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+      accompaniment to her narrative. &ldquo;The girl Edith and her sister-in-law,
+      Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things on me.
+      The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it. He's what he
+      is. I like him.&rdquo; She paused reflectively, continuing, &ldquo;Edith's
+      'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not stupid, but I
+      think he's&mdash;&rdquo; She interrupted herself with a cheery outcry: &ldquo;Oh! I
+      mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make Edith like him, I
+      ought to respect him as a colleague.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand a thing you're talking about,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees
+      complained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+      always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that know.
+      He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those people you
+      wondered about at the theater, the last time we went&mdash;dressed in
+      ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She flatters
+      the father, and so did I, for that matter&mdash;but not that way. I
+      treated him outrageously!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of us
+      follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the
+      Palatine. He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em
+      listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present of the
+      house. What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples
+      panorama in the hall. He made us look at all the plumbing&mdash;bath-rooms
+      and everywhere else&mdash;and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples.
+      He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And
+      he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken a
+      prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed in
+      mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful and
+      nice&mdash;he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was
+      modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
+      after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street to
+      her house with them&mdash;her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim
+      Sheridan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. &ldquo;'Jim'!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Mary, PLEASE&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I'll make it as easy for you as I can, mamma. Mr.
+      James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe explained that
+      'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed that Mr. Lamhorn
+      was the only one near death's door on that account. Edith and Mrs. Roscoe
+      said they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They were objectionably
+      apologetic about it, and they seemed to think NOW we were going to have a
+      'good time' to make up for it. But I hadn't been bored at the dinner, I'd
+      been amused; and the 'good time' at Mrs. Roscoe's was horribly, horribly
+      stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mary,&rdquo; her mother began, &ldquo;is&mdash;is&mdash;&rdquo; And she seemed unable
+      to complete the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?
+      I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise&mdash;Oh, what
+      right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly my
+      kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the
+      Sheridan Building&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees cried. &ldquo;Surely not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and two other things of that kind&mdash;I don't know what. But,
+      after all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a
+      palace in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver
+      pieces had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I
+      shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it picturesque and stately&mdash;I'd
+      have been impressed. And what's the real difference? The icing is
+      temporary, and that's much more modest, isn't it? And why is it vulgar to
+      feel important more on account of something you've done yourself than
+      because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides, if we go back a
+      few generations, we've all got such hundreds of ancestors it seems idiotic
+      to go picking out one or two to be proud of ourselves about. Well, then,
+      mamma, I managed not to feel superior to Mr. James Sheridan, Junior,
+      because he didn't see anything out of place in the Sheridan Building in
+      sugar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+      conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head gravely.
+      &ldquo;My dear, dear child,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it seems to me&mdash;It looks&mdash;I'm
+      afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say as much of it as you can, mamma,&rdquo; said Mary, encouragingly. &ldquo;I can
+      get it, if you'll just give me one key-word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything you say,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, &ldquo;seems to have the air
+      of&mdash;it is as if you were seeking to&mdash;to make yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees,
+      speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. &ldquo;But you said that&mdash;that
+      you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan's
+      unentertaining&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at
+      dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+      understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she asked, gravely, &ldquo;is there anything else I can do? You and papa
+      don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the
+      only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress me.
+      That's all there is about it, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But nothing MUST distress you!&rdquo; the mother cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I say!&rdquo; said Mary, cheerfully. &ldquo;And so it doesn't. It's all
+      right.&rdquo; She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+      room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
+      the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet. &ldquo;Mother,
+      you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter whom a girl
+      marries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees protested. &ldquo;I never said such a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
+      marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
+      right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
+      One man as well as another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Mary, indulgently. &ldquo;I don't mean you and papa. But isn't
+      it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there must be
+      something in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that.&rdquo; And Mrs. Vertrees lifted
+      pleading eyes to her daughter&mdash;eyes that begged to be spared. &ldquo;It
+      sounds&mdash;almost reckless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. &ldquo;Never fret,
+      dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do&mdash;I've always
+      been too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does
+      our choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for
+      more than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very
+      house next door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
+      this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. &ldquo;Oh, the
+      one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he speak of it?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
+      But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
+      he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
+      'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
+      ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if&mdash;if one were
+      in the Sheridan family&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed a little ruefully&mdash;&ldquo;he
+      might be interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks
+      and bonds. I didn't see him after dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be something wrong with him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;They'd have
+      introduced him if there wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much&mdash;sometimes
+      people like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke
+      of sending him back to a machine-shop of some sort; I suppose he meant
+      when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr.
+      Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me; and
+      he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic change
+      came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, thoughtfully, &ldquo;I don't think he is; but he might be
+      uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he once
+      sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy just
+      then! I'm afraid I'll keep remembering&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't.&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the
+      remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. &ldquo;I'd keep my mind on pleasanter
+      things, Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary laughed and nodded. &ldquo;Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and
+      probably, if all were known, too good&mdash;even for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+      were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Edith, glancing casually into the &ldquo;ready-made&rdquo; library, stopped abruptly,
+      seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and
+      golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+                  <span style="margin-left: 4em;">FUGITIVE</span><br />
+<br />
+  I will forget the things that sting:<br />
+    &nbsp; The lashing look, the barbed word.<br />
+  I know the very hands that fling<br />
+    &nbsp; The stones at me had never stirred<br />
+  To anger but for their own scars.<br />
+    &nbsp; They've suffered so, that's why they strike.<br />
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars<br />
+    &nbsp; Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like<br />
+  These wounded ones I must not be,<br />
+    &nbsp; For, wounded, I might strike in turn!<br />
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free<br />
+    &nbsp; Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she
+      came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than
+      that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by
+      the poem. &ldquo;Pretty young, isn't it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There must have been
+      something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe the
+      poem did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low
+      voice: &ldquo;I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs.
+      I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't want them
+      to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about it; but
+      here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it aloud to the
+      whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what other poems I'd
+      written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more, and if I didn't,
+      why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought I'd die of shame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp,&rdquo; Bibbs suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every time
+      anybody speaks of the thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked grieved. &ldquo;The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
+      only seventeen when you wrote it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up!&rdquo; she snapped. &ldquo;I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time
+      I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was.
+      I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he said, comfortingly. &ldquo;It was the very most flattering thing
+      ever happened to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
+      machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I DON'T like it!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I don't even understand it&mdash;and
+      papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
+      truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe they expected father to endow the school,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE! I
+      hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how I
+      'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
+      thing, the way he says it. I hate it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another name
+      you might find&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance
+      I get.&rdquo; She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. &ldquo;I'd like to think
+      I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith!&rdquo; he called, as she went into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth do you mean?&rdquo; she said, coming back as far as the
+      threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I first came you couldn't look at me,&rdquo; Bibbs explained, in his
+      impersonal way. &ldquo;But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if I'd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's because you look so much better,&rdquo; she told him, cheerfully. &ldquo;This
+      month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium&mdash;the change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw,&rdquo; said Edith, with supreme
+      candor. &ldquo;But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
+      life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you
+      mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say. But
+      you're right about my not being able to look at you at first. You had a
+      kind of whiteness that&mdash;Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose, but
+      you've got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody could
+      look at you now, Bibbs, and no&mdash;not get&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;almost that!&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;And you're getting a better color
+      every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I'm afraid so,&rdquo; he said, ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean father
+      might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough. I heard
+      him say something about it the night of the&mdash;&rdquo; The jingle of a
+      distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. &ldquo;Bobby
+      Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the country.
+      Afternoon, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his
+      eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted almost
+      entirely of handsome &ldquo;uniform editions&rdquo;: Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith,
+      Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott,
+      Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe,
+      Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves of
+      encyclopedias, of anthologies, of &ldquo;famous classics,&rdquo; of &ldquo;Oriental
+      masterpieces,&rdquo; of &ldquo;masterpieces of oratory,&rdquo; and more shelves of &ldquo;selected
+      libraries&rdquo; of &ldquo;literature,&rdquo; of &ldquo;the drama,&rdquo; and of &ldquo;modern science.&rdquo; They
+      made an effective decoration for the room, all these big, expensive books,
+      with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames
+      that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an
+      impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief,
+      and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody
+      else considered them at all. Himself, he disturbed not one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house, and
+      white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs. &ldquo;Awready,
+      Mist' Bibbs,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you' ride, an'
+      she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at fo' 'clock.
+      Aw ready, suh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in the
+      manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the hall they
+      passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket opened the
+      door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the chauffeur in the car
+      which stood waiting in the driveway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I
+      first came home, George,&rdquo; said Bibbs, thoughtfully. &ldquo;What did you tell
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh!&rdquo; George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+      reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. &ldquo;You ast
+      me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty near ev'y
+      day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me twicet.&rdquo; He shook
+      his head solemnly. &ldquo;Look to me mus' be somep'm might lamiDAL 'bout 'at
+      statue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty lamiDAL!&rdquo; George, burst out laughing. &ldquo;What DO 'at word mean,
+      Mist' Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I nev' DID hear it!&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f
+      an' she pop in my head&mdash;'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so
+      good, seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do she?&rdquo; cried George. &ldquo;WHAT she mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's exactly the word for the statue,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with conviction, as he
+      climbed into the car. &ldquo;It's a lamiDAL statue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hiyi!&rdquo; George exulted. &ldquo;Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+      statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>	  &ldquo;I expect she is!&rdquo;
+       said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept
+      from sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in the
+      hallway. &ldquo;Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson&mdash;'I expec' she is!' Ev'y
+      day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways, las'
+      thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git well,
+      'at young man go' be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh, right
+      now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out with all 'at money, George!&rdquo; Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+      &ldquo;White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you. You the on'y man
+      bettin' on 'im!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I risk it!&rdquo; cried George, merrily. &ldquo;I put her all on now&mdash;ev'y cent!
+      'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for the
+      meaning of &ldquo;lamiDAL,&rdquo; differed radically from another prediction
+      concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some twenty
+      minutes later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees beside
+      him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon the highroad.
+      The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the occupants of Jim's
+      had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on the back seat&mdash;his
+      white face startlingly white against cap and collar of black fur&mdash;but
+      he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim waved his left hand carelessly. &ldquo;It's Bibbs, taking his
+      constitutional,&rdquo; he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I bowed to him, too, though I've never met him.
+      In fact, I've only seen him once&mdash;no, twice. I hope he won't think
+      I'm very bold, bowing to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if he noticed it,&rdquo; said honest Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see!&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is
+      funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he? How?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;He strikes me as anything but funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm his brother,&rdquo; Jim said, deprecatingly, &ldquo;but I don't know what
+      he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS his
+      brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half alive to
+      me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we were too
+      big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his own age.
+      He'd rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself. Nobody could
+      ever get him to DO anything; you can't get him to do anything now. He
+      never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I
+      believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever made! Father put him in
+      the machine-shop over at the Pump Works&mdash;best thing in the world for
+      him&mdash;and he was just plain no account. It made him sick! If he'd had
+      the right kind of energy&mdash;the kind father's got, for instance, or
+      Roscoe, either&mdash;why, it wouldn't have made him sick. And suppose it
+      was either of them&mdash;yes, or me, either&mdash;do you think any of us
+      would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it, but Bibbs
+      Sheridan'll never amount to anything as long as he lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked thoughtful. &ldquo;Is there any particular reason why he should?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
+      believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much money
+      his father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be carried on
+      by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've got and see
+      other fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things already, isn't it
+      every man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger? Isn't it his duty?
+      Don't we always want to get bigger and bigger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es&mdash;I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He
+      looked so lonely&mdash;and sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's gettin' better every day,&rdquo; Jim said. &ldquo;Dr. Gurney says so. There's
+      nothing much the matter with him, really&mdash;it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+      'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous diseases,
+      because they don't have time to imagine 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean his trouble is really mental?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's not a lunatic,&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;He's just queer. Sometimes he'll say
+      something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off the
+      subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance, the
+      other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The darky
+      asked him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody else in
+      the world would have just said what time they DID want it, and that would
+      have been all there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says, and I heard him
+      with my own ears. 'What time do I want the car?' he says. 'Well, now, that
+      depends&mdash;that depends,' he says. He talks slow like that, you know.
+      'I'll tell you what time I want the car, George,' he says, 'if you'll tell
+      ME what you think of this statue!' That's exactly his words! Asked the
+      darky what he thought of that Arab Edith and mother bought for the hall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary pondered upon this. &ldquo;He might have been in fun, perhaps,&rdquo; she
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary&mdash;of a work of
+      art! Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just kind-hearted&mdash;and
+      that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Isn't there any way for us to get over this Mister
+      and Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed to be
+      with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you know
+      how I feel by this time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked panic-stricken immediately. &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; she protested, quickly.
+      &ldquo;No, I don't, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do,&rdquo; he said, and his voice shook a little. &ldquo;You couldn't help
+      knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do!&rdquo; she denied, hurriedly. &ldquo;I do help knowing. I mean&mdash;Oh,
+      wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for? You do know how I feel, and you&mdash;well, you've certainly
+      WANTED me to feel that way&mdash;or else pretended&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; she lamented. &ldquo;You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Spoilin' it!'&rdquo; He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+      squarely. &ldquo;See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! Stop the car a minute.&rdquo; And when he had complied she faced him as
+      squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. &ldquo;Listen. I don't want
+      you to go on, to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean it's just a whim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest,
+      and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell me something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever told any man you loved him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. &ldquo;No,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that&mdash;or ever
+      know what it means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&mdash;you've just been flirting with me!&rdquo; Poor Jim looked both
+      furious and crestfallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one bit!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant
+      every single thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you don't!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start
+      the car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I have
+      not flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing more, and
+      then I want you to take me straight home, talking about the weather all
+      the way. I said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care' for any man, and
+      that is true. I doubt the existence of the kind of 'caring' we hear about
+      in poems and plays and novels. I think it must be just a kind of emotional
+      TALK&mdash;most of it. At all events, I don't feel it. Now, we can go
+      faster, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just where does that let me out?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;How does that excuse you
+      for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't an excuse,&rdquo; she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+      wholly desolate. &ldquo;I haven't said I should never marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Jim gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+      unfathomably sorrowful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise nothing,&rdquo; she said, faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't!&rdquo; shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. &ldquo;You needn't! By George!
+      I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise whenever
+      you're ready!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't forget what I asked,&rdquo; she begged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!&rdquo; cried the
+      happy Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields and
+      sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean air
+      beneath a glorious sky&mdash;that sky so despised in the city, and so
+      maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible for
+      men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+      resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.
+      How largely this apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his
+      face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the
+      result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than the
+      circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a month
+      before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it seemed
+      to Bibbs that she must have meant to convey her forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to his
+      experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the impression
+      that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her veil
+      tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind&mdash;and that
+      look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed
+      and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the
+      smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon, that
+      nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine shrouded
+      in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very heart of it,
+      for a commanded interview with his father, the distant cloud was like an
+      implacable genius issuing thunderously in smoke from his enchanted bottle,
+      and irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of November
+      late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and here the sky
+      shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray; the smoke did not
+      visibly permeate the air, but it was there, nevertheless&mdash;impalpable,
+      thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And then, as the car drove on, the
+      chimneys and stacks of factories came swimming up into view like miles of
+      steamers advancing abreast, every funnel with its vast plume, savage and
+      black, sweeping to the horizon, dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation
+      over league on league already rich and vile with grime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar
+      and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car
+      passed two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways
+      possible to make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and lurid
+      the next with the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing
+      blackened giants, half naked, in passionate action, struggling with
+      formless things in the hot illumination. And big as these shops were, they
+      were growing bigger, spreading over a third block, where two new
+      structures were mushrooming to completion in some hasty cement process of
+      a stability not over-reassuring. Bibbs pulled the rug closer about him,
+      and not even the phantom of color was left upon his cheeks as he passed
+      this place, for he knew it too well. Across the face of one of the
+      buildings there was an enormous sign: &ldquo;Sheridan Automatic Pump Co., Inc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and adding
+      their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses of a
+      thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots and
+      nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from one
+      another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch some
+      night when the right wind blew. They were only waiting for that wind and a
+      cigarette, and then they would all be gone together&mdash;a pinch of
+      incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there a
+      forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people said
+      it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure that
+      asphalt and &ldquo;improving&rdquo; the streets did it; but Bigness was in too Big a
+      hurry to bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles and
+      telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the thousand
+      to take their places. So he let the trees die and put up his poles. They
+      were hideous, but nobody minded that; and sometimes the wires fell and
+      killed people&mdash;but not often enough to matter at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the town where
+      the few solid old houses not already demolished were in transition: some,
+      with their fronts torn away, were being made into segments of
+      apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into trade, brazenly
+      putting forth &ldquo;show-windows&rdquo; on their first floors, seeming to mean it for
+      a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped humorously over the tops
+      of temporary office buildings of one story erected in the old front yards.
+      Altogether, the town here was like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after
+      Thanksgiving; the old ingredients were discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the
+      roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing while
+      the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before
+      it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet
+      above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them, rising
+      higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings were coming
+      down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked
+      underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders
+      in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the wind
+      like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners;
+      motor-cars of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings
+      and frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage;
+      steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic tentacle and claw;
+      riveters rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook to the thunder of
+      gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was the sound of
+      earthquake playing accompaniments for battle and sudden death. On one of
+      the new steel buildings no work was being done that afternoon. The
+      building had killed a man in the morning&mdash;and the steel-workers
+      always stop for the day when that &ldquo;happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+      brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the
+      pagan women&mdash;there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For the
+      Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush
+      and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be &ldquo;to the minute&rdquo; or his father would
+      consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's office
+      marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with his
+      entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under Sheridan's
+      direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or audible
+      suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to the new-comer. As
+      the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly stenographer, the last
+      of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that they all understood that he
+      was a failure as a great man's son, a disappointment, the &ldquo;queer one&rdquo; of
+      the family, and that he had been summoned to judgment&mdash;a well-founded
+      impression, for that was exactly what they understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+      fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+      silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his
+      big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They
+      were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as might be
+      still damp from a basin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said at last, not altering his attitude, &ldquo;do you know
+      what I'm goin' to do with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon the
+      ceiling. &ldquo;I heard you tell Jim,&rdquo; he began, in his slow way. &ldquo;You said
+      you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to Miss
+      Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo; said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That brought his father sharply round to face him. &ldquo;You beat the devil!
+      Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liver, maybe,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you organically.
+      No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter, and that's ALL the
+      matter. Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put through the big deals!
+      No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just sets out on the back fence
+      and thinks about how much trouble there must be in the world! That ain't
+      the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs; it's the kind that borrows
+      fifteen cents from his wife's uncle's brother-in-law to get ten cent's
+      worth o' plug tobacco and a nickel's worth o' quinine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned again
+      to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out there!&rdquo; he bade his son. &ldquo;Look out o' that window! Look at the
+      life and energy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
+      tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young men
+      are doin' in this town!&rdquo; He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk in
+      the middle of the room. &ldquo;Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look at
+      what your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look at Jim! I
+      made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last New-Year's, with
+      charge of every inch o' ground and every brick and every shingle and stick
+      o' wood we own; and it's an example to any young man&mdash;or ole man,
+      either&mdash;the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found out we wanted
+      two more big warehouses at the Pump Works&mdash;wanted 'em quick.
+      Contractors said it couldn't be done; said nine or ten months at the
+      soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What'd Jim do? Took the contract
+      himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process; kept men
+      on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day himself&mdash;and,
+      by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week! Four months and a
+      half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o' these fellers that
+      make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young man can be like Jim,
+      because there's mighty few got his ability, but every young man can go in
+      and do his share. This town is God's own country, and there's opportunity
+      for anybody with a pound of energy and an ounce o' gumption. I tell you
+      these young business men I watch just do my heart good! THEY don't set
+      around on the back fence&mdash;no, sir! They take enough exercise to keep
+      their health; and they go to a baseball game once or twice a week in
+      summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice families, with sons to take their
+      places sometime and carry on the work&mdash;because the work's got to go
+      ON! They're puttin' their life-blood into it, I tell you, and that's why
+      we're gettin' bigger every minute, and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why
+      it's all goin' to keep ON gettin' bigger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing
+      that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still
+      fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was
+      impelled to groan. &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is the way you always were.
+      I don't believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You don't LOOK
+      as if you did. By George! it's discouraging!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand about getting&mdash;about getting bigger,&rdquo; said Bibbs,
+      bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. &ldquo;I don't see
+      just why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT?&rdquo; Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+      staring across it incredulously at his son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand&mdash;exactly&mdash;what you want it all bigger for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great God!&rdquo; shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+      clenched fist. &ldquo;A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the poorest
+      day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did once,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted; &ldquo;when I was in the machine-shop. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wha'd he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said, 'Oh, hell!'&rdquo; answered Bibbs, mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I reckon he would!&rdquo; Sheridan swung away from the desk. &ldquo;I reckon he
+      certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the same answer, then?&rdquo; Bibbs's voice was serious, almost tremulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damnation!&rdquo; Sheridan roared. &ldquo;Did you ever hear the word Prosperity, you
+      ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the word
+      PROGRESS?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,
+      his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. &ldquo;Now then,&rdquo; he said,
+      huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, &ldquo;what do you want to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you WANT to do, I said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. &ldquo;What&mdash;what do&mdash;I&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him&mdash;a profound
+      shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his
+      shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to the
+      desk in school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you do? Loaf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo; Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it
+      made was unquestionably a guilty sound. &ldquo;I suppose I'd&mdash;I'd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I'd try to&mdash;to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing important&mdash;just poems and essays, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+      putting upon himself. &ldquo;That is, you want to write, but you don't want to
+      write anything of any account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan got up again. &ldquo;I take my hat off to the man that can write a good
+      ad,&rdquo; he said, emphatically. &ldquo;The best writin' talent in this country is
+      right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for good writin'&mdash;look
+      on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for that kind o' writin'.
+      Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried it, and I can't do it.
+      I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes people do the hardest
+      thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to make 'em give up their
+      MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell you when it comes to the
+      actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to make things HAPPEN, R. T.
+      Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo
+      Emerson ever knew in his whole life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you may be&mdash;&rdquo; Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word
+      smothered in a cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up
+      with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'! My
+      Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper without
+      havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane Eyre,' or 'East
+      Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why, look at Edith! I
+      expect that poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water mark for you, young
+      man, and it's the only one she's ever managed to write in her whole LIFE!
+      When I wanted her to go on and write some more she said it took too much
+      time. Said it took months and months. And Edith's a smart girl; she's got
+      more energy in her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in
+      your whole body, Bibbs. Now look at the facts: say she could turn out four
+      or five poems a year and you could turn out maybe two. That medal she got
+      was worth about fifteen dollars, so there's your income&mdash;thirty
+      dollars a year! That's a fine success to make of your life! I'm not sayin'
+      a word against poetry. I wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for
+      that poem of Edith's; and poetry's all right enough in its place&mdash;but
+      you leave it to the girls. A man's got to do a man's work in this world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+      Bibbs confidentially on the knee. &ldquo;This city's got the greatest future in
+      America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're goin'
+      to have a mighty fair share of it&mdash;a mighty fair share. I love this
+      town. It's God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every day right
+      along, I don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own business,
+      and I'd fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family. It's a
+      beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any district you
+      want to; look at the park system we're puttin' through, and the boulevards
+      and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she grows!&rdquo; He had become
+      intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. &ldquo;Now, Bibbs, I can't take any of
+      it&mdash;nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds&mdash;away with me
+      in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave my share in it to my
+      boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and a maker; and two blades
+      of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever I laid my hand on the
+      ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built big, and I want the buildin' to
+      go on. And when my last hour comes I want to know that my boys are ready
+      to take charge; that they're fit to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs,
+      when that hour comes I want to know that my boys are big men, ready and
+      fit to take hold of big things. Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that
+      the big share I've made mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in
+      the charge of my boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned back, deeply moved. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; he said, huskily. &ldquo;I've never
+      spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you to
+      understand&mdash;and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that
+      way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;At least I think I do. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute!&rdquo; Sheridan raised his hand. &ldquo;If you see the least bit in
+      the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here
+      and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you must
+      understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have him come
+      back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because he
+      couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs. I've had a
+      whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another, and I
+      reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does, anyway! Now
+      here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder than what I did the
+      other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw you needed to be
+      shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of moody and mopish&mdash;and
+      you needed work that'd keep you on the jump. Now, why did it make you sick
+      instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of done? I
+      pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look here, ain't it really because
+      he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says, 'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it,
+      it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it, and that affects his nervous
+      system. The more he tries it, the more he hates it; and the more he hates
+      it, the more injury it does him.' That ain't quite his words, but it's
+      what he meant. And that's about the way it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;that's about the way it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to
+      make you like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+      ghostly. &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice. &ldquo;I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't go back to the shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Can't like it. I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
+      exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father
+      should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious
+      stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from
+      childhood. &ldquo;By George, you will!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You'll go back there and
+      you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like it, and he says
+      it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks as if it was about
+      up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work doesn't kill
+      anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you, whether you hate it or not.
+      I've never made a mistake in a serious matter in my life, and it wasn't a
+      mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And I'm goin' to prove it&mdash;I'm
+      goin' to send you back there and vindicate my judgment. Gurney says it's
+      all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin' to learn the right one! He says
+      in a couple more months this fool thing that's been the matter with you'll
+      be disappeared completely and you'll be back in as good or better
+      condition than you were before you ever went into the shop. And right then
+      is when you begin over&mdash;right in that same shop! Nobody can call me a
+      hard man or a mean father. I do the best I can for my chuldern, and I take
+      full responsibility for bringin' my sons up to be men. Now, so far, I've
+      failed with you. But I'm not goin' to keep ON failin'. I never tackled a
+      job YET I didn't put through, and I'm not goin' to begin with my own son.
+      I'm goin' to make a MAN of you. By God! I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. &ldquo;You say you give
+      me a couple of months?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. &ldquo;Gurney said two months more
+      would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself
+      in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by, sir,&rdquo; said Bibbs, meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the &ldquo;lamidal&rdquo;
+       George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of
+      temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception of
+      himself as a permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the mantelpiece
+      the two photographs that he owned: one, a &ldquo;group&rdquo; twenty years old&mdash;his
+      father and mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys&mdash;and the other a
+      &ldquo;cabinet&rdquo; of Edith at sixteen. And upon a table were the books he had
+      taken from his trunk: Sartor Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque, Huckleberry
+      Finn, and Afterwhiles. There were some other books in the trunk&mdash;a
+      large one, which remained unremoved at the foot of the bed, adding to the
+      general impression of transiency. It contained nearly all the possessions
+      as well as the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs sat beside it, the
+      day after his interview with his father, raking over a small collection of
+      manuscripts in the top tray. Some of these he glanced through dubiously,
+      finding little comfort in them; but one made him smile. Then he shook his
+      head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to read it. It was written on
+      paper stamped &ldquo;Hood Sanitarium,&rdquo; and bore the title, &ldquo;Leisure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Having read so far as the word &ldquo;peace,&rdquo; Bibbs suffered an interruption
+      interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the hall
+      just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel was in
+      progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and
+      continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you BETTER go home!&rdquo; Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.
+      &ldquo;You better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, Edie!&rdquo; he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see here!&rdquo; This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+      tremulous. &ldquo;Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother
+      Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she
+      thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did!&rdquo; And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. &ldquo;Yes, you did!
+      YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it up
+      between Bobby Lamhorn and me because&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, Edie! Now, now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+      tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what
+      about his not going to HER house. How&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've explained that to Mother Sheridan.&rdquo; Sibyl's voice indicated that she
+      was descending the stairs. &ldquo;Married people are not the same. Some things
+      that should be shielded from a young girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. &ldquo;'Shielded from a
+      young girl'!&rdquo; she shrilled. &ldquo;You seem pretty willing to be the shield! You
+      look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+      pacification were renewed. &ldquo;Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,
+      and you'd oughtn't to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!&rdquo; the girl cried, passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!&rdquo; And Edith,
+      flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung round
+      it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself, face
+      down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no perception of
+      Bibbs's presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a passion of tears,
+      she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched fists. &ldquo;Sneak!&rdquo; she
+      babbled aloud. &ldquo;Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward
+      the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some
+      sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; don't go.&rdquo; She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob, and
+      repeated her request. &ldquo;Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet, anyhow.
+      Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at all, but I
+      wish you'd sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo; And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. &ldquo;Go ahead and
+      cry all you want, Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No harm in that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sibyl told mamma&mdash;OH!&rdquo; she began, choking. &ldquo;Mary Vertrees had mamma
+      and Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had
+      some women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid
+      herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em ever
+      since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn is so
+      bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice people in
+      town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it's a falsehood,
+      and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place I know the
+      reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I won't SAY what
+      it is&mdash;not yet&mdash;because papa and all of you would think I'm as
+      crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably quit
+      speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I ask. Just
+      you watch that woman. You'll see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching &ldquo;that woman.&rdquo; Glancing from
+      the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old house
+      next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked quickly up the
+      path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of calling. But he did
+      not mention this to his sister, who, after delivering herself of a rather
+      vague jeremiad upon the subject of her sister-in-law's treacheries,
+      departed to her own chamber, leaving him to his speculations. The chief of
+      these concerned the social elasticities of women. Sibyl had just been a
+      participant in a violent scene; she had suffered hot insult of a kind that
+      could not fail to set her quivering with resentment; and yet she elected
+      to betake herself to the presence of people whom she knew no more than
+      &ldquo;formally.&rdquo; Bibbs marveled. Surely, he reflected, some traces of emotion
+      must linger upon Sibyl's face or in her manner; she could not have ironed
+      it all quite out in the three or four minutes it took her to reach the
+      Vertreeses' door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+      wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+      master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+      anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+      casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose
+      that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+      intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+      antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may and
+      does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex as
+      well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is a
+      type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought
+      greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women and by
+      its own &ldquo;lack of perspective,&rdquo; for it is a type that never sees itself.
+      Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question&mdash;it was
+      like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not even
+      the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make a
+      certain impression she believed that she made it. She believed that she
+      was believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,&rdquo;
+       Mary said, when they were seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had been
+      brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark addressed to
+      her by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms. It was intended
+      partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an impression of
+      sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just thought I'd fly in a minute,&rdquo; she said, continuing the cooing to
+      relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. &ldquo;I thought I'd just behave like
+      REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far from
+      down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted to tell
+      you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that afternoon.
+      You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here before, I've had
+      to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely, and I really've known
+      scarcely anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed in business ever
+      since he was a mere boy, why, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+      afternoon,&rdquo; Sibyl went on. &ldquo;They're really delightful people. Indeed they
+      are! Yes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+      another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+      errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+      abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+      errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected with
+      the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of cheerful
+      ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people
+      here in town the other day,&rdquo; said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and
+      protracting it. &ldquo;They said something that took ME by surprise! We were
+      talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary interrupted her promptly. &ldquo;Do you mean 'mutual' to include my mother
+      and me?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+      ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. &ldquo;That's just
+      the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!&rdquo; she cried, with a vehemence that made Mary
+      stare. &ldquo;Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families here speak of
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.
+      &ldquo;I had the impression he was a friend of yours,&rdquo; she said; adding,
+      hastily, &ldquo;and your husband's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said the caller, absently. &ldquo;He is, certainly. A man's reputation
+      for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to married people,
+      of course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN it may be very,
+      very dangerous. There are a great many things safe and proper for married
+      people that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young girl. Don't you agree,
+      Miss Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; returned the frank Mary. &ldquo;Do you mean that you intend to
+      remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's doing
+      so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it exactly!&rdquo; was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. &ldquo;What I
+      feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable for
+      Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell you,&rdquo; she
+      cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, &ldquo;her father ought to put his
+      foot down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and then
+      retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one might
+      catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back into
+      hiding under a bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Sibyl, much more composedly, &ldquo;I hardly need say that
+      it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as fond
+      of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting about
+      it. It would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with pathos,
+      but she flatted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the stress
+      of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not uncommonly
+      developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by
+      placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed.
+      In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness of Mary.
+      The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened to her
+      own frantic purpose&mdash;a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of penetrating
+      that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing that she was projecting the image
+      of herself that she desired to project, never dreaming that with every
+      word, every look, and every gesture she was more and more fully disclosing
+      the pitiable truth to the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw
+      was an overdressed woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as
+      a pan, but possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong&mdash;perhaps
+      even violent. What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began
+      to suspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled,&rdquo; Sibyl continued. &ldquo;It would be a
+      dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
+      Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
+      would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+      Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't
+      tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent and
+      hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too late.
+      You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just what
+      it's my duty to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, &ldquo;Does Miss Sheridan seem
+      to&mdash;to care very much about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's deliberately fascinated her,&rdquo; returned the visitor, beginning to
+      breathe quickly and heavily. &ldquo;Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she
+      wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that
+      were, and she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start that
+      made it easy for him&mdash;and he didn't need it. He could have done it,
+      anyway!&rdquo; Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice
+      shook. &ldquo;He went after her deliberately, the way he does everything; he's
+      as cold-blooded as a fish. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and
+      lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold of a piece of real
+      money&mdash;and there was Edith! And he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can
+      stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any money if she marries him,
+      and the only person that could make him understand that is Father
+      Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed, because Lamhorn is going to
+      hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so last night. He said he was
+      going to marry her the first minute he could persuade her to it&mdash;and
+      little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!&rdquo; Sibyl's eyes flashed green
+      again. &ldquo;And he swore he'd do it,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;He swore he'd marry Edith
+      Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+      creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
+      unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she saw
+      Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps&mdash;for
+      Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants might have heard. She saw
+      Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and Lamhorn&mdash;tired
+      of her&mdash;first evasive, then brutally letting her have the truth; and
+      at last, infuriated, &ldquo;swearing&rdquo; to marry her rival. If Sibyl had not
+      babbled out the word &ldquo;swore&rdquo; it might have been less plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, more quietly, &ldquo;whatever's going to be done ought to
+      be done right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard
+      about Lamhorn&mdash;oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before
+      Edith. I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because
+      nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend
+      would do. But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid to
+      ever come right out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith can
+      get anything she wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary
+      indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel rock.
+      If it's a question of his will against anybody else's he'd make his will
+      rule if it killed 'em both! Now, he'd never in the world let Lamhorn come
+      near the house again if he knew his reputation. So, you see, somebody's
+      got to tell him. It isn't a very easy position for me, is it, Miss
+      Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to be frank,&rdquo; said Sibyl, smiling, &ldquo;that's why I've come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To ME!&rdquo; Mary frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl rippled and cooed again. &ldquo;There isn't ANYBODY ever made such a hit
+      with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL hope
+      you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the family!&rdquo;
+       (This sally with another and louder effect of laughter). &ldquo;And if it's MY
+      duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this
+      story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a good
+      reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose (what's
+      most likely) she loses her temper and says I invented it, then what am I
+      going to do? Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter,
+      and they're out of the question, anyway. But suppose I could say: 'All
+      right, if you want proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came with me, and she's
+      waiting in the next room right now, to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Mary, quickly. &ldquo;You mustn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen just a minute more,&rdquo; Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
+      ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. &ldquo;You
+      naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but if
+      YOU take part in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what weight
+      you carry over there, and no one would have the right to say you did it
+      except out of the purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and his father
+      would admire you all the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen! Don't you see
+      we OUGHT to do it, you and I? Do you suppose Robert Lamhorn cares a snap
+      of his finger for her? Do you suppose a man like him would LOOK at Edith
+      Sheridan if it wasn't for the money?&rdquo; And again Sibyl's emotion rose to
+      the surface. &ldquo;I tell you he's after nothing on earth but to get his finger
+      in that old man's money-pile, over there, next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to
+      do it. Marry Edith?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I tell you he'd marry their nigger cook
+      for THAT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, afraid&mdash;at the wrong time&mdash;that she had been too
+      vehement, but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she
+      had produced the effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was
+      staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She
+      became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+      money-pile, over there, next door!&rdquo; The voice was vulgar, the words were
+      vulgar&mdash;and the plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary
+      Vertrees's ears! The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly in the
+      flawed one at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her
+      bargain. &ldquo;Now don't you worry,&rdquo; she said, sunnily, &ldquo;about this setting
+      Edith against you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she
+      tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in
+      over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a
+      house, and Jim likes to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that way;
+      she's too crazy to have you take her around with the smart crowd, but if
+      she DID, you needn't worry. And another thing&mdash;I guess you won't mind
+      Jim's own sister-in-law speaking of it. Of course, I don't know just how
+      matters stand between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about as much
+      alike as two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up his mind;
+      sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD. Now, what I mean is,
+      sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like that. There's
+      lots of little things can be said, and lots&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and
+      now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or any
+      other kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered something
+      neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and that she
+      would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of
+      absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her guest was
+      talking. And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think this
+      unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first considered it. There
+      might have been more excuse for it, she thought, had she been speaking of
+      matters less important&mdash;offering to do the girl all the kindness in
+      her power, too!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of her
+      shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory of the
+      furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and engravings. Then
+      she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window and stood looking
+      out upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair she had abandoned,
+      and sat again. There was no sound in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her face,
+      and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary&mdash;scarlet to the ears. She
+      looked at her watch again&mdash;and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since
+      she had looked at it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let
+      herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her
+      own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. &ldquo;Saw you from the window,&rdquo; he
+      explained. &ldquo;You must find a lot to say to that old lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What old lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the daughter
+      come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk on up the
+      street. Don't stand out on the porch,&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;Come in here.
+      There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you about. Come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house and
+      started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,
+      staring fixedly. &ldquo;Something's the matter over there,&rdquo; he muttered, and
+      then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, &ldquo;What's the
+      matter over there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed,
+      and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity,
+      and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had
+      followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she was
+      crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; gasped Roscoe. &ldquo;I believe somebody's dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he started for the New House at a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon, and
+      at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from foreign
+      parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with Sheridan and
+      his colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name, was a gentleman
+      of Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and Sheridan took
+      pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's finest city. They got
+      into an open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan Building, and were
+      driven first, slowly and momentously, through the wholesale district and
+      the retail district; then more rapidly they inspected the packing-houses
+      and the stock-yards; then skirmished over the &ldquo;park system&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;boulevards&rdquo;; and after that whizzed through the &ldquo;residence section&rdquo; on
+      their way to the factories and foundries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All cray,&rdquo; observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Cray'?&rdquo; echoed Sheridan. &ldquo;I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No white,&rdquo; said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the long rows
+      of houses on both sides of the street. &ldquo;No white lace window-curtains; all
+      cray lace window-curtains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh. I see!&rdquo; Sheridan laughed indulgently. &ldquo;You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
+      ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. &ldquo;There are NO white ones,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white window-curtains,
+      no white house, no white peeble!&rdquo; He pointed upward. &ldquo;Smoke!&rdquo; Then he
+      sniffed the air and clasped his nose between forefinger and thumb. &ldquo;Smoke!
+      Smoke ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites.&rdquo; He tapped his chest. &ldquo;Smoke in
+      your lunks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! SMOKE!&rdquo; Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+      patently finding it delicious. &ldquo;You BET we got smoke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exbensif!&rdquo; said Herr Favre. &ldquo;Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in
+      summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan laughed uproariously. &ldquo;They know it means new spring hats for
+      'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must need many, too!&rdquo; said the visitor. &ldquo;New hats, new all things,
+      but nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing peeble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip, and I
+      tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty dirty
+      and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin' right
+      down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town than in
+      Munich? I know you got more enterprise up there than the part of the old
+      country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're associated
+      with others like you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place, wouldn't you
+      heap rather be here than over there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me,&rdquo; said Herr Favre, &ldquo;no. Here I should not think I was living. It
+      would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
+      like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo; And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. &ldquo;The first generation,
+      they bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are Americans,
+      like you.&rdquo; He tapped his host's big knee genially. &ldquo;You are patriot; so
+      are they.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+      Farver!&rdquo; Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. &ldquo;You certainly stand up for your own
+      town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would here.
+      Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT&mdash;after you've seen
+      our city! It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire you
+      for it; every man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees the
+      other fellow's got the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in your
+      heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live right here than any place else in the
+      world, if you had your choice. Man alive! this is God's country, Mr.
+      Farver, and a blind man couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand where
+      you do in a business way and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are. This is
+      the big works, and I'll show you something now that'll make your eyes
+      stick out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+      personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+      president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll take you for a spin in the country,&rdquo; said Sheridan, when at last
+      they came out to the car again. &ldquo;We'll take a breezer.&rdquo; But, with his foot
+      on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out of the office
+      smiling a greeting. &ldquo;Hello, young fellow!&rdquo; Sheridan said, heartily. &ldquo;On
+      the job, are you, Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of it very often, I
+      guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in the country sometimes
+      with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside you!&rdquo; He roared with
+      laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder. &ldquo;That's all right with me&mdash;if
+      it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we goin' to move into your new
+      warehouses? Monday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sunday, if you want to,&rdquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried his father, delighted. &ldquo;Don't tell me you're goin' to keep
+      your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
+      contractor yet didn't want more time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be all ready for you on the minute,&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;I'm going over
+      both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I guess
+      they'll pass inspection, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, when you get through with that,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;you go and
+      take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell her you
+      stand high with ME!&rdquo; He stepped into the car, waving a waggish farewell,
+      and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his companion a
+      broad face literally shining with pride. &ldquo;That's my boy Jimmie!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine young man, yes,&rdquo; said Herr Favre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got two o' the finest boys,&rdquo; said Sheridan, &ldquo;I got two o' the finest
+      boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and I
+      tell you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM in
+      bed! My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's a
+      wizard. You saw them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?
+      Well, JIM built 'em. I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver.&rdquo; And he recited
+      this history, describing the new process at length; in fact, he had such
+      pride in Jim's achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it more than
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine young man, yes,&rdquo; repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an
+      hour later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is that!&rdquo; said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: &ldquo;I got a fine
+      family, Mr. Farver&mdash;fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her
+      and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.
+      There's culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,
+      and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it&mdash;her and
+      my daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.
+      I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and
+      you'll see&mdash;and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been
+      holdin' their own with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for
+      much o' that kind o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern;
+      and my daughter she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem she
+      wrote when I get you up at the house. She wrote it in school and took the
+      first prize for poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em any
+      smarter'n that girl, Mr. Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're a
+      pretty happy family; yes, sir. Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet, and I
+      haven't ever spoke to him and his wife about it&mdash;it's kind of a
+      delicate matter&mdash;but it's about time the wife and I saw some
+      gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker for about four
+      or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys, I hope, o'
+      course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+      splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard me
+      joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods here,
+      and I guess it was a mighty good stock&mdash;to raise HER! She's one these
+      girls that stand right up and look at you! And pretty? She's the prettiest
+      thing you ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good sense. Jim'll be
+      just right if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME to think o' the way
+      that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder. Four months and a half! Yes,
+      sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain the
+      stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they
+      reached the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan
+      allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were
+      shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, good night, Mr. Farver,&rdquo; said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+      shake hands with his guest. &ldquo;Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and
+      take you up to&mdash;Go on away, boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, &ldquo;Extry! Secon'
+      Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo; laughed Sheridan. &ldquo;Who wants to read about accidents? Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy moved away philosophically. &ldquo;Extry! Extry!&rdquo; he shrilled. &ldquo;Three
+      men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
+      Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't forget, Mr. Farver,&rdquo; Sheridan completed his interrupted farewells.
+      &ldquo;I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be here for you
+      about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed the drive much
+      as I have. Good night&mdash;good night!&rdquo; He leaned back, speaking to the
+      chauffer. &ldquo;Now you can take me around to the Central City barber-shop,
+      boy. I want to get a shave 'fore I go up home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry! Extry!&rdquo; screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+      bats in the dusk. &ldquo;Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!&rdquo; It
+      struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many &ldquo;Extras&rdquo;; they printed
+      &ldquo;Extras&rdquo; for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake,
+      he decided, critically. Crying &ldquo;Wolf!&rdquo; too often wouldn't sell the goods;
+      it was bad business. The papers would &ldquo;make more in the long run,&rdquo; he was
+      sure, if they published an &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; only when something of real importance
+      happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!&rdquo; a boy squawked under his
+      nose, as he descended from the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on away!&rdquo; said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see
+      the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+      barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus
+      cried his wares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Yallern,&rdquo; said this second, hoarse with awe, &ldquo;'n't chew know who
+      that IS?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's SHERIDAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeest!&rdquo; cried the first, staring insanely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about the same hour, four times a week&mdash;Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+      and Saturday&mdash;Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+      barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was their
+      habit to give him a &ldquo;reception,&rdquo; his entrance being always the signal for
+      a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses of briskness
+      and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shop was crowded. Copies of the &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; were being read by men
+      waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. &ldquo;Extras&rdquo; lay upon
+      vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+      patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened the
+      door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering of a
+      firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men turned
+      their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing silence
+      in the shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
+      left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section
+      of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above
+      it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's
+      closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber
+      remembered that there are no circumstances in life&mdash;or just after it&mdash;under
+      which a man does not need to be shaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped forward, profoundly grave. &ldquo;I be through with this man in the
+      chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan,&rdquo; he said, in a hushed tone. &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo;
+       And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, &ldquo;You goin'
+      RESIGN?&rdquo; he demanded in a fierce undertone. &ldquo;You goin' take Mist'
+      Sheridan's coat?&rdquo; He sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,
+      taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of
+      subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan,&rdquo; said the head barber, gently.
+      &ldquo;I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Go on get through with your man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo; And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+      Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know
+      what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand
+      for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been
+      imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd
+      look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the shop,
+      and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly shifted,
+      furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after wondering
+      if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the night before;
+      but there was no vacancy in either line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of the
+      &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The first
+      of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+    </p>
+<div class="blok"><p class="c">
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to<br />
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the
+      print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,
+      pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've come for you, father,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Here's the boy with your coat
+      and hat. Put them on and come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
+      strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+      calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop, but
+      as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his son's
+      sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood face to
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo; His mouth could not do him the service he asked
+      of it, he was so frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry!&rdquo; screamed a newsboy straight in his face. &ldquo;Young North Side
+      millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not&mdash;JIM!&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And YOU come to tell me that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
+      first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered cry
+      of accusation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why wasn't it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three days
+      later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite in his
+      mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs wondered
+      how many million times that had happened since men first made a word to
+      name the sons of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his strong
+      brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead son. He had
+      nothing to help him meet the shock, neither definite religion nor
+      &ldquo;philosophy&rdquo; definite or indefinite. He could only beat his forehead and
+      beg, over and over, to be killed with an ax, while his wife was helpless
+      except to entreat him not to &ldquo;take on,&rdquo; herself adding a continuous
+      lamentation. Edith, weeping, made truce with Sibyl and saw to it that the
+      mourning garments were beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed, and he shirked,
+      justifying himself curiously by saying he &ldquo;never had any experience in
+      such matters.&rdquo; So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who became, during this
+      dreadful little time, the master of the house; for as strange a thing as
+      that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He met the relatives from
+      out of town at the station; he set the time for the funeral and the time
+      for meals; he selected the flowers and he selected Jim's coffin; he did
+      all the grim things and all the other things. Jim had belonged to an order
+      of Knights, who lengthened the rites with a picturesque ceremony of their
+      own, and at first Bibbs wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he
+      offered no objection&mdash;he divined that the Knights and their service
+      would be not precisely a consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So
+      the Knights led the procession, with their band playing a dirge part of
+      the long way to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two
+      lines, plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the
+      carriages pass between.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty fine-lookin' men,&rdquo; said Sheridan, brokenly. &ldquo;They all&mdash;all
+      liked him. He was&mdash;&rdquo; His breath caught in a sob and choked him. &ldquo;He
+      was&mdash;a Grand Supreme Herald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had divined aright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dust to dust,&rdquo; said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+      Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
+      shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to &ldquo;Dust to dust.&rdquo; Bibbs stood
+      passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a
+      familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long
+      time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between
+      himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if he
+      had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close&mdash;as
+      Dr. Gurney predicted&mdash;that no one would be able to tell the
+      difference between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him
+      truly, would be all the more determined to &ldquo;make a man&rdquo; of him, now that
+      there was a man less in the family. To Bibbs's knowledge, no one and
+      nothing had ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans,
+      once he had determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing
+      that any plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His
+      nature unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible
+      persistence, and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way
+      he would hold to that way of &ldquo;making a man&rdquo; of Bibbs, who understood very
+      well, in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
+      make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The truth
+      about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so thoroughly
+      formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that no doubt he
+      had forgotten&mdash;by this time&mdash;where he had put some of them,
+      especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
+      feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange to
+      his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that Sheridan's
+      plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would bring about a
+      good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was to be, the son
+      had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the big, woeful
+      figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid hands upon
+      Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering; Edith wept
+      audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her husband; but
+      Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and Bibbs
+      nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line of
+      waiting carriages. Roscoe understood&mdash;Bibbs would stay and see the
+      grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over the
+      turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the carriages
+      filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs gazed
+      steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking back as
+      he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not want to see.
+      But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the
+      gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had gone. A coupe had
+      been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it,
+      and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking
+      thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock
+      beneath the darkening November sky. &ldquo;It's too bad!&rdquo; he half whispered, his
+      lips forming the words&mdash;and his meaning was that it was too bad that
+      the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was his last thought
+      before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone,
+      on the other side of the drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope
+      where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric
+      and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned
+      columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved
+      children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting&mdash;in unthought
+      pathos&mdash;their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such a
+      background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long
+      and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
+      undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
+      box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without hope and
+      without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting&mdash;she
+      was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a graveyard is not
+      the place for people to look charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused
+      than Bibbs. In &ldquo;Edith's&rdquo; poem he had declared his intention of hiding his
+      heart &ldquo;among the stars&rdquo;; and in his boyhood one day he had successfully
+      hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade of other boys or
+      of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were only a few
+      fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All his life Bibbs
+      had kept himself to himself&mdash;he was but a shy onlooker in the world.
+      Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the unexpected lady before
+      him had causes other than his shyness and her unexpectedness. For Mary
+      Vertrees had been a shining figure in the little world of late given to
+      the view of this humble and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes
+      find their hearts beating faster than those of the actors in the
+      spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started and stared; he lifted his hat
+      with incredible awkwardness, his fingers fumbling at his forehead before
+      they found the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
+      you. I&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;yes,&rdquo; Bibbs stammered. &ldquo;I'll&mdash;I'll be de&mdash;Won't
+      you get in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then
+      Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're very kind,&rdquo; she said, somewhat breathlessly. &ldquo;I should have had to
+      walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It&mdash;it is beginning to get dark. I&mdash;I
+      noticed that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; Mary began, confusedly. She bit her
+      lip, sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure. &ldquo;It must seem odd, my&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Bibbs protested, earnestly. &ldquo;Not in the&mdash;in the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does, though,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I had not intended to come to the cemetery,
+      Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered
+      to me that 'the family wished me to'&mdash;I think your sister sent him.
+      So I came. But when we reached here I&mdash;oh, I felt that perhaps I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded gravely. &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;I mean
+      opposite from&mdash;from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in
+      the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time it takes. From
+      where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving&mdash;at least I didn't
+      notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here. I
+      didn't know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they
+      didn't think to wait for me. That's why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo; And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked out through the dusty window. &ldquo;I think we'd better be going
+      home, if you please,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Bibbs agreed, not moving. &ldquo;It will be dark before we get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a quick little glance. &ldquo;I think you must be very tired, Mr.
+      Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;If you'll
+      let me, I'll&mdash;&rdquo; And without explaining her purpose she opened the
+      door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Driver!&rdquo; she called, in her clear voice, loudly. &ldquo;Driver! We'd like to
+      start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+      please.&rdquo; The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once
+      more. &ldquo;I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I suppose
+      they have a great deal of night work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice. &ldquo;I've
+      never been able to apologize quickly,&rdquo; he said, with his accustomed
+      slowness, &ldquo;because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe whipped me
+      once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil. It took me so
+      long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle
+      voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state of
+      their vehicle was an &ldquo;accident.&rdquo; She had formed a casual impression of
+      him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was unlike
+      any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she saw a
+      picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy hammering
+      a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not that picture
+      alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a glimpse of
+      Bibbs's life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new to her
+      experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little; and then,
+      with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat so long,
+      after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had not started.
+      What she did not realize, however, was that she had made no response to
+      his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates, neither having
+      spoken again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was silence.
+      The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a rich
+      presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the two
+      could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither had
+      any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling presently
+      on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance, of the
+      plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible, coughing
+      asthmatically, or saying, &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; with a spiritless flap of the whip
+      upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps at
+      street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and, thinning
+      rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness. And yet
+      neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral broke the
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it&mdash;too late. Abruptly
+      she realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+      companion and not talking to him. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she began, not knowing
+      what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized
+      the queerness of this drive&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. Sheridan, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The coupe stopped. &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; said the driver, reproachfully, and climbed
+      down and opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo; Bibbs inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+      mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Bibbs demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're there, sir,&rdquo; said the driver, sympathetically. &ldquo;Next house north of
+      Mr. Sheridan's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs descended to the curb. &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, you seem to be
+      right.&rdquo; And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front windows
+      of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me help you,&rdquo; said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she
+      was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;I think I can&mdash;&rdquo; She meant that she could get
+      out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already
+      accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he rumbled
+      away at his team's best pace&mdash;a snail's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; said Mary, stiffly. She
+      did not offer her hand. &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked beside
+      her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran. Realization
+      of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her, beginning to shock
+      her; she stepped aside from the light that fell through the glass panels
+      of the door and withheld her hand as it touched the old-fashioned
+      bell-handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm quite safe, thank you,&rdquo; she said, with a little emphasis. &ldquo;Good
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the street
+      he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+      from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are your eyes, Bibbs?&rdquo; demanded Roscoe. &ldquo;Sleep-walking, as usual?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. &ldquo;Come over to our house for a
+      little while, Bibbs,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;I want to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'd better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet over
+      there&mdash;all worn out. Just come for a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with real
+      feeling: &ldquo;'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And I don't
+      wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get down sick
+      again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and was
+      grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+      decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+      heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+      leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+      recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed
+      Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted, she
+      went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you. How
+      did you happen to be there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had only been to the door,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Good night, Sibyl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;We saw you coming out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't,&rdquo; he explained, moving to depart. &ldquo;I'd just brought Miss
+      Vertrees home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, and stepped out upon the porch, &ldquo;that was it. Good night,
+      Sibyl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; she said, following him across the threshold. &ldquo;How did that
+      happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the&mdash;the&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there,&rdquo; he said, reluctantly. &ldquo;She had
+      walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were leaving.
+      When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow
+      breathlessness. &ldquo;And she drove home from Jim's funeral&mdash;with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually
+      over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the door
+      shut behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.
+      The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it
+      seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and
+      that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had she
+      wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement? He
+      found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he wished
+      that he had not encountered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering about
+      the house, several mournfully admiring the &ldquo;Bay of Naples,&rdquo; and others
+      occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for trains.
+      Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but Bibbs
+      interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives summoned to
+      the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon Sheridan from
+      Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of him. He
+      ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last by accident.
+      Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard a murmurous sound,
+      and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a quavering and rickety
+      voice, monotonously bleating:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that; we
+      got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin' along, and
+      I've seen a-many of 'em go&mdash;two daughters and a son the Lord give me,
+      and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth
+      away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the Shuhite
+      says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people, nor any
+      remaining in his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in his
+      underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging
+      backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard and
+      gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but Uncle
+      Gideon paid no attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bildad the Shuhite spake and he says, 'If thy children have sinned
+      against Him and He have cast them away&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows rattled.
+      The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but Uncle Gideon
+      leaped from his chair. &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+      Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+      discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy of
+      fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+      &ldquo;flash-lights&rdquo; of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+      explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the
+      Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded him
+      to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing the
+      door of his father's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several
+      attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was
+      a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to
+      convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train. They were the last
+      to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to the
+      window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary
+      Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book
+      half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+  <p>Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, &ldquo;Darktown is Out To-night.&rdquo;  That
+  is natural&mdash;but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.</p>
+
+<p>  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady&mdash;
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.</p>
+
+<p>
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak&mdash;she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as&mdash;as Bildad the Shuhite!</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
+      period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
+      and slippers, and went softly out into the hall&mdash;to his father's
+      door. Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in
+      the evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room&mdash;but the food
+      was untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
+      There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
+      bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+      experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little pause&mdash;sleep
+      has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is a curious half-void, a
+      glimpse of aphasia; and although the person experiencing it may not know
+      for that instant his own name or age or sex, he may be acutely conscious
+      of depression or elation. It is the moment, as we say, before we
+      &ldquo;remember&rdquo;; and for the first time in Bibbs's life it came to him bringing
+      a vague happiness. He woke to a sense of new riches; he had the feeling of
+      a boy waking to a birthday. But when the next moment brought him his
+      memory, he found nothing that could explain his exhilaration. On the
+      contrary, under the circumstances it seemed grotesquely unwarranted.
+      However, it was a brief visitation and was gone before he had finished
+      dressing. It left a little trail, the pleased recollection of it and the
+      puzzle of it, which remained unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the
+      morning is not usually the result of a drive home from a funeral. No
+      wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs Sheridan!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father had gone when he came down-stairs. &ldquo;Went on down to 's office,
+      jes' same,&rdquo; Jackson informed him. &ldquo;Came sat breakfas'-table, all by
+      'mself; eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat a
+      thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I reckon
+      putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
+      passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried a
+      little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be seen.
+      Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved herself
+      able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving calls in the
+      earliest stages of &ldquo;mourning.&rdquo; Lunch was as usual&mdash;for Jim and his
+      father had always lunched down-town&mdash;and the afternoon was as usual.
+      Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother went with him, as she sometimes
+      did when the weather was pleasant. Altogether, the usualness of things was
+      rather startling to Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.
+      &ldquo;But you wouldn't remember about that,&rdquo; she said, after narrating an
+      episode. &ldquo;You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that.
+      And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon
+      it'll just about kill your father to put somebody in his place as
+      president of the Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe over;
+      he told me last week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any one man
+      could handle and not go crazy. Oh, it's a pity&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped to wipe
+      her eyes. &ldquo;It's a pity you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and kind o'
+      pick up his ways. Think what it'd meant to papa now! You never did run
+      with either Roscoe or Jim any, even before you got sick. Of course, you
+      were younger; but it always DID seem queer&mdash;and you three bein'
+      brothers like that. I don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit down
+      together for a good talk in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother, I've been away so long,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, gently. &ldquo;And since I
+      came home I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Jim ain't been home much
+      of an evening since you got back&mdash;what with his work and callin' and
+      goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house for
+      dinner. Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some
+      miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'
+      the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he
+      told papa he would. I reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if
+      there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you
+      scarcely really knew him right well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't
+      much to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know
+      much about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!&rdquo; she moaned. &ldquo;And you'll have to learn to
+      know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it
+      was all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will
+      just kill him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this! You
+      mustn't LET him, Bibbs&mdash;you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved
+      over you, and now he can't stand any more&mdash;he just can't! Whatever he
+      says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise me
+      you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would if I could,&rdquo; he said, sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Why can't you?&rdquo; she cried, clutching his arm. &ldquo;He wants you to go
+      back to the machine-shop and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;'like it'!&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's it&mdash;to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it
+      wouldn't hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit&mdash;the doctor said
+      that himself, Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for
+      your father? You ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a
+      beautiful house to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur
+      coats and warm clothes; you been taken care of all your life. And you
+      don't KNOW how he worked for the money to give all these things to you!
+      You don't DREAM what he had to go through and what he risked when we were
+      startin' out in life; and you never WILL know! And now this blow has
+      fallen on him out of a clear sky, and you make it out to be a hardship to
+      do like he wants you to! And all on earth he asks is for you to go back to
+      the work in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you! That's all he asks.
+      Look, Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we get there I want
+      you to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to. Promise me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see him
+      better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her before
+      he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she exclaimed, satisfied. &ldquo;That's a good boy! That's all I wanted
+      you to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't give me any credit,&rdquo; he said, ruefully. &ldquo;There isn't anything else
+      for me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he soothed her. &ldquo;We'll have to begin to make the spirit a
+      cheerful one. We may&mdash;&rdquo; They were turning into their own driveway as
+      he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was
+      visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the
+      door open behind her. She bowed gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'We may'&mdash;what?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo; said Bibbs, blankly. &ldquo;Well, what WERE we saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the queer boys!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You always were. Always! You haven't
+      forgot what you just promised me, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, as the car stopped. &ldquo;No, the spirit will be as cheerful
+      as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she failed
+      to hear his final words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behave like who, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was fretful in her grief. &ldquo;You said it wouldn't do to behave like
+      SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was just nonsense,&rdquo; he explained, turning to go in. &ldquo;An obscure person
+      I don't think much of lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behave like WHO?&rdquo; she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+      insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell Dr.
+      Gurney about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like Bildad the Shuhite!&rdquo; was what Bibbs said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was Sheridan's
+      custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the library, while his
+      wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit) or allowed herself to
+      be repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms of solitaire. To-night
+      she did neither, but sat in her customary chair, gazing at the fire, while
+      Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his lap, though now and then he
+      lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall back upon his knees again. Bibbs
+      came in noiselessly and sat in a corner, doing nothing; and from a
+      &ldquo;reception-room&rdquo; across the hall an indistinct vocal murmur became just
+      audible at intervals. Once, when this murmur grew louder, under stress of
+      some irrepressible merriment, Edith's voice could be heard&mdash;&ldquo;Bobby,
+      aren't you awful!&rdquo; and Sheridan glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose at once and went into the &ldquo;reception-room&rdquo;; there was a flurry of
+      whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall&mdash;Edith and her
+      suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned to
+      her chair in the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't bother you any more, papa,&rdquo; she said, in a comforting voice.
+      &ldquo;She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening, and
+      I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd already
+      told him he could.&rdquo; She paused, then added, rather guiltily: &ldquo;I got kind
+      of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used to. Maybe&mdash;maybe
+      you better ask Roscoe, papa.&rdquo; And as Sheridan nodded solemnly, she
+      concluded, in haste: &ldquo;Don't say I said to. I might be wrong about it,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+      Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+      brought tears. &ldquo;That Miss Vertrees was a good girl,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;SHE was
+      all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of thought,
+      for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you&mdash;How did you fix it about the&mdash;the Realty Company?&rdquo; she
+      faltered. &ldquo;Did you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair. &ldquo;I
+      fixed it,&rdquo; he said, in a husky voice. &ldquo;I moved Cantwell up, and put
+      Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the four
+      men with salaries high enough to take it.&rdquo; He went to her, put his hand
+      upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath. &ldquo;It's my
+      bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up.&rdquo; He dropped the hand from her shoulder and
+      moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped and spoke
+      again, without turning to look at her. &ldquo;The Realty Company'll go right on
+      just the same,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's like&mdash;it's like sand, mamma. It puts
+      me in mind of chuldern playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks his
+      finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of 'em'll pat the place
+      with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill it up and
+      settle against one another; and then, right away it's flat on top again,
+      and you can't tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty Company'll go
+      on all right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I reckon, that
+      wouldn't go right on&mdash;just the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread
+      upon the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+      &ldquo;It's so forlone,&rdquo; she said, chokingly. &ldquo;That's the first time he spoke
+      since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to
+      hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come,
+      right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She just
+      seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what Sibyl
+      said the other day, and&mdash;and you heard what&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Edith said to Sibyl?&rdquo; Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;Oh, it looks as if
+      movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares me!&rdquo;
+       She put both her hands over her face. &ldquo;Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you only
+      wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son! I don't
+      know what we're all comin' to!&rdquo; And, weeping, she followed her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man who
+      has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room&mdash;it was called
+      &ldquo;the smoking-room&rdquo;&mdash;where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up
+      in no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a
+      less conspicuous adjacency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good evening,&rdquo; said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a leather
+      easy-chair near them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he returned, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She frowned. &ldquo;Did you want something?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't be
+      going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left for
+      me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'CHAT with'!&rdquo; she echoed, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can talk about almost anything,&rdquo; said Bibbs with an air of genial
+      politeness. &ldquo;It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about business&mdash;if
+      that's what you happened to be talking about. But you aren't in business,
+      are you, Mr. Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not, either,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+      noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
+      to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of which
+      had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he sat
+      expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if implying
+      that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with a mixture of
+      astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was obviously
+      disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in presenting
+      the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in
+      his mind at any time except &ldquo;personalities&rdquo;&mdash;he could talk about
+      people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous, offered the
+      weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+      leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for the
+      rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would move, and
+      Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just going,&rdquo; he said, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh NO!&rdquo; Edith cried, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Good night! I think I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too bad,&rdquo; said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+      while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard
+      Bibbs offering to &ldquo;help&rdquo; Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather
+      curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed by
+      the closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you?&rdquo; she cried, furiously. &ldquo;What do you MEAN? How
+      did you dare come in there when you knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+      stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up, a
+      few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bibbs,&rdquo; she said, shaking her head woefully, &ldquo;you'd oughtn't to
+      distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the
+      house. You'd ought to been more considerate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+      naive shadow motionless across its threshold. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He doesn't
+      appear to be much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: &ldquo;You call yourself one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't claim&mdash;&rdquo;
+       But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, sighing. &ldquo;That's almost the first time in my life I ever
+      tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in what I
+      tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hurt her feelin's,&rdquo; she groaned. &ldquo;You must 'a' gone at it too rough,
+      Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked upon her wanly. &ldquo;That's my trouble, mother,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;I'm a
+      plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. &ldquo;Hush your
+      nonsense!&rdquo; she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+      appearing. &ldquo;You go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her and obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't do that under a misapprehension,&rdquo; he warned her, when they
+      were alone in the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what under a what?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'&rdquo; he
+      told her, gravely. &ldquo;I have a prejudice against that young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+      prejudices against!&rdquo; In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+      implores. &ldquo;Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence
+      with papa against him!&rdquo; And she laughed louder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said, with peculiar earnestness. &ldquo;I'll tell you now, because&mdash;because
+      I've decided I'm one of the family.&rdquo; And then, as if the earnestness were
+      too heavy for him to carry it further, he continued, in his usual tone,
+      &ldquo;I'm drunk with power, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to tell me?&rdquo; she demanded, brusquely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lamhorn made love to Sibyl,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith hooted. &ldquo;SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat between
+      us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and said something
+      like that to you afterward&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, gravely. &ldquo;I KNOW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+      Lamhorn&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith screamed with laughter. &ldquo;You were with ROSCOE&mdash;and you heard
+      Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I heard them quarreling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You say he made love to her
+      because you heard them quarreling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can&mdash;by
+      the way they quarrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!&mdash;it's
+      always certain&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. &ldquo;You ought to
+      know. You've had so much experience, yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't any, Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My life has been about as exciting as an
+      incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you look out through the glass you must know
+      what effect such stuff would have upon ME!&rdquo; She rose, visibly agitated.
+      &ldquo;What if it WAS true?&rdquo; she demanded, bitterly. &ldquo;What if it was true a
+      hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to
+      giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about
+      Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think it
+      matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'? What
+      if I understood WHY she&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off with a violent gesture, a
+      sweep of her arm extended at full length, as if she hurled something to
+      the ground. &ldquo;Do you think a girl that really cared for a man would pay any
+      attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady. She
+      met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she had
+      spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm sorry,
+      Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see until you
+      see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of it&mdash;especially
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's sensible,&rdquo; she responded, curtly. &ldquo;You're most surprising of all
+      when you're sensible, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and George
+      appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting there, he
+      announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch upon the
+      shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+      glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over fifty,
+      in spite of Sheridan's habitual &ldquo;ole Doc Gurney.&rdquo; He was gray, however,
+      almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said, not
+      rising. &ldquo;Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of
+      me&mdash;between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean you're too sleepy to move,&rdquo; returned Bibbs, complying. &ldquo;I think
+      you'll notice that I'm getting worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Taken on about twelve pounds,&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;Thirteen, maybe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it won't do.&rdquo; The doctor rubbed his eyelids. &ldquo;You're so much better
+      I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just where you
+      are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down&mdash;all the
+      way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded. &ldquo;Machine-shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still hate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't blame you!&rdquo; the doctor grunted. &ldquo;Yes, I expect it'll make a lump in
+      your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've got the
+      old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use?&rdquo; Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. &ldquo;My kind of writing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the doctor agreed. &ldquo;I suppose if you broke away and lived on roots
+      and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of
+      editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred
+      dollars a year by the time you're fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's about it,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know what you want to do,&rdquo; said Gurney, drowsily. &ldquo;You don't
+      hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show&mdash;the noise and
+      jar and dirt, the scramble&mdash;the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'
+      You'd like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask
+      on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it
+      and have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I
+      can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another of
+      his boys if you don't go to Sicily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to go to Sicily,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I want to stay right here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his patient
+      a sharp glance. &ldquo;It's a risk,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think we'll find you're so much
+      better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick. Something's got hold
+      of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as you used to be. But I
+      warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did before, and
+      perhaps even harder, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. &ldquo;Well, when we go over you
+      this afternoon what are we going to say about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him I'm ready,&rdquo; said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; Gurney laughed. &ldquo;Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll see.
+      Don't forget I said to walk down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+      informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.
+      &ldquo;Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce,&rdquo; he said, gloomily, to his
+      next patient when Bibbs had gone. &ldquo;Doctor tells a man he's well, and
+      that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon this
+      point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any point,
+      so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy afternoon,
+      and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to his nostrils,
+      though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with the smell they could
+      no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked hurriedly, too intent upon
+      their destinations to be more than half aware of the wayside; they wore
+      the expressions of people under a vague yet constant strain. They were all
+      lightly powdered, inside and out, with fine dust and grit from the
+      hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of that also. They did not even
+      notice that they saw the smoke, though the thickened air was like a
+      shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new &ldquo;Sheridan Apartments,&rdquo; now
+      almost completed, he observed that the marble of the vestibule was already
+      streaky with soot, like his gloves, which were new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way
+      from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which
+      continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by a
+      street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his
+      preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that, having
+      crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the north, and
+      as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's daughter
+      emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the path to the
+      old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the pedestrian
+      from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the gate and he
+      was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she saw him she started
+      visibly. And if this thing had happened to Robert Lamhorn, he would have
+      had a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts.
+      Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought. He would have said: &ldquo;You
+      jumped because you were thinking of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand closing
+      the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction Bibbs was
+      walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they should walk
+      together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had paused in his
+      slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either spoke or moved&mdash;it
+      was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each to seem to say, by
+      look and attitude, &ldquo;Why, it's YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's name
+      as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to a stop
+      simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk
+      on together he contrived to find his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;hate a frozen fish myself,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think three miles
+      was too long for you to put up with one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+      restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan, you're
+      lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's
+      turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know
+      each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for me
+      to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I decided
+      I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the car-line. I
+      never thought of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, earnestly. &ldquo;I didn't, either. I might have said
+      something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must
+      remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though
+      it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I ever
+      met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what it
+      said. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one which
+      Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, &ldquo;a cripple would
+      crawl five miles to hear.&rdquo; And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's father's
+      son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. &ldquo;I'll be any kind of
+      idiot,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be difficult
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+      perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+      description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the first
+      time. &ldquo;Rather tragic and altogether impossible.&rdquo; It seemed to her now that
+      she must have been blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed the New House without either of them showing&mdash;or
+      possessing&mdash;any consciousness that it had been the destination of one
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll keep on talking,&rdquo; Bibbs continued, cheerfully, &ldquo;and you keep on
+      laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
+      making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
+      bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes me
+      bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what I'll
+      think of myself later if I don't keep talking&mdash;talking now, I mean&mdash;and
+      I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides these two
+      things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as much as this
+      more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always in me to do
+      it, though, the first time I met any one who didn't know me well enough
+      not to listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're not really talking to me,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;You're just thinking
+      aloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he returned, gravely. &ldquo;I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+      vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
+      subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,
+      but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't
+      know how to manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;Not even if you really talked about yourself.&rdquo; She turned her face toward
+      him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was pathetically amazed
+      by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look, warmly friendly and
+      understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was an eagerly interested
+      look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;you&mdash;I&mdash;I'm&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered, and the faint color
+      in his cheeks grew almost vivid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came
+      into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how
+      &ldquo;queer&rdquo; many people might think him; but he did not seem &ldquo;queer&rdquo; to Mary
+      Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited, and became coherent. &ldquo;YOU say something now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don't
+      even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny man's
+      solo! You&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she interrupted. &ldquo;I'd rather play your accompaniment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stop and listen to it, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;&rdquo; she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+      gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were
+      approaching. &ldquo;Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I could,&rdquo; he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+      &ldquo;But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better
+      say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason I
+      don't want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where you're
+      going, and where I'll be sent back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head in cheery negation. &ldquo;Not unless you want to be. Would
+      you like to come with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Anywhere!&rdquo; And again it was apparent
+      that he spoke in simple truthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come&mdash;if you care for organ music. The organist is an old
+      friend of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had
+      a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up
+      everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like
+      Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a
+      little. I hope so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. &ldquo;I think Beethoven
+      would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't kept you?&rdquo; Mary said to the organist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered, heartily. &ldquo;I would not mind so only you should
+      shooer come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The organist looked bluntly surprised. &ldquo;Iss that SO?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Well,
+      I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink. He iss
+      musician himself, then, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      played the&mdash;I tried to play&mdash;&rdquo; Fortunately he checked himself;
+      he had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master
+      the jews'-harp in his boyhood. &ldquo;No, I'm not a musician,&rdquo; he contented
+      himself with saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. &ldquo;Young man, you are fortunate! I
+      play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You are
+      the first one EVER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+      finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees in
+      a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though she stopped as he
+      did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking away from them toward
+      the front of the church, shaking his white Beethovian mane roguishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's false pretenses on my part,&rdquo; Bibbs said. &ldquo;You mean to be kind to the
+      sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back to work
+      in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, beginning to walk forward. &ldquo;Not unless you don't like
+      great music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+      ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+      ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they
+      covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,
+      reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician
+      ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain to overwhelm
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This afternoon some Handel!&rdquo; he turned to shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary nodded. &ldquo;Will you like that?&rdquo; she asked Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
+      about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
+      pretend, I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, &ldquo;you wouldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air; the
+      huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+      listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with it.
+      The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about them, while
+      the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a tiny star of
+      light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it rhythmically, or
+      lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist thrusting, but he
+      was magnificently the master of his giant, and it sang to his magic as he
+      bade it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
+      unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike the
+      tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the
+      enchanted cave, and that&mdash;for Bibbs&mdash;was what made its magic
+      dazing. It seemed to him a long, long time since he had been walking home
+      drearily from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him that he had set out
+      upon a happy journey since then, and that he had reached another planet,
+      where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone together listening to a vast choiring
+      of invisible soldiers and holy angels. There were armies of voices about
+      them singing praise and thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was
+      incredible that the walls of the church were not the boundaries of the
+      universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky street
+      just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in evening papers from front
+      steps and where children were taking their last spins on roller-skates
+      before being haled indoors for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew it
+      could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,
+      saying: &ldquo;You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream
+      that these sounds bring to me?&rdquo; And it seemed to him as though she
+      answered continually: &ldquo;I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new one
+      that you are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring to you.
+      Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear&mdash;together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except
+      the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white
+      head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting
+      beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in
+      the darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting
+      of the organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be
+      chorusing of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing
+      for him the world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she
+      was so kind to him. It all meant Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+      silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+      walking slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what it meant to me,&rdquo; she said, as he did not immediately
+      reply. &ldquo;Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all
+      others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+      infinitesimal&mdash;it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+      infinitesimal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+      hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering every
+      way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town to-morrow.
+      And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to. They're like
+      servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery
+      itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss and dirt they
+      forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework has to be done,
+      but the people who do it have been so overpaid that they're confused and
+      worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet, poor things! they
+      haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of course, when the world gets
+      to paying its wages sensibly that will be different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean 'communism'?&rdquo; she asked, and she made their slow pace a
+      little slower&mdash;they had only three blocks to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+      now&mdash;especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+      'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for all
+      the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak ones a
+      fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even on the
+      stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all cross the
+      winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody&mdash;if he sees
+      the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead of other
+      people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel. And that,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see, if I keep
+      talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you what it did
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't it mean courage to you, too&mdash;a little?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Triumph
+      and praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they were all there,&rdquo; Bibbs said. &ldquo;I don't know the name of what he
+      played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that makes the
+      music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the name he puts
+      to it can't make much difference&mdash;except to himself and people very
+      much like him, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of the
+      people who hear it,&rdquo; Bibbs went on, musingly, &ldquo;according to their own
+      natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might
+      compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail, and
+      some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some would
+      think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself
+      at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white
+      horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the music, he'd
+      think of a circus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did not open
+      it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her kindnesses&mdash;not
+      to be prompt in leaving him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you didn't tell me whether you liked it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I didn't need to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you were
+      trying to keep from telling me what it did mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't keep from telling it any longer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The music meant to me&mdash;it
+      meant the kindness of&mdash;of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kindness? How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp&mdash;and sick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, decidedly. &ldquo;I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr. Kraft
+      play. And you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+      playing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary laughed. &ldquo;I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin&mdash;Grieg&mdash;Chaminade.
+      You wouldn't listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs drew a deep breath. &ldquo;I'm frightened again,&rdquo; he said, in an unsteady
+      voice. &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and
+      the words sank to a murmur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you want ME to play for you!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Yes, gladly. It will be
+      merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
+      thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
+      listen, and if you&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
+      and laughed ruefully. &ldquo;But my piano won't be here after to-night. I&mdash;I'm
+      sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to you
+      you'd have to come this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll let me?&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, if you care to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could play&mdash;&rdquo; he said, wistfully, &ldquo;if I could play like that
+      old man in the church I could thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
+      and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
+      especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
+      was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. &ldquo;You'll come after
+      dinner, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, not moving. &ldquo;Would you mind if I stood here until time to
+      come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+      response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+      windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok"><p>
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.</p>
+
+<p>  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it&mdash;and ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the &ldquo;Greek profile.&rdquo;  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a &ldquo;Greek profile&rdquo;; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.</p>
+
+<p>  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity&mdash;he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities&mdash;a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+</p>
+<p>  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be &ldquo;sent away.&rdquo;  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  &ldquo;Sent away&rdquo; is a euphuism for &ldquo;sent to prison.&rdquo;  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner&mdash;the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos &ldquo;sent away&rdquo;&mdash;and where?</p>
+
+<p>  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness&mdash;those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing&mdash;ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.</p>
+
+<p>  Yes&mdash;the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;mystery about pianos&rdquo; which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to Mr.
+      Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs
+      scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon
+      Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until
+      after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found
+      not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and with
+      every phase of everything that they discussed&mdash;no extraordinary state
+      of affairs in a family which has always &ldquo;held up its head,&rdquo; only to arrive
+      in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on helplessly at the
+      processes of its own financial dissolution. For that was the point which
+      this despairing couple had reached&mdash;they could do nothing except look
+      on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and they knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She needn't to have done that about her piano,&rdquo; vapored Mr. Vertrees. &ldquo;We
+      could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
+      consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with
+      the&mdash;the dealer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thought that it might be&mdash;annoying for you,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees
+      explained. &ldquo;Really, she planned for you not to know about it until they
+      had removed&mdash;until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to&mdash;to
+      mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this morning.
+      She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's&mdash;it's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her other idea is&mdash;that is, it was&mdash;I think it can be avoided,
+      of course&mdash;it was about her furs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he exclaimed, quickly. &ldquo;I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
+      rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll try not,&rdquo; his wife promised. &ldquo;Of course, they're very handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason for her to keep them!&rdquo; he returned, irritably. &ldquo;We're
+      not THAT far gone, I think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not yet,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees said. &ldquo;She seems to be troubled about the&mdash;the
+      coal matter and&mdash;about Tilly. Of course the piano will take care of
+      some things like those for a while and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way,&rdquo; she said, comfortingly.
+      &ldquo;She arranged with the&mdash;with the purchaser that the men will come for
+      it about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
+      really quite winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he agreed, moodily. &ldquo;So far as that goes people have a right to
+      move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I suppose,
+      even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much attention
+      just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early the morning
+      after the funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. &ldquo;I don't believe that
+      was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only because he
+      felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed wrapped up in
+      his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about most. He isn't
+      vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a great deal about
+      his&mdash;his actual money&mdash;though there was something about blades
+      of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something about his
+      energy&mdash;but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be not so
+      much a personal vainglory as about his family and the greatness of this
+      city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Greatness of this city'!&rdquo; Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+      &ldquo;It's nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who
+      has the luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any
+      YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows
+      that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else
+      gets the habit. But you have a different point of view if it's the city
+      that got what it wanted out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's 'great'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. &ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; she
+      began, timidly, &ldquo;he doesn't boast of&mdash;that is, I understand he has
+      never seemed so interested in the&mdash;the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon it; he
+      looked more haggard than before. &ldquo;'The other one',&rdquo; he repeated, averting
+      his eyes. &ldquo;You mean&mdash;you mean the third son&mdash;the one that was
+      here this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the&mdash;the youngest,&rdquo; she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+      almost a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either
+      look at the other during that silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly. &ldquo;What&mdash;ah&mdash;what
+      was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she came in this
+      afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but she answered in
+      such a low voice I didn't&mdash;ah&mdash;happen to catch it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&mdash;she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she
+      had enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful
+      creature I've ever known.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile&mdash;though he
+      doesn't seem quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window
+      when she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about
+      him I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, of course,&rdquo; she said, hurriedly. &ldquo;Nothing definite, that is.
+      Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we thought
+      at first. It's only&mdash;well, of course it IS odd, their attitude about
+      him. I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him&mdash;perhaps a
+      little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself to anything&mdash;or
+      perhaps does odd things. But, after all, of course, we only have an
+      impression about it. We don't know&mdash;that is, positively. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused, then went on: &ldquo;I didn't know just how to ask&mdash;that is&mdash;I
+      didn't mention it to Mary. I didn't&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; The poor lady
+      floundered pitifully, concluding with a mumble. &ldquo;So soon after&mdash;after
+      the&mdash;the shock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him,&rdquo; said Mr. Vertrees.
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of him is&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. &ldquo;I can't
+      imagine her&mdash;oh, NO!&rdquo; he gasped. And he began to pace the floor. &ldquo;A
+      half-witted epileptic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He may be all right. We&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's horrible! I can't&mdash;&rdquo; He threw himself back into his chair
+      again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply
+      at his sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. &ldquo;You mustn't give way so,&rdquo; she said, inspired
+      for once almost to direct discourse. &ldquo;Whatever Mary might think of doing,
+      it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if WE should&mdash;should
+      consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It isn't because we
+      think of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh God, no!&rdquo; he groaned. &ldquo;Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but
+      Mary can't be a stenographer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she murmured,
+      &ldquo;it all seems very premature, speculating about such things, but I had a
+      queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in this&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      had almost said &ldquo;in this one,&rdquo; but checked herself. &ldquo;In this young man.
+      It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and well, and he is&mdash;he
+      seems to be, that is&mdash;rather appealing to the&mdash;the sympathies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; he agreed, bitterly. &ldquo;Precisely. The sympathies!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;perhaps you might feel easier if I could have a
+      little talk with some one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought of&mdash;not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+      perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to be
+      talking with somebody that knew the family&mdash;and then I might find a
+      chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much, and&mdash;Something
+      of that kind perhaps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know anybody that knows the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That is&mdash;well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That
+      Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan is not a&mdash;that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced
+      little woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is
+      interested about&mdash;that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more
+      intimate with Mary, naturally. She's always looking over here from her
+      house; she was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I
+      noticed&mdash;though I don't think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't
+      think it out of place to&mdash;to be frank about matters. She called the
+      other day, and Mary must rather like her&mdash;she said that evening that
+      the call had done her good. Don't you think it might be wise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so do I,&rdquo; she returned, promptly. &ldquo;It isn't really a thing we should
+      be considering seriously, of course. Still&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say not! But possibly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the
+      lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between them
+      that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain definite
+      information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and physical status
+      of Bibbs. And if he were subject to attacks of lunacy, the unhappy pair
+      decided to prevent the sacrifice they supposed their daughter intended to
+      make of herself. Altogether, if there were spiteful ghosts in the old
+      house that night, eavesdropping upon the woeful comedy, they must have
+      died anew of laughter!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness had
+      fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano down
+      the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway behind
+      them, preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation; and Mrs.
+      Roscoe Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the light of the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;It did give me a fright!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+      informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+      &ldquo;Won't you come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Oh no, thank you!&rdquo; Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side. &ldquo;You
+      don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but your
+      piano!&rdquo; She laughed shrilly. &ldquo;You know, since our tragedy coming so
+      suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been&mdash;almost
+      hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago, and
+      saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,
+      carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the
+      way it looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in, next
+      door, only such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your daughter
+      start for a drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three o'clock&mdash;and&mdash;
+      They aren't back yet, are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Good heavens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the only thing I could think of was that something must have happened
+      to them, and I just dashed over&mdash;and it was only your PIANO!&rdquo; She
+      broke into laughter again. &ldquo;I suppose you're just sending it somewhere to
+      be repaired, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;it's being taken down-town,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;Won't you
+      come in and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I
+      was&mdash;ah&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her
+      invitation. &ldquo;Won't you come in? I'd really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home about
+      this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's very sweet.&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward
+      the street with Sibyl. &ldquo;It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't
+      it? Almost like a May evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano,&rdquo; said Sibyl, watching the
+      instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. &ldquo;She plays wonderfully,
+      Mrs. Kittersby tells me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her
+      yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean Bibbs?&rdquo; asked Sibyl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The&mdash;the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether
+      he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your
+      daughter expect the piano back soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear
+      her play because she had arranged with the&mdash;that is, it was to be
+      removed this afternoon. He seems almost well again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Sibyl nodded. &ldquo;His father's going to try to start him to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems very delicate,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;I shouldn't think he would
+      be able to stand a great deal, either physically or&mdash;&rdquo; She paused and
+      then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness&mdash;&ldquo;or
+      mentally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right,&rdquo; said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Entirely?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, entirely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But has he ALWAYS been?&rdquo; This question came with the same anxious
+      eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor&mdash;&rdquo; Sibyl choked, and pressed her
+      handkerchief to her mouth. &ldquo;Good night, Mrs. Vertrees,&rdquo; she said,
+      hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+      above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where
+      the two ladies were standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you come in?&rdquo; urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound of
+      a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare. &ldquo;Do!
+      There's Mary now, and she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl was half-way across the street. &ldquo;No, thanks,&rdquo; she called. &ldquo;I
+      hope she won't miss her piano!&rdquo; And she ran into her own house and plunged
+      headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her handkerchief over
+      her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the quiet
+      house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of a
+      decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the
+      hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,
+      holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your excitement?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;What do you find to go into
+      hysterics over? Another death in the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's funny!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
+      THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!&rdquo; Lying prone, she elevated her feet in
+      the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come through, come through!&rdquo; said her husband, crossly. &ldquo;What you been up
+      to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+      &ldquo;Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!&rdquo; She wiped her eyes. &ldquo;They've had
+      to sell their piano!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago,&rdquo; said Sibyl.
+      &ldquo;They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as last
+      winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and
+      patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook had
+      HERS! And the night of the house-warming I kind of got suspicious, myself.
+      She didn't have one single piece of any kind of real jewelry, and you
+      could see her dress was an old one done over. Men can't tell those things,
+      and you all made a big fuss over her, but I thought she looked a sight,
+      myself! Of course, EDITH was crazy to have her, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well?&rdquo; he urged, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING! Just
+      absolutely NOTHING&mdash;and they don't know anywhere to turn! The
+      family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very
+      distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's
+      been wondering what WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to
+      marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the
+      men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and married other girls.
+      Gracious! they were lucky! Marry HER? The man that found himself tied up
+      to THAT girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible funny, terrible funny!&rdquo; said Roscoe, with sarcasm. &ldquo;It's so
+      funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little
+      while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men
+      go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute I
+      got the idea they were moving out&mdash;the house has been foreclosed on,
+      Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was
+      out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over&mdash;and
+      it was their PIANO! They'd sold it and were trying to sneak it out after
+      dark, so nobody'd catch on!&rdquo; Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but
+      resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. &ldquo;Wait a
+      minute, can't you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all
+      away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell all
+      kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they can't.
+      She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they'd sold it; and I hope
+      they'll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last week a
+      coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees. Their cook
+      told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN she'd seen any
+      money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that girl in your
+      LIFE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What girl? Their cook?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into this
+      neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and out, and
+      here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll the girl up in
+      her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan&mdash;she's
+      GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on first with
+      YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she was going to mash you, and
+      then she found out you were the married one, and turned right square
+      around to Jim and carried him off his feet. Oh, Jim was landed&mdash;there's
+      no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky; he didn't live to STAY landed, and
+      it's a good thing for him!&rdquo; Sibyl's mirth had vanished, and she spoke with
+      virulent rapidity. &ldquo;Well, she couldn't get you, because you were married,
+      and she couldn't get Jim, because Jim died. And there they were, dead
+      broke! Do you know what she did? Do you know what she's DOING?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; said Roscoe, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity. &ldquo;BIBBS!
+      She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S FUNERAL!
+      Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; she shrieked.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that. &ldquo;And
+      yesterday,&rdquo; she continued, between paroxysms&mdash;&ldquo;yesterday she came out
+      of the house&mdash;just as he was passing. She must have been looking out&mdash;waiting
+      for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window! And she got him
+      there last night&mdash;to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave that away! And
+      to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the cream of it is that
+      they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or not&mdash;they thought
+      maybe he was, but she went after him just the same! The old lady set
+      herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord! BIBBS!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Roscoe looked grim. &ldquo;So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
+      pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it might,&rdquo; she returned, sobering. &ldquo;It might, if those people weren't
+      such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to come down off
+      the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny, but to see 'em
+      sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating dirt&mdash;well, I
+      think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and
+      expects people to wallow on the ground before her until they get near
+      enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old patched shoes&mdash;oh,
+      she'd do THAT, all right!&mdash;and then she powders up and goes out to
+      mash&mdash;BIBBS SHERIDAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Roscoe, heavily; &ldquo;I don't care about that one way or
+      another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about. I
+      was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. &ldquo;What
+      is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began, frowning, &ldquo;what I was going to say then&mdash;&rdquo; He broke
+      off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
+      his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. &ldquo;I never expected I'd have to
+      say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask you
+      what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I felt the time had come for me to know about it,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;You never
+      told me anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never asked,&rdquo; she interposed, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;It looks to
+      me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
+      many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down to
+      work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed soon
+      as I'd got the paper read&mdash;unless there was some good musical show in
+      town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or so,
+      I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and excited
+      and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then, Lamhorn had
+      been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long ago you got
+      to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got to quarreling
+      with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see you'd been
+      quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you object to that?&rdquo; asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;when it injures my wife's health!&rdquo; he returned, with a quick
+      lift of his eyes to hers. &ldquo;You began to run down just about the time you
+      began falling out with him.&rdquo; He stepped close to her. &ldquo;See here, Sibyl,
+      I'm going to know what it means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you ARE?&rdquo; she snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're trembling,&rdquo; he said, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was all I was going to say the other day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was going to
+      ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
+      have you to say to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; he replied, with grim swiftness, &ldquo;I want to know why you keep
+      telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, &ldquo;And what
+      else did Edith want you to ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn,&rdquo; he said,
+      fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in
+      there on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you then
+      what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she didn't!&rdquo; he vociferated, his voice growing louder. &ldquo;She said,
+      'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see
+      her, because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want to
+      know what it means. I intend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. &ldquo;Dinner is ready,&rdquo; she said,
+      and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the
+      dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I intend to know exactly what has been going on,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;I mean to
+      know just what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you DO!&rdquo; she cried, shrilly. &ldquo;You mean to know just what's what, do
+      you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your wife,
+      and then you come home making a scene before the servants and humiliating
+      me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't hear every
+      word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go on! Go and
+      eat your dinner alone&mdash;because I won't eat with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon her,
+      and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room slam
+      overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+      through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+      found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A
+      window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his
+      note-book on the sill&mdash;and the sheets were loose. The door was open,
+      and when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two
+      sheets had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting
+      and put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George or
+      Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them down-town
+      with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and, having a
+      little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them out, and
+      glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were not
+      epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a &ldquo;private letter&rdquo; that came into
+      his possession in that way, though in a &ldquo;matter of business&rdquo; he might have
+      felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity afforded in any
+      manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's scribblings were
+      only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred to the
+      machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be justified in
+      reading them.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then&mdash;days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator&mdash;she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  &ldquo;WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?&rdquo;  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  &mdash;you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.</p>
+
+<p>  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.</p>
+
+<p>  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The &ldquo;business man&rdquo; feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work&mdash;he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.</p>
+
+<p>  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.</p>
+
+<p>  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.</p>
+
+<p>  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more. He
+      crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a
+      waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of Names,
+      which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a volume now
+      first put to use for the location of &ldquo;Midas.&rdquo; Having read the legend,
+      Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office, exhaling the breath of
+      contempt. &ldquo;Dam' fool!&rdquo; he mumbled. But this was no new thought, nor was
+      the contrariness of Bibbs's notes a surpise to him; and presently he
+      dismissed the matter from his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long
+      time he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a club
+      luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went to a small restaurant
+      near the Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes in the
+      consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came for his
+      father every day, at five minutes after twelve, and Sheridan was again in
+      his office at five minutes before one. But now that Jim no longer came,
+      Sheridan remained alone in his office; he had not gone out to lunch since
+      Jim's death, nor did he have anything sent to him&mdash;he fasted until
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the time he missed Jim personally the most&mdash;the voice and eyes
+      and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things
+      were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far
+      deeper. Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was a
+      great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily perceived
+      his own likeness. Jim was the one who would have been surest to keep the
+      great property growing greater, year by year. Sheridan had fallen asleep,
+      night after night, picturing what the growth would be under Jim. He had
+      believed that Jim was absolutely certain to be one of the biggest men in
+      the country. Well, it was all up to Roscoe now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
+      question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+      suggested it&mdash;though vaguely&mdash;and he had meant to speak to
+      Roscoe about it. However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for
+      several days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no
+      opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+      o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower
+      floor. He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer
+      room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would find his
+      son busy with others, and that his question would have to be postponed,
+      but when he entered the door marked &ldquo;R. C. Sheridan. Private,&rdquo; Roscoe was
+      there alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and
+      he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy,&rdquo; said
+      Sheridan. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself! I
+      just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll keep, if you're
+      workin' something out in your mind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused
+      with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in
+      the chair. Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the
+      office. &ldquo;You're all right, ain't you?&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Not sick, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. &ldquo;I
+      wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guess your
+      mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him
+      longer'n any of us, so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't,&rdquo; said Roscoe, thickly&mdash;&ldquo;I won't say a dam' thing about
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position near the
+      window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were bloodshot and
+      vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted, and he was
+      deathly pale. The father stood aghast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;ROSCOE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;Can' help that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ROSCOE!&rdquo; Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
+      nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe&mdash;the
+      steady old wheel-horse&mdash;in this condition. &ldquo;How'd you GET this way?&rdquo;
+       he demanded. &ldquo;You caught cold and took too much for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. &ldquo;Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
+      lately. Firs' you notice it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; cried Sheridan. &ldquo;I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+      lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.
+      Boh! To see you like a common hog!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+      &ldquo;Hog!&rdquo; he repeated, chuckling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a hog!&rdquo; said Sheridan, angrily. &ldquo;In business hours! I don't object
+      to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor,
+      if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one to
+      baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe. It
+      ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way on a
+      grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them men out
+      there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think you can come
+      to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder how often this
+      has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look over your books
+      to-morrow, and I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+      contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the heavy
+      chair in which he had been sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hoo&mdash;hoorah!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you
+      want to&mdash;outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing
+      innerfere business hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink!
+      Die! L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling his
+      own office, overhead. &ldquo;Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's suite and
+      get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in room
+      two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows on the
+      Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over with
+      Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two. You needn't
+      come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be disturbed. Tell
+      Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a closed car. We may
+      have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at Roscoe's room as soon
+      as the car gets here. 'T's all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. &ldquo;Drunk in business
+      hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble,
+      mus'n' kill 'nybody&mdash;not in business hours! All right any other time.
+      Kill 'nybody you want to&mdash;'s long 'tain't in business hours! Fine!
+      Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your trouble 't
+      home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business! Have funerals
+      on Sunday&mdash;might innerfere business! Don' let your wife innerfere
+      business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad&mdash;your
+      tradegy&mdash;keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die, go on die 't home&mdash;don'
+      die round th' office! Might innerfere business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his
+      back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his
+      father's significant posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know wh' I think?&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly any
+      'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked, an' he
+      got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at me, I
+      ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to me!
+      Fine!&rdquo; He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable
+      gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair and
+      caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several
+      minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to the
+      newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by
+      holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed
+      in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He
+      rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what you ask me while ago?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did. What&mdash;what was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. You better sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
+      won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and
+      said, &ldquo;Right down.&rdquo; Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and
+      brought them to his son. &ldquo;Get into this coat,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're goin'
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All ri',&rdquo; Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the
+      outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and
+      told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached the
+      ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the
+      automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own
+      house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word
+      in the interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without
+      meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he heard from
+      within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of
+      song:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...<br />
+  With a leap from the ground<br />
+  To the saddle in a bound.<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; And away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-yay!<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any
+      musical symptom whatever in Bibbs&mdash;he had never even heard him
+      whistle&mdash;and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool
+      should be merry to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he
+      did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and came
+      to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety manifest
+      and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his lunch had
+      &ldquo;disagreed&rdquo; with him a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had become
+      hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+      white-jacket's salver. &ldquo;Here's another difference between Midas and
+      chicken,&rdquo; Sheridan remarked, grimly. &ldquo;Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
+      can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
+      had the advantage there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his
+      plate without dropping it and to respond, &ldquo;Yes&mdash;he crows over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed&mdash;for
+      he could blush distinctly now&mdash;and his mother looked upon him with
+      pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon
+      to her. &ldquo;Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got to be such a gadabout,&rdquo; Edith giggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+      anybody was up,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;I reckon if people lose things in this
+      house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it he lost?&rdquo; asked Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows!&rdquo; her father returned. &ldquo;Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
+      home with me. I looked it over&mdash;thought probably it was something
+      pretty important, belongin' to a busy man like him.&rdquo; He affected to search
+      his pockets. &ldquo;What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
+      remember leavin' it down at the office&mdash;in the waste-basket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good place for it,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured, still red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave him a grin. &ldquo;Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up early
+      enough to find things before I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+      evening, to Mary Vertrees&mdash;they had come to know each other that
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My time's here at last,&rdquo; he said, as they sat together in the melancholy
+      gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano. That removal
+      had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees that neither
+      of them had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gas-light,
+      though from a single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any
+      room seem bare that knew the glowing presence of Mary. He spoke lightly,
+      not sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
+      any longer. It's really my part to go to him&mdash;at least it would save
+      my face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
+      Hard labor for life, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary shook her head. &ldquo;I don't think so. He's too kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think my father's KIND?&rdquo; And Bibbs stared at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
+      only that he has to be kind in his own way&mdash;because he can't
+      understand any other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;If that's what you mean by 'kind'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. &ldquo;It's
+      going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;self-pity!&rdquo; he returned, smiling. &ldquo;This has been just the last
+      flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work. There'd
+      be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do
+      best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless&mdash;so I have
+      to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it like&mdash;exactly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get up at six,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which
+      is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin buckets, and
+      tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty, and I'm at work
+      in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and work again from
+      one till five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the work itself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't muscularly exhausting&mdash;not at all. They couldn't give me a
+      heavier job because I wasn't good enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what will you do? I want to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I left,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;I was 'on' what they call over there a
+      'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
+      what I'll be sent back to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is it?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs explained. &ldquo;It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
+      zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
+      circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a
+      certain angle&mdash;and yet I was a very bad hand at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+      paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have known
+      it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do that all day long?&rdquo; she asked, and as he nodded, &ldquo;It seems
+      incredible!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
+      nine hours a day! No wonder&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off, and then, after a keen
+      glance at his face, she said: &ldquo;I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
+      hand at it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed ruefully. &ldquo;I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say
+      it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+      rhythmical crashing&mdash;a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute&mdash;a little
+      more than one a second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're close to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,&rdquo; he said, turning to her more
+      gaily. &ldquo;The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
+      have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing&mdash;I flinch
+      and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it.
+      I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
+      back. They used to laugh at me all day long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on
+      the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She was
+      staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you,&rdquo; she said, in a
+      low voice. &ldquo;No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
+      leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
+      published for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you SEE him?&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in his
+      voice. &ldquo;If he could understand what you're saying&mdash;and if you can
+      imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up posters
+      all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a Punch!' No.
+      It's just as well he never got the&mdash;But what's the use? I've never
+      written anything worth printing, and I never shall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't,&rdquo; said BIBBS, honestly. &ldquo;I never could&mdash;but you're the
+      kindest lady in this world, Miss Vertrees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+      &ldquo;That sounds wrong,&rdquo; she said, impulsively. &ldquo;I mean 'Miss Vertrees.' I've
+      thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't you
+      rather call me 'Mary'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't you?&rdquo; she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I CAN!&rdquo; he said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that's very pretty!&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;You're such an honest person, it's
+      pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.&rdquo; She became
+      grave again immediately. &ldquo;I hear myself laughing as if it were some one
+      else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.&rdquo; She got up
+      restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him.
+      &ldquo;You've GOT to go back to that place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other time you did it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just over it,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of a
+      repetition so much as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much as what?&rdquo; she prompted, as he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked up at her shyly. &ldquo;I want to say it, but&mdash;but I come to a
+      dead balk when I try. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on. Say it, whatever it is,&rdquo; she bade him. &ldquo;You wouldn't know how to
+      say anything I shouldn't like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say,&rdquo; he returned,
+      moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet&mdash;he seemed
+      to feel awkward, thoroughly. &ldquo;You see, all my life&mdash;until I met you&mdash;if
+      I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying things is a
+      new trick for me, and this&mdash;well, it's just this: I used to feel as
+      if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been of use to
+      anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself, except a kind of
+      haphazard thinking. But now it's different&mdash;I'm still of no use to
+      anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful, but I have had
+      something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy experience, and it
+      makes my life seem to be&mdash;I mean I'm glad I've lived it! That's all;
+      it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have, this strange,
+      beautiful, happy little while!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to
+      say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not speak,
+      but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to
+      her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet
+      that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. &ldquo;If you
+      think it has been&mdash;happy&mdash;to be friends with me&mdash;you'd want
+      to&mdash;to make it last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he gulped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to evade her. &ldquo;Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. &ldquo;You said what you did
+      because you think the shop's going to kill you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do think that!&rdquo; She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+      before him. &ldquo;Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+      Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm a
+      friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said&mdash;and
+      you did mean it, I know it!&mdash;you're not going to go back to the
+      sanitarium. The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid
+      in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I mean THAT much to you,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;they can't harm you! Go back to
+      the shop&mdash;but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
+      machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
+      that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stumbled to his feet. &ldquo;You say&mdash;&rdquo; he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every evening, dear Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could only stare, bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!&rdquo; And she held out
+      her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. &ldquo;If I
+      could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
+      remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is done&mdash;won't
+      the night make up for the day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of
+      kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, &ldquo;To think you're there&mdash;with
+      me&mdash;standing beside the old zinc-eater&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it
+      meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father
+      sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before him.
+      &ldquo;I'm cured, father,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When do I go back to the shop? I'm ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The desolate and grim old man did not relax. &ldquo;I was sittin' up to give you
+      a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time! I just
+      wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take you over
+      there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you just one
+      more day. Well, you got to it before I did&mdash;pretty close to the
+      eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the month.
+      Think you can get up in time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Six o'clock,&rdquo; Bibbs responded, briskly. &ldquo;And I want to tell you&mdash;I'm
+      going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's YOUR lookout!&rdquo; his father grunted. &ldquo;They'll put you back on the
+      clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than I'm worth, too,&rdquo; said Bibbs, cheerily. &ldquo;That reminds me, I
+      didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;G'night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+      inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring
+      angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could be heard
+      descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression
+      and the state of her toilette being those of a person who, after trying
+      unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for burglars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; she exclaimed, drowsily. &ldquo;Why'n't you go to bed? It must be goin'
+      on 'leven o'clock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the
+      fire. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+      sluggishly with each other in her voice. &ldquo;I knew you were worried all
+      dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein' taken
+      away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She jeered feebly. &ldquo;N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same as he did before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just pre-CISELY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&mdash;how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?&rdquo; she asked,
+      timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until he KNOWS something!&rdquo; The unhappy man struck his palms together,
+      then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
+      talked. &ldquo;He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
+      in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
+      it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn
+      it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went there I had
+      'em set him on the simplest machine we got&mdash;and he stuck there! How
+      much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole business if
+      he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there to make him
+      THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's whole life,
+      there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against everything I
+      want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be worked out of
+      him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what it was when we
+      were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles, the man that can
+      manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself. Well, I set Bibbs
+      to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE set himself to balk on
+      the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's lasted close on to three
+      years. If he balks again I'm just done with him! Sometimes I feel like I
+      was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew there was something else,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a
+      yawn. &ldquo;You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now&mdash;'less
+      you'll tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose something happened to Roscoe,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;THEN what'd I have to
+      look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
+      lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
+      groove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roscoe?&rdquo; she yawned. &ldquo;You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
+      strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
+      he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better go
+      up to bed, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
+      means, keepin' property together these days&mdash;just keepin' it ALIVE,
+      let alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
+      away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves come
+      out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off for
+      themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night and
+      day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen a big
+      fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone&mdash;there wasn't even a
+      dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again. My
+      Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like I
+      deserved it&mdash;no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
+      have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
+      to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+      bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays&mdash;a
+      man's got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes,
+      'd make you think the millennium had come&mdash;but right the next breath
+      you'll hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
+      'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
+      goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but
+      it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been fillin' up
+      with it from all over the world for a good many years, and the old
+      camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it used to be.
+      Nothin's what it used to be&mdash;everything's turned up from the bottom,
+      and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's an awful
+      ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin' to keep your
+      balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like bugs on the
+      bottom of a board&mdash;after any piece o' money they hear is loose. Fool
+      schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst! You
+      got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And the woods are
+      full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto: 'Get the other
+      fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's built as I have,
+      when he's built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper&mdash;THOSE
+      are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit
+      of it and put their names to it! And what's the use of my havin' ever been
+      born, if such a thing as that is goin' to happen? What's the use of my
+      havin' worked my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be
+      dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in the ground?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating&mdash;little regarding
+      the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
+      thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. &ldquo;You think this is a
+      time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was
+      such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is
+      despoiled while he sleeps&mdash;yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
+      eat him before he wakes!&mdash;but the live man can build straight up till
+      he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
+      soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
+      Sunday to go fishin'&mdash;it's turmoil! turmoil!&mdash;and you got to go
+      out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a
+      dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son
+      Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out
+      and do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense,&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+      irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. &ldquo;There isn't anything
+      goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
+      nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan halted. &ldquo;All right, mamma,&rdquo; he said, with a vast sigh. &ldquo;Let's go
+      up.&rdquo; And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you speak to Roscoe?&rdquo; she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+      drowsiness. &ldquo;Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I will to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+      Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the fourth
+      day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine in the
+      morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Sheridan, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then
+      walked away, smiling bitterly. &ldquo;Boh!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Still at it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What about
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,&rdquo; his father returned. &ldquo;I'd
+      bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I would!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better do it,&rdquo; Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When'd you begin this thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours&mdash;until the
+      other day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan began cutting. &ldquo;It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
+      office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and
+      he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You been
+      leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks. I
+      been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't done any
+      work, to count, in a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. &ldquo;It's all true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you goin' to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. &ldquo;I can't stand very much
+      talk about it, father,&rdquo; he said, pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; Sheridan cried. &ldquo;Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?&rdquo;
+       He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. &ldquo;I can't stand to
+      talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
+      what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't straighten me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Can you go back to your office and stay sober
+      to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple o'
+      huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand if
+      they see you tryin' to take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't worry about that,&rdquo; said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+      resentment. &ldquo;I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you got?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll see about that!&rdquo; said Sheridan, harshly. &ldquo;Now I can't fool with you
+      to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my office. You
+      bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last Sunday&mdash;but
+      you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the women-folks are
+      workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober till then? You
+      better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie down to your office
+      every little while, and he'll let me know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe paused at the door. &ldquo;You told Abercrombie about it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TOLD him!&rdquo; And Sheridan laughed hideously. &ldquo;Do you suppose there's an
+      elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  &ldquo;WHO looks a mustang in the eye?<br />
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!&rdquo;
+ </div></div>
+    <p>
+      So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+      because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that the
+      uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the
+      afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing
+      and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling
+      improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash
+      with vocal imitations:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Fearless and bold,<br />
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!<br />
+  With a leap from the ground<br />
+  To the saddle in a bound,<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; And away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!<br />
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; NIGHT'S on the way<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; EACH time I say,<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was
+      thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything
+      was implacably in motion&mdash;nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied
+      eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy
+      instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea to
+      faintness. But he felt neither now. &ldquo;ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY THOUGHTS TO
+      YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS BESIDE YOU.&rdquo; He saw
+      her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place became suffused with
+      radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop; he was still a poet
+      there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!<br />
+    &nbsp; Wild are his eyes,<br />
+    &nbsp; Fiercely he dies!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAH!<br />
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!<br />
+    &nbsp; Ready to fling<br />
+    &nbsp; Our gloves in the ring&mdash;<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+      Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+      standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded to
+      those nearest him&mdash;he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of
+      them&mdash;but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily,
+      never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical
+      programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if you don't
+      try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's right&mdash;YOU'LL
+      never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a nice, shiny
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+      Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: &ldquo;Talkin' to himself! By George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs returned to song:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!<br />
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?<br />
+    &nbsp; &nbsp; Fearless and bo&mdash;
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      His father grasped him by the arm. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Let ME show you
+      how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n
+      you used to be, but that's no way to handle&mdash;Get out the way and let
+      me show you once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better be careful,&rdquo; Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Careful? Boh!&rdquo; Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. &ldquo;What you
+      talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so abused
+      you're goin' wrong in the head?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Abused'? No!&rdquo; shouted Bibbs. &ldquo;I was SINGING&mdash;because I 'like it'! I
+      told you I'd come back and 'like it.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply, but
+      began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it awkwardly&mdash;and
+      with bad results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin'
+      to it, if you put your mind on it.&rdquo; By his own showing then his mind was
+      not upon it. He continued to talk. &ldquo;All you got to look out for is to keep
+      it pressed over to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't run your hand up with it,&rdquo; Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run nothin'! You GOT to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+      forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and the
+      zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers. He
+      swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops over
+      himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch
+      my bag. It's in my machine, outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor still
+      grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin. Sheridan
+      had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at his son as
+      the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go on back to your work,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've had worse snips than that
+      from a pencil-sharpener.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, you haven't!&rdquo; said Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, too!&rdquo; Sheridan retorted, angrily. &ldquo;Bibbs, you go on back to your
+      work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc Gurney
+      tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs a little
+      court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back on your
+      job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HERE!&rdquo; Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door. &ldquo;You
+      watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I
+      slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you&mdash;YOU'RE liable to get
+      your whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo; And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+      outside, where conversation was possible. &ldquo;I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
+      have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you
+      for a drive and leave you at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. &ldquo;He wants me to
+      take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much
+      harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks have
+      got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your house!
+      But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half shut&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, &ldquo;that's what they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's made
+      the difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the machine,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I've made a friend of it. I serenade it
+      and talk to it, and then it talks back to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, indeed? What does it say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I want to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+      repeatedly. &ldquo;Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take the
+      time off that he allowed for the examination, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till
+      five o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that,&rdquo; Bibbs said, thoughtfully; &ldquo;but the zinc-eater
+      doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being in
+      business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be
+      content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do beat the devil!&rdquo; exclaimed Gurney. &ldquo;Your father's right when he
+      tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing
+      when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm
+      off. Go on back to your murdering old machine.&rdquo; He climbed into his car,
+      which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately in
+      motion. &ldquo;Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him not
+      to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he didn't
+      pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show you how
+      to do something you were already doing a great deal better than he could.
+      You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the dressing
+      to-morrow morning. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than
+      change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of its
+      kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was rebellious
+      and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability only by means of
+      horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he appeared at the
+      dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which he seemed to regard
+      as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon the subject evidently
+      struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan, having been unable to
+      contain her solicitude several times during the day, and having been
+      checked each time in a manner that blanched her cheek, hastened to warn
+      Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to omit any reference to the
+      injury and to avoid even looking at the sling if they possibly could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
+      arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and the
+      members of the family were all seated at the table within two minutes
+      after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
+      awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as
+      she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that
+      of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent. Roscoe looked
+      ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive. Bibbs
+      had more color than any of these, and there was a strange brightness, like
+      a light, upon his face. It was curious to see anything so happy in the
+      tense gloom of that household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never
+      once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance,
+      heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like
+      Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself
+      with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting it
+      to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father gazed
+      heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and between
+      Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed
+      continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing
+      during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?&rdquo; his mother asked, in the
+      effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you go to church this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You THINK so! Don't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just down the street. It's brick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the sermon about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you hear me?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I asked you what the sermon was about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He roused himself. &ldquo;I think it was about&mdash;&rdquo; He frowned, seeming to
+      concentrate his will to recollect. &ldquo;I think it was about something in the
+      Bible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean
+      upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. &ldquo;He don't know they WAS any
+      suhmon!&rdquo; he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue. &ldquo;All he
+      know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!&rdquo; George was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?&rdquo; Sibyl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;No, I didn't go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh?&rdquo; Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry,
+      and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. &ldquo;OH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that
+      completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to
+      other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the
+      library, but was not well received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks,&rdquo; Sheridan
+      commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs retreated. &ldquo;Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+      mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+      according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her
+      feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room,
+      examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs.
+      Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively
+      of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that she
+      thought it &ldquo;right pretty,&rdquo; and followed it with one of the former and the
+      same remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+      doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead,
+      he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the
+      room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing
+      after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy. He made it
+      perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions and that it
+      had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+      curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's another right pretty record,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting&mdash;with
+      patent nervousness&mdash;not to hear. And she unloosed the music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a
+      little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold
+      chair, with his eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did Edith go?&rdquo; she asked, curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith?&rdquo; he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. &ldquo;Is she gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing,
+      still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was
+      suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp
+      excitement. She listened intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+      library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+      husky: &ldquo;I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well
+      let me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+      protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started another
+      record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She
+      walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
+      instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+      foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so
+      white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences
+      became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and
+      contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit just as you were&mdash;both of you!&rdquo; she said. And then to Edith:
+      &ldquo;Did you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You march out of here!&rdquo; said Edith, fiercely. &ldquo;March straight out of
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good God!&rdquo; Lamhorn said. &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You knew that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HUSH!&rdquo; he begged, panic-stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
+      come&mdash;you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to
+      say! You were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand
+      times before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!&rdquo; she stormed. &ldquo;You
+      wouldn't even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat!
+      And SHE told my husband! You're a MAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+      Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to
+      her feelings. &ldquo;Get out of this house!&rdquo; she shrieked. &ldquo;This is my father's
+      house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! No! I mustn't SPEAK&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you DARE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+      fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled and
+      rose and cracked&mdash;they screeched. They could be heard over the noise
+      of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could be
+      heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could have
+      been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told my husband!&rdquo; screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+      Edith's. &ldquo;You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike
+      me with! HE did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's TIME
+      your husband&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. &ldquo;Do you want the neighbors
+      in?&rdquo; Sheridan thundered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his
+      mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved
+      slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the
+      hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily,
+      his eyes on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NOW THEN!&rdquo; said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the vicious
+      gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction
+      of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and
+      Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They
+      fled lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa!&rdquo; wailed Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't to
+      been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of
+      the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. &ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; he
+      repeated. &ldquo;You goin' to leave my house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will NOT!&rdquo; sobbed Edith. &ldquo;Don't you DARE order him out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you bother, dear,&rdquo; said Lamhorn, quietly. &ldquo;He doesn't understand.
+      YOU mustn't be troubled.&rdquo; Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very
+      handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught eyes
+      a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels&mdash;the
+      rabble being enacted by her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't come back, either!&rdquo; said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+      impersonation. &ldquo;Keep off the premises!&rdquo; he called savagely into the hall.
+      &ldquo;This family's through with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is NOT!&rdquo; Edith cried, breaking from her mother. &ldquo;You'll SEE about
+      that! You'll find out! You'll find out what'll happen! What's HE done? I
+      guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's HE
+      done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you s'pose
+      he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he
+      flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it was before he
+      met ME! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything, anyway&mdash;he
+      never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be serious, and she
+      was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long ago he cared about
+      me, but she kept persecuting him and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Sheridan, sternly; &ldquo;that's HIS side of it! That'll do! He
+      doesn't come in this house again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look out!&rdquo; Edith cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on
+      the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie look up
+      this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count on earth!
+      He's no good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was George
+      Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, papa,&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan began, &ldquo;if Edie says it was all Sibyl's fault,
+      makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'S enough!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;He keeps off these premises! And if any of you so
+      much as ever speak his name to me again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound
+      of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother.
+      However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her
+      husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her
+      pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She locked her door,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. &ldquo;She
+      wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said her husband, &ldquo;she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks
+      to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow&mdash;Here!
+      You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders. No,
+      you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better not,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father glared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Mother, when you were in love with father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My goodness!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+      that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith feels about him just what you did about father,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;And
+      if YOUR father had told you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!&rdquo; she declared, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;What
+      is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her see him all she wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a&mdash;&rdquo; Sheridan gave it up. &ldquo;I don't know what to call you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her see him all she wants,&rdquo; Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. &ldquo;You're up
+      against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling you'd have
+      a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your determination,
+      father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll beat you. You can't
+      keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does
+      now. You can't make her think less of him, either. Nobody can. Your only
+      chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go
+      easy she probably will. Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's
+      just what you don't want, and as you DON'T want it, you'd better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't stand any more!&rdquo; Sheridan burst out. &ldquo;If it's come to BIBBS
+      advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that
+      nigger George? Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family.
+      Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'!
+      Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, &ldquo;if you haven't got anything to do, you might
+      step over and take Sibyl's wraps home&mdash;she left 'em in the hall. I
+      don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo; And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and delivered
+      them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only, &ldquo;Forgot these,&rdquo;
+       and, &ldquo;Good night, Roscoe,&rdquo; cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the
+      New House. His mother and father were still talking in the library, but
+      with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there
+      he proceeded to write in his note-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+<div class="blok"><p>
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love&mdash;nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train&mdash;hatreds and jealousies&mdash;all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?</p>
+
+<p>   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!</p>
+
+<p>   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness&mdash;it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured&mdash;the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.</p>
+
+<p>   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.</p>
+
+<p>   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.</p>
+
+<p>   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning &ldquo;Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted.&rdquo;  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting&mdash;always there&mdash;for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?</p>
+
+<p>   Dawn and the sea&mdash;music in moonlit gardens&mdash;nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom&mdash;what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what</p> it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+      somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own
+      (and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to sleep
+      soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of affairs
+      of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote, &ldquo;Who would
+      wake from such a dream as this?&rdquo; Bibbs was a sympathetic person, easily
+      touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all things outside of it
+      were veiled and remote&mdash;for that is the way of youth in a dream. And
+      Bibbs, who had never before been of any age, either old or young, had come
+      to his youth at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+      down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of
+      soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile at
+      the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr. Gurney's,
+      but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist. And when he was once
+      more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater he whistled and sang to it,
+      as other workmen did to their own machines sometimes, when things went
+      well. His comrades in the shop glanced at him amusedly now and then. They
+      liked him, and he ate his lunch at noon with a group of Socialists who
+      approved of his ideas and talked of electing him to their association.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles
+      blew. When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested
+      himself of his overalls&mdash;his single divergence from the routine of
+      his fellow-workmen&mdash;and after that he used soap and water copiously.
+      This was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather
+      frail young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the
+      pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the
+      point of elegance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and boys
+      and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many hurried
+      and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one another, and
+      Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught sight
+      of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost passed her,
+      for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not recognize her,
+      though his shoulder actually touched hers. He would have gone by, but she
+      laughed delightedly; and he stopped short, startled. Two boys, one chasing
+      the other, swept between them, and Bibbs stood still, peering about him in
+      deep perplexity. She leaned toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew YOU!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; cried Bibbs. &ldquo;I thought it was your voice coming out of a
+      star!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only smoke overhead,&rdquo; said Mary, and laughed again. &ldquo;There aren't
+      any stars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, there were&mdash;when you laughed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his arm, and they went on. &ldquo;I've come to walk home with you,
+      Bibbs. I wanted to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But were you here in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have&mdash;you
+      ought to know better. What did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only waited about twelve seconds,&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;I'd just got here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was in this part of town already,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;At least, I was only
+      seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd have
+      had to go home alone&mdash;and I preferred going home with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's pretty beautiful for me,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with a deep breath. &ldquo;You'll
+      never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness&mdash;and then
+      to&mdash;to see you standing there! Oh, it was like&mdash;it was like&mdash;how
+      can I TELL you what it was like?&rdquo; They had passed beyond the crowd now,
+      and a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again
+      she was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
+      vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
+      had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
+      was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his solicitude
+      for her took another turn. &ldquo;I think you ought to have a car,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in winter,
+      anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I don't think I'd care for one particularly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would.&rdquo; Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. &ldquo;I think in
+      winter you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she interrupted, lightly. &ldquo;I don't need&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
+      for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl likes to walk, too,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Let me tell you where I've been
+      this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
+      home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
+      He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
+      mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
+      I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see more of
+      them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever painted; I
+      don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in his life. He
+      gives drawing-lessons to keep alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean he paints the smoke?&rdquo; Bibbs asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the street&mdash;anywhere.
+      He just paints what's around him&mdash;and it's beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The smoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs of
+      cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and smoky
+      sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow columns of
+      smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing with the hazy
+      light in the distance; and he has others with the broken sky-line of
+      down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of vapor that have
+      colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take you there some
+      Sunday afternoon, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're showing me the town,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't know what was in it at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are workers in beauty here,&rdquo; she told him, gently. &ldquo;There are other
+      painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+      'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of it
+      that shows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beauty-workers seem buried very deep,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;And I imagine
+      that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest of
+      all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one of your
+      friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't get one
+      of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible&mdash;unless he could
+      use it for an advertisement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And really he's the town. They ARE buried
+      pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet it's all wonderful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's wonderful to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the town is wonderful to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city is
+      only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than the
+      horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater all
+      day long, helping me. Mary&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped with a gasp. &ldquo;That's the
+      first time I've called you 'Mary'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; She laughed, a little tremuously. &ldquo;Though I wanted you to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk
+      home with me. That must be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women like to have things said,&rdquo; Mary informed him, her tremulous
+      laughter continuing. &ldquo;Were you glad I came for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+      and up&mdash;over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way
+      most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person I
+      was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at all. It
+      seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly&mdash;somebody else&mdash;somebody
+      I don't understand now, a coward afraid of shadows&mdash;afraid of things
+      that didn't exist&mdash;afraid of my old zinc-eater! And now I'm only
+      afraid of what might change anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment, and then, &ldquo;You're happy, Bibbs?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don't you see?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I want it to last for a thousand, thousand
+      years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I wouldn't have
+      one thing different&mdash;nothing, nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Bibbs!&rdquo; she said, and laughed happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
+      after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
+      decided that he was &ldquo;a member of the family&rdquo;; but he appeared to have
+      relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy&mdash;he
+      was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days in
+      the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence&mdash;he
+      seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware
+      that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
+      imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
+      Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen
+      Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer wandered into
+      storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened. He was
+      sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but
+      their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
+      not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
+      days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
+      frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or no,
+      Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
+      information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
+      Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why
+      the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as of
+      yore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was not delirious&mdash;she was a thin little ego writhing and
+      shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+      herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of that
+      of a child after a bad bruise&mdash;there must be screaming and telling
+      mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
+      hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
+      end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to let me die!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;It's cruel not to let me die! What
+      harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive? Just look
+      at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what
+      that got me into!&mdash;look where I am now! He brought me to this town,
+      and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't even know
+      the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING! I had nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing
+      in the world! I wanted to have a good time&mdash;and how could I? Where's
+      any good time among these Sheridans? They never even had wine on the
+      table! I thought I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet
+      attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and go to dances&mdash;and,
+      oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did the best I could; I did,
+      indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every woman's got a right to
+      live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were just beginning to look
+      brighter&mdash;we'd moved up here, and that frozen crowd across the street
+      were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd have started us with the
+      right people&mdash;and then I saw how Edith was getting him away from me.
+      She did it, too! She got him! A girl with money can do that to a married
+      woman&mdash;yes, she can, every time! And what could I do? What can any
+      woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand it&mdash;and I
+      couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle&mdash;that Vertrees girl&mdash;and
+      she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt her. It
+      wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT little! She treated me as
+      if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take the trouble to sweep out of
+      her house! Let her WAIT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky whisper,
+      though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half upright, and the
+      nurse restrained her. &ldquo;I'd get up out of this bed to show her she can't do
+      such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and she walked out and left
+      me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket
+      was fairly underground, and she thinks she's landed that poor loon&mdash;but
+      she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able to walk across the street again
+      I'll show her how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help!
+      It wouldn't have hurt her any&mdash;it wouldn't&mdash;it wouldn't. And
+      Edith needn't have told what she told Roscoe&mdash;it wouldn't have hurt
+      her to let me alone. And HE told her I bored him&mdash;telephoning him I
+      wanted to see him. He needn't have done it! He needn't&mdash;needn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion, though she would
+      go over it all again as soon as her strength returned. She lay panting.
+      Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway, &ldquo;Don't come
+      in, Roscoe,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;I don't want to see you.&rdquo; And as he turned
+      away she added, &ldquo;I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she
+      had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the disadvantage
+      of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp
+      tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to telephoning
+      Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary
+      distraction over a counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
+      whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+      separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
+      the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like
+      legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly fuel
+      by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool, and thus
+      set her on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
+      father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence had
+      done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing fast,
+      she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she went away;
+      it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not think always
+      of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little. She had written to
+      a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in apartments&mdash;and
+      a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring peace. Sheridan
+      shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a
+      Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and having kissed
+      everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have kissed Bibbs, but
+      he failed to realize that the day of her departure had arrived, and was
+      surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that evening, to find her
+      gone. &ldquo;I suppose they'll be maried there,&rdquo; he said, casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+      fuming. &ldquo;Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I
+      don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
+      are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept away
+      from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business. For
+      Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
+      sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
+      excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
+      wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
+      had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had the
+      habit of gesture; he could not &ldquo;take time to remember,&rdquo; he said, that he
+      must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his hurt; he
+      refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+      Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which the
+      doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before the appointed
+      time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom&mdash;there was
+      a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's office. The door was
+      slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the latter all Sheridan's,
+      and Gurney listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!&rdquo; he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+      breaking into thunder, &ldquo;I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick! You'd
+      lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his hind leg
+      at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what if it is?
+      There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to keep OUR money
+      tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a
+      crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a little skeery! You
+      listen to every street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try
+      to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on this&mdash;understand? I tell
+      you there never WAS better times. These are good times and big times, and
+      I won't stand for any other kind o' talk. This country's on its feet as it
+      never was before, and this city's on its feet and goin' to stay there!&rdquo;
+       And Gurney heard a series of whacks and thumps upon the desk. &ldquo;'Bad
+      times'!&rdquo; Sheridan vociferated, with accompanying thumps. &ldquo;Rabbit talk!
+      These times are glorious, I tell you! We're in the promised land, and
+      we're goin' to STAY there! That's all, gentlemen. The loan goes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened in.
+      His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his right
+      hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage as best
+      he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of Roscoe and
+      Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile reception.
+      But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic command Roscoe
+      awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the New House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney says your wife's able to travel,&rdquo; Sheridan said brusquely, as he
+      came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude which
+      had become his habit. &ldquo;Yes, she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I wouldn't put it that way,&rdquo; Roscoe protested, drearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I hear YOU wouldn't!&rdquo; There was a bitter gibe in the father's voice,
+      and he added: &ldquo;It's a good thing she's goin' abroad&mdash;if she'll stay
+      there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more&mdash;you least
+      of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use your talking that way,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;You won't do any good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, when are you comin' back to your office?&rdquo; Sheridan used a brisker,
+      kinder tone. &ldquo;Three weeks since you showed up there at all. When you goin'
+      to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the foolishness and
+      start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a lot o' lost time and
+      a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself out o' the way and lets
+      you and all the rest of us alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
+      you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute before you talk that way!&rdquo; Sheridan began his sentry-go up
+      and down the room. &ldquo;I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good men
+      about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin' right
+      again, down in your office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be good men.&rdquo; Roscoe nodded indifferently. &ldquo;I thought I was
+      doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty men
+      drive harder'n I do, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with 'em.
+      They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use the rest of
+      their lives. The last's my case, I guess&mdash;'complicated by domestic
+      difficulties'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You set there and tell me you give up?&rdquo; Sheridan's voice shook, and so
+      did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
+      despondent figure. &ldquo;Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
+      down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
+      more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
+      you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
+      fastened on you yet. Don't say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use on earth,&rdquo; Roscoe mumbled. &ldquo;No use on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here! If you want another month's vacation&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney!&rdquo; Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. &ldquo;It's Gurney, Gurney,
+      Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+      everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
+      doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get its
+      Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
+      blattin'&mdash;'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
+      NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
+      emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
+      chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's the
+      matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and Work's
+      the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; Sheridan bellowed. &ldquo;I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel like
+      shootin' anybody that says it to me!&rdquo; He fumed and chafed, swearing
+      indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. &ldquo;Look here; do you think
+      you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+      outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at your
+      age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it's mine, and it's enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit there!
+      I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket, and all
+      you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right here,
+      you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and what
+      would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from now?
+      Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd either
+      get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be split up and&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room, and stood silent a
+      moment. Then he said, solemnly: &ldquo;Listen. If you go out now, you leave me
+      in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth to depend on but your
+      brother&mdash;and you know what he is. I've depended on you for it ALL
+      since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor, and he says maybe
+      you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that certainly you won't
+      be for a year or so&mdash;probably more. Now, that's all a lie. Men don't
+      break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell you, you can shake
+      this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and a little gumption. Men
+      don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING businesses like
+      ours&mdash;they lose the strings. And if you could, I won't let you&mdash;if
+      you lay down on me now, I won't&mdash;and that's because if you lay down
+      you prove you ain't the man I thought you were.&rdquo; He cleared his throat and
+      finished quietly: &ldquo;Roscoe, will you take a month's vacation and come back
+      and go to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Roscoe, listlessly. &ldquo;I'm through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a table,
+      went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
+      &ldquo;Best I can do,&rdquo; he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. &ldquo;I
+      figure it out a good deal like this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't KNOW my job was
+      any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur&mdash;from what I
+      hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and the&mdash;the
+      trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I am. I tried
+      to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on whiskey&mdash;and
+      that put the finish to me! I&mdash;I'm not hitting it as hard as I was for
+      a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a little more
+      energy, I better try to quit entirely&mdash;I don't know. I'm all in&mdash;and
+      the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a few months
+      ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know it. Now, then,
+      I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you I wouldn't speak of her
+      as 'that woman,' because she's your daughter-in-law and going to stay that
+      way. She didn't do anything wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny
+      it, to find what she had done&mdash;encouraging that fellow to hang around
+      her after he began trying to flirt with her, and losing her head over him
+      the way she did. I don't deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a
+      hurt inside of me I'll never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't
+      understand a woman's nature.&rdquo; Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and
+      desolate earnest. &ldquo;A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting
+      attractive people, and traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things,
+      but I can give her the traveling&mdash;real traveling, not just going to
+      Atlantic City or New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman
+      has to have something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I
+      was. I never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and
+      I believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+      about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's all.
+      I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was so busy
+      with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her, I was so
+      busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us to&mdash;and
+      now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do when
+      anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me dizzy&mdash;it
+      makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had to go down-town
+      and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the floor, deathly sick.
+      You talk about a 'month's vacation'&mdash;and I get just as sick. I'm
+      rattled&mdash;I can't plan&mdash;I haven't got any plans&mdash;can't make
+      any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as I
+      can&mdash;and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His father rustled the paper. &ldquo;I said good-by, Roscoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; said Roscoe, listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then
+      he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Bibbs got home from work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mist' Bibbs? No, suh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon the
+      newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond their
+      explanatory rubrics&mdash;there was nothing unusual or startling to
+      concentrate his attention:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  &ldquo;Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Burglars Make Big Haul.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Plan New Eighteen-story Structure.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;School-girl Meets Death under Automobile.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes Action by Coroner.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to     Governor in Church Rioting Case.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our<br />
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No<br />
+    European City Holds Candle.&rdquo; (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+      &ldquo;Well, father, did you want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Sit down.&rdquo; Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire,
+      holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came within seven of the shop record to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I handled more
+      strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest to me is
+      sixteen behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. &ldquo;What'd I tell you? I'd
+      like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you there&mdash;I
+      would just like to hear him! And you&mdash;ain't you ashamed of makin'
+      such a fuss about it? Ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time,&rdquo; Bibbs said,
+      smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. &ldquo;I didn't know
+      the difference it meant to like a thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
+      HAVE! I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
+      hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+      Ain't that so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks like it!&rdquo; Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead o'
+      hurting you, it's been the makin' of you&mdash;physically. You're a good
+      inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am if you'd
+      get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little. Physically,
+      it's started you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole family. Now,
+      then, mentally&mdash;that's different. I don't say it unkindly, Bibbs, but
+      you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like what's begun
+      physically. And I'm goin' to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his
+      son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. &ldquo;I got plans
+      for you, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. &ldquo;I&mdash;I'm all
+      right now, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen.&rdquo; Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of
+      a reasonable man reasoning. &ldquo;Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow
+      to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been
+      expectin' it some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll be
+      frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever called
+      you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of your life.
+      Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to use it. You
+      got will-power, I'll say that for you. I never knew boy or man that could
+      be stubborner&mdash;never one in my life! Now, then, you've showed you
+      could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop, in no time at
+      all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other things. I don't
+      deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't deny that, at all. Well,
+      that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as it looks. You're all
+      I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't as poor material as I
+      thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within seven strips of the shop's
+      record to-day looks to me like encouragin' information brought in at just
+      about the right time. Now, then, I'm goin' to give you a raise. I wanted
+      to send you straight on up through the shops&mdash;a year or two, maybe&mdash;but
+      I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's laid
+      down on me. If he ever comes back at all, he'll be a long time pickin' up
+      the strings, and, anyway, he ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count
+      on him. I got to have SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to
+      this: you're my last chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains
+      you got and see if we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin'
+      to put my time in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME,
+      and I won't be hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin'
+      to do the big thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the
+      big thing for me, in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the
+      shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over ahead
+      of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal to your
+      ambition that'll make you dizzy!&rdquo; He tapped his son on the knee again.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm goin' to make you a
+      director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to make you vice-president
+      of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust Company!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. &ldquo;Yes, sir!
+      And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+      vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+      directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop&mdash;oh, I
+      know you did!&mdash;but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so
+      right now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you to, I
+      deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger and bigger
+      every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand I deal you. I'm
+      startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't&mdash;I don't&mdash;I don't want it!&rdquo; Bibbs stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd you say?&rdquo; Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want it, father. I thank you&mdash;I do thank you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked perplexed. &ldquo;What's the matter with you? Didn't you
+      understand what I was tellin' you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know! But I can't take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you?&rdquo; Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+      &ldquo;Your head feel funny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never been quite so sane in my life,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;as I have lately.
+      And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right life. I'm
+      earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages are enough. I
+      don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damnation!&rdquo; Sheridan sprang up. &ldquo;You've turned Socialist! You been
+      listening to those fellows down there, and you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+      &ldquo;Then what is it? What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; his son returned, nervously. &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;except that I'm
+      content. I don't want to change anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. &ldquo;I'll tell you, father,
+      if I can. I know it may be hard to understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think it may be,&rdquo; said Sheridan, grimly. &ldquo;What you say usually is
+      a LITTLE that way. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at
+      every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream&mdash;a
+      rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and
+      made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his
+      eyes lowered. &ldquo;You weren't altogether right about the shop&mdash;that is,
+      in one way you weren't, father.&rdquo; He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan
+      stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.
+      &ldquo;That's difficult to explain,&rdquo; Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again,
+      to follow the tracings of his finger. &ldquo;I&mdash;I believe the shop might
+      have done for me this time if I hadn't&mdash;if something hadn't helped me
+      to&mdash;oh, not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy
+      in it. I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I
+      don't want, I don't want to live a business life&mdash;I don't want to be
+      drawn into it. I don't think it IS living&mdash;and now I AM living. I
+      have the healthful toil&mdash;and I can think. In business as important as
+      yours I couldn't think anything but business. I don't&mdash;I don't think
+      making money is worth while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;You think
+      this city is rich and powerful&mdash;but what's the use of its being rich
+      and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools
+      because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they used
+      to because some people&mdash;not rich and powerful people&mdash;have
+      thought the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been
+      reading the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught
+      anything except what would help them to make money. You said it was
+      wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live.
+      When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's
+      the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has
+      meant really going ahead&mdash;it's just been getting bigger and dirtier
+      and noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when
+      it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an
+      utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics
+      just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman that
+      not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and
+      dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it?
+      And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time,
+      and was always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep
+      clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house
+      altogether unpeaceful and unlivable&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just one minute!&rdquo; Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy,
+      &ldquo;If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
+      whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon any
+      subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you mention
+      one single time when you were proved to be right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, &ldquo;If
+      I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm right
+      about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring
+      up my average.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
+      probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been
+      balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do,
+      you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now&mdash;and yet I
+      can't seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I
+      said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of this
+      country. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be a part of it,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with unwonted decision. &ldquo;I
+      want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went down
+      there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money enough to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. &ldquo;You've never had
+      to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me
+      remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty
+      fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these
+      noisy housekeepers&mdash;me, for instance&mdash;decided to let you do your
+      own housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm earning nine dollars a week,&rdquo; said Bibbs, sturdily. &ldquo;It's enough. I
+      shouldn't mind at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My work!&rdquo; Bibbs answered. &ldquo;And I've done so well on that clipping-machine
+      I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job.
+      I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a
+      trade than be in business&mdash;I should, infinitely!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!&rdquo; But Sheridan
+      struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+      controlling it. &ldquo;You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+      either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning&mdash;or&mdash;you
+      can go to plumbing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently. &ldquo;I can get along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. &ldquo;O God,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a
+      week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for him?&rdquo;
+       Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of
+      dismissal. &ldquo;Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a
+      whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated
+      the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick
+      for over two years&mdash;and now, when I offer to take you out of it and
+      give you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy!
+      You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit,
+      and one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had a
+      crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First morning
+      he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out
+      into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' That's what
+      you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the pretty
+      dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust! Well,
+      mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are, I'll take
+      you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you&mdash;yes, and
+      I'll lam you, if I got to&mdash;until I've made something out of you
+      that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while I'm able to
+      stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin' at you till
+      they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't let me hear
+      from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked up, you poor,
+      pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for
+      once; but there was more than that&mdash;he seemed to be startled by his
+      father's last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm
+      nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the
+      consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of
+      Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading Maurice
+      Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet
+      might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose through the
+      glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And
+      while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights as these,
+      all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve to break the
+      spell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and
+      Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to
+      discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever
+      there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were
+      together, and it was light, she looked at him all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+      little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+      said: &ldquo;There's something I want to read over. This:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her&mdash;that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You boy!&rdquo; said Mary, not very clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;But it's true&mdash;especially my knees!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You boy!&rdquo; she murmured again, blushing charmingly. &ldquo;You might read
+      another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking
+      into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it&mdash;I can give it to
+      you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works&mdash;and going to stay one,
+      unless I have to decide to study plumbing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; She shook her head. &ldquo;You love and want what's beautiful and delicate
+      and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always
+      wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had
+      ever known, and that's what you were wistful for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or
+      two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. &ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I
+      wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here I am!&rdquo; she laughed, completely understanding. &ldquo;I think we're
+      like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough
+      Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told
+      everybody that the devil was dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn't, though,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room
+      began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. &ldquo;He gets
+      into the clock whenever I'm with you.&rdquo; And, sighing deeply he rose to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're always very prompt about leaving me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I try to be,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+      everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you
+      look tired&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. You always look&mdash;you always look&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something,
+      you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it.
+      If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that look&mdash;and I'd
+      never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of
+      gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite understand why it should be,
+      either.&rdquo; He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. &ldquo;Mary, you haven't
+      a 'secret sorrow,' have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer she only laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
+      that's why you were so kind to me&mdash;you have nothing but happiness in
+      your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
+      happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours when
+      I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal
+      every time it comes&mdash;and then, when I've left the house, there's a
+      bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and
+      it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really beginning
+      another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But now's the
+      bad time&mdash;and I must go through it, and so&mdash;good night.&rdquo; And he
+      added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, &ldquo;I hate it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
+      motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary! Your eyes are so&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; But she looked quickly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought just then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know&mdash;it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+      understand&mdash;and didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. &ldquo;My eyes are
+      pleased,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She inclined her head. &ldquo;Yes. I'll&mdash;'let it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to church,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It IS going to church when I go with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
+      formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
+      speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
+      doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
+      looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
+      the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but
+      the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to tell him
+      that she would never shut him out; he could always see that friendly light
+      of the open doorway&mdash;as if it were open for him to come back, if he
+      would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came between, when he
+      went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the beautiful symbol of
+      her friendship&mdash;of her thought of him; a symbol of herself and of her
+      ineffable kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she kept the door open&mdash;even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+      snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn
+      with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was
+      there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm
+      touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did&mdash;she
+      went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had spent
+      the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he was out of
+      sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of
+      him under the street-lamp that stood between the two houses, and saw that
+      he turned to look back again. Then, and not before, she looked at the
+      upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street. They were dark. Mary
+      waited, but after a little while she closed the front door and returned to
+      her window. A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe's house
+      flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them. Mary felt
+      the cold then&mdash;it was the third night she had seen those windows
+      lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for his
+      last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already
+      upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the
+      sheltering wing of the New House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+      aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
+      library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
+      rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
+      detonations&mdash;the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood;
+      then Gurney, sharply imperious, &ldquo;Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your
+      hand in that sling, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;LOOK!&rdquo; George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
+      tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he
+      had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of
+      Bibbs. &ldquo;Look at 'at lamidal statue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine&mdash;painted
+      colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded
+      and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the
+      spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had been a massacre in the oasis&mdash;the
+      Moor had been hurled headlong from his pedestal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hit 'at ole lamidal statue,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;POW!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's I
+      kin telefoam&mdash;she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't
+      takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago. You
+      done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what he
+      was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!&rdquo; He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a
+      crumpled telegraph form. &ldquo;Here what come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I pick 'er up when he
+      done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs&mdash;you' ma tell me tuhn
+      'er ovuh to you soon's you come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to
+      Mrs. Sheridan.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.</p>
+                                                     <p class="rt">Edith Lamhorn.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+      thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors of
+      the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just then,
+      would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For that reason
+      he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade room, intending
+      to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan vociferously demanding his
+      presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him in.
+      Now you'll SEE!&rdquo; And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into the
+      hall, beckoned to her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+      cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was striding
+      up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that he seemed
+      to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot; his forehead
+      was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken loose, and there
+      were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THERE'S our little sunshine!&rdquo; he cried, as Bibbs appeared. &ldquo;THERE'S the
+      hope o' the family&mdash;my lifelong pride and joy! I want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep you hand in that sling,&rdquo; said Gurney, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. &ldquo;For God's sake,
+      sing another tune!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You said you 'came as a doctor but stay as
+      a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize ME&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, talk sense,&rdquo; said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. &ldquo;What do you
+      want Bibbs to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'&mdash;'hysterical,'
+      oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'! You
+      sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many another man
+      you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!&rdquo; He swung toward the
+      quiet figure waiting in the doorway. &ldquo;Bibbs, will you come down-town with
+      me Monday morning and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a
+      directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, father,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+      instead of takin' up my offer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're too
+      high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find other work,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! You hear him for yourself!&rdquo; Sheridan cried. &ldquo;You hear what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+      broke, piping into falsetto: &ldquo;He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to be
+      a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business&mdash;he
+      wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+      &ldquo;There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance to
+      live,&rdquo; he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
+      throat. &ldquo;That's my one chance to live&mdash;that thing you see in the
+      doorway yonder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
+      and tossed it into the open bag. &ldquo;What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
+      chance to live?&rdquo; he said, coolly. &ldquo;I would if I were you. You've had TWO
+      that went into business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. &ldquo;Joe Gurney,&rdquo; he
+      said, when he could command himself so far, &ldquo;are you accusin' me of the
+      responsibility for the death of my son James?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accuse you of nothing,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But just once I'd like to
+      have it out with you on the question of Bibbs&mdash;and while he's here,
+      too.&rdquo; He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
+      his back and smiling. &ldquo;Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
+      and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at the
+      risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And he
+      did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't you
+      let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he couldn't
+      do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some message&mdash;something
+      to say that might make the world just a little bit happier or wiser? He
+      MIGHT&mdash;in time&mdash;it's a possibility not to be denied. Now he
+      can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you, and he won't
+      HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is likely to injure
+      his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the shop did, the first
+      time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But I tell you one thing I
+      know: if you take him down there you'll kill something that I feel is in
+      him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical body, and you'll kill it
+      deader than a door-nail! And so why not let it live? You've about come to
+      the end of your string, old fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish
+      fighting and give Bibbs his chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. &ldquo;What 'fighting?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours&mdash;with nature.&rdquo; Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his
+      fierce antagonist equably. &ldquo;You don't seem to understand that you've been
+      struggling against actual law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Natural law,&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
+      Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
+      powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
+      against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
+      grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame&mdash;and won in a walk! What's
+      taken Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
+      wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
+      could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
+      Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want him
+      to lead&mdash;and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
+      twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT!&rdquo; Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your son Bibbs,&rdquo; said the doctor, composedly, &ldquo;Bibbs Sheridan has the
+      kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
+      anything&mdash;if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to
+      remain asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the
+      life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT to
+      lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it&mdash;he's
+      obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
+      knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell you
+      something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
+      thwarted you&mdash;and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger
+      than your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
+      very self of the law&mdash;for it was the very self of the law that took
+      Jim from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The
+      very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+      beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
+      The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
+      the law&mdash;you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends,
+      to wield it and twist it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. &ldquo;Yes! And by
+      God, I will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Ajax defied the lightning,&rdquo; said Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard that dam'-fool story, too,&rdquo; Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+      &ldquo;That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me tell
+      you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half a man
+      he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the lightning&mdash;we
+      hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A man nowadays
+      would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what about Bibbs?&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;Will you be a really big man now
+      and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!&rdquo; Sheridan began to walk to and fro
+      again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot his bolt
+      the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target
+      seemed unaware of the marksman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder,&rdquo; Sheridan
+      went on, &ldquo;and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what&mdash;I
+      don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I mightn't
+      need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now&mdash;a spender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, put your hand back!&rdquo; said Gurney, wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in
+      the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and
+      half-way across the room&mdash;a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
+      Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it lay!&rdquo; he shouted, fiercely. &ldquo;Let it lay!&rdquo; And, weeping, she
+      obeyed. &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden
+      hush he put upon it. &ldquo;I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful
+      where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy&mdash;you remember
+      him, Doc&mdash;J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
+      messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
+      built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there from
+      nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he died&mdash;over
+      eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used to eat a bag o'
+      peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't stingy&mdash;he was just
+      livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or automobiles&mdash;he had
+      his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin'
+      heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pass one o'
+      these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the
+      streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? God! he wouldn't
+      'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the
+      bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd 'a'
+      had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every day of his
+      life was workin' for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it was for the
+      bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood and the blood
+      of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't. It was every bit&mdash;from the
+      time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three&mdash;it
+      was every last lick of it just slavin' for that turned-up-nose,
+      turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He
+      died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased him off the front steps
+      of his house once. The day after Tracy died his old-maid daughter married
+      the cigarette&mdash;and there AIN'T any Tracy bank any more! And now&rdquo;&mdash;his
+      voice rose again&mdash;&ldquo;and now I got a cigarette son-in-law!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+      Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,&rdquo; Sheridan went on. &ldquo;That's good,
+      and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be there
+      next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can
+      be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got me to
+      spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't give me a
+      minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's got it,
+      besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before this time
+      next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette behind&mdash;for
+      good&mdash;she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there ain't
+      goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there ain't
+      goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein', nor
+      God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll be back,
+      and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that cigarette, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; interposed Gurney, &ldquo;didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs
+      warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and
+      stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded
+      hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to
+      catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the
+      bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; he panted, choking. &ldquo;If he's shown gumption enough to guess right
+      the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin' him on!&rdquo;
+       And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs, thrusting forward
+      his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. &ldquo;My name ain't Tracy, I tell
+      you!&rdquo; he screamed, hoarsely. &ldquo;You give in, you stubborn fool! I've had my
+      way with you before, and I'll have my way with you now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+      &ldquo;splendid look&rdquo; of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage in
+      a struggle, so that he would &ldquo;never give up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You can't have your way,&rdquo; he said. And then, obeying a significant
+      motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her husband's
+      room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the darkened chamber.
+      At the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house they had shared a room, but the architect had chosen to
+      separate them at the New, and they had not known how to formulate an
+      objection, although to both of them something seemed vaguely reprehensible
+      in the new arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the aperture
+      when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came and sat by the bed. &ldquo;I woke up thinkin' about it,&rdquo; she explained.
+      &ldquo;And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I
+      knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake, so&mdash;well, you got
+      plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't goin' to have the worry
+      with Bibbs it looks like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You BET I ain't!&rdquo; he grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works,&rdquo; she continued.
+      &ldquo;He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
+      say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
+      right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
+      time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
+      company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
+      look at the way he did when Jim&mdash;when Jim got hurt. He took right
+      hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all&mdash;and
+      the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do
+      in that kind o' trouble&mdash;still, he did take hold, and everything went
+      off all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says
+      he's got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right
+      considerable of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got
+      such a large practice&mdash;he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some
+      ways. Well, what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and
+      how much he'd amount to if he ever woke up&mdash;that's what I got to
+      thinkin' about. You heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger
+      business man than what Jim and Roscoe was put together&mdash;if he ever
+      wakes up,' he says. Wasn't that exactly what he says?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest. &ldquo;Gurney's
+      crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't&mdash;if what he says was true&mdash;what
+      of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.
+      You know where he goes all the time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes!&rdquo; Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+      leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. &ldquo;You better
+      go back to sleep. He runs over there&mdash;every minute she'll let him, I
+      suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHY ain't there?&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;I know better&mdash;there is, too! You wait
+      and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest
+      young man alive up&mdash;yes, and make him JUMP up&mdash;and I don't care
+      who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it
+      into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and
+      chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll
+      see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you&mdash;moony, no-'count
+      young men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or
+      something; and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings
+      'em right down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is
+      Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister exactly&mdash;he's
+      so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS&mdash;but I know this is
+      goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say that Bibbs
+      has got the idea in his head yet&mdash;'r else he wouldn't be talkin' that
+      fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on.
+      But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him
+      out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary
+      and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more. That
+      girl's the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give things to!
+      She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look nice on her, and I guess
+      she'd like to have 'em about as well as the next. And I guess she isn't
+      gettin' many these days, either, and she'll be pretty ready for the
+      change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at the kitchen window the
+      other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their cook left two weeks ago,
+      and they haven't tried to hire another one. He says her and her mother
+      been doin' the housework a good while, and now they're doin' the cookin,'
+      too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that unless she's told him, and I reckon
+      she wouldn't; she's kind o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the
+      clouds to notice anything like that for himself. They've never asked him
+      to a meal in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either&mdash;he's
+      kind of innocent. Now I was thinkin'&mdash;you know, I don't suppose we've
+      hardly mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to
+      me maybe if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+      &ldquo;You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I?&rdquo; she demanded, crossly. &ldquo;Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are. There's nothin' in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet you,&rdquo; she said, rising&mdash;&ldquo;I'll bet you he goes to church
+      with her this morning. What you want to bet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back to bed,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+      nothin' in it, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head perplexedly. &ldquo;You think because&mdash;because Jim was
+      runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Nothin' to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;do you know something about it that you ain't told me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; he grunted. &ldquo;Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
+      ain't had any yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; She went to the door, her expression downcast. &ldquo;I thought
+      maybe&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; She coughed prefatorily. &ldquo;Oh, papa, something else
+      I wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night
+      when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but&mdash;well, Sibyl
+      wants to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants
+      to say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to
+      sit up&mdash;and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what
+      happened. They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she
+      wants to feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's
+      what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't
+      disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all along it
+      was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that foolishness
+      pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought was, no use
+      bein' rough with her, papa&mdash;I expect she's suffered a good deal&mdash;and
+      I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account. You'll&mdash;you'll
+      be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had pulled
+      over his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she said, timidly. &ldquo;I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl
+      all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw the coverlet off furiously. &ldquo;I presume so!&rdquo; he roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She departed guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to church
+      with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.
+      Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's
+      house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and
+      they had no other. They meant to go to church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation
+      as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and
+      Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with
+      Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other at
+      this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled among
+      groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this somewhat
+      prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it, and they
+      had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before they discovered
+      their error. However, feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if
+      they returned, they decided that a walk would make them as good. It was a
+      windless winter morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground. So
+      they walked, and for the most part they were silent, but on their way
+      home, after they had turned back at noon, they began to be talkative
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; said Bibbs, after a time, &ldquo;am I a sleep-walker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed a little, then looked grave. &ldquo;Does your father say you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He
+      has quite a list.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't mind,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;He's been getting some pretty
+      severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.
+      I've always been sure he's very big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Big and&mdash;blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without
+      any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow
+      stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+      something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and his
+      kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it&mdash;so
+      great none of us could see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight,&rdquo; she finished for
+      him, cheerily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the smoke,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+      dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the little
+      pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of soot on
+      your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have
+      thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his
+      chance of my whipping him for it if I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+      rhetorically? IS there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary&mdash;a fleck on each. One
+      landed since I mentioned the first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+      transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
+      entirely matter-of-course about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for
+      the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the soot.
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; said the elderly wife. &ldquo;You're always wrong when you begin
+      guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't honeymooners at
+      all&mdash;they've been married for years. A blind man could see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I did know who threw that soot on you,&rdquo; said Bibbs, looking up at
+      the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. &ldquo;They arrest children for
+      throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the
+      houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make. I
+      wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year. Yes,
+      we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have money to
+      pay or none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it gets the pay?&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I!&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some of
+      the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to
+      get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, smiling to him, and nodding. &ldquo;And you don't want it, and
+      you don't need it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?&rdquo; He had told her of his
+      father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+      picturesqueness of their setting forth. &ldquo;You think I'm right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand times!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;There aren't so many happy people in this
+      world, I think&mdash;and you say you've found what makes you happy. If
+      it's a dream&mdash;keep it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thought of going down there&mdash;into the money shuffle&mdash;I hate
+      it as I never hated the shop!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hate it! And the city itself,
+      the city that the money shuffle has made&mdash;just look at it! Look at it
+      in winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the
+      ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting
+      dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the
+      unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise
+      aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and noise
+      MEAN&mdash;that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but
+      they're only the expression of a spirit&mdash;a blind embryo of a spirit,
+      not yet a soul&mdash;oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense!
+      Oughtn't it all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I
+      could&mdash;I'd want to help the other fellow to keep up with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I read something the other day and remembered it for you,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;It
+      was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: 'In the
+      first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city,
+      full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies
+      leaning from the windows all down great lengths of a street leading to the
+      city walls; and there the gates are wide open, letting in a space of green
+      field and cornfield in harvest; and all round his head a great rain of
+      swirling autumn leaves blowing from a little walled graveyard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I painted,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, &ldquo;I'd paint a lady walking in the
+      street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life&mdash;children
+      being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer,
+      and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the
+      gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and
+      freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a great rain of swirling
+      soot&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, adding, thoughtfully: &ldquo;And yet I believe I'm glad
+      that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were your brother&mdash;the
+      way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for you. Still, Edith
+      never&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she?&rdquo; said Mary, as he paused again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. And I&mdash;&rdquo; He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+      offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were
+      passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. &ldquo;Mary, our walk's almost
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked as blank. &ldquo;So it is, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly to a
+      stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl,
+      who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her illness,
+      however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not taking his
+      arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her
+      companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary gazed
+      after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Bibbs.&rdquo; And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly
+      unreasonably happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you want to go in&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I don't want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you&mdash;but&mdash;I
+      just wanted to say&mdash;I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning,
+      grumbling about soot and all that&mdash;while all the time I&mdash;Mary, I
+      think it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.
+      And&mdash;I don't know just why&mdash;but it's seemed to me that it was
+      one I'd always remember. And you,&rdquo; he added, falteringly, &ldquo;you look so&mdash;so
+      beautiful to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, will you tell me something?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever
+      just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much colder,
+      you don't&mdash;you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+      questions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I found I'd be warmer without them!&rdquo; She caught his hand quickly
+      in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth
+      will so often make even a ready-made library the actual &ldquo;living-room&rdquo; of a
+      family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed. Thus it was with
+      Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and
+      figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting&mdash;when
+      he was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far
+      end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a
+      solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the
+      length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his
+      expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but
+      the most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his
+      sling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at
+      him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were
+      nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.
+      There was a deadly silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she
+      was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them.
+      She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed
+      to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me,
+      and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I
+      acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and
+      to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never
+      happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come
+      back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you
+      never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the
+      way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only
+      wish her happiness and good in her new life. I thank you for all your
+      kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can
+      overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier&mdash;and
+      I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the
+      future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so
+      unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to excuse it this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+      never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
+      agitation of her hands within the muff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
+      heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There's something else&mdash;about something
+      different&mdash;I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear
+      it, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's up-stairs in her room,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Roscoe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin
+      to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the
+      chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, let me go,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want to speak to her a minute first,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
+      Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
+      room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter
+      Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of
+      the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the
+      recollection there had flashed the thought&mdash;out of her own experience&mdash;that
+      people are often much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by
+      words directly addressed to them. Sibyl intended to make it impossible for
+      Bibbs not to overhear. She did not hesitate&mdash;her heart was hot with
+      the old sore, and she believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in
+      the truth of what she was going to say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had
+      delivered into her hands the girl who had affronted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+      driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood,
+      and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again,
+      in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) &ldquo;have a fit right
+      there.&rdquo; She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her
+      hair before a mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just coming down,&rdquo; she said, as the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he wants you to,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;It's all right, mother Sheridan. He's
+      forgiven me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
+      daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+      wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I hope Edith will be happy,&rdquo; Sibyl added, inciting more applications
+      of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; murmured the good woman. &ldquo;We mustn't make the worst of
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it,
+      too,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;We better go down, mother Sheridan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to
+      a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. &ldquo;I want to tell you about it
+      first,&rdquo; she said, abruptly. &ldquo;It isn't a secret, of course, in any way;
+      it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole
+      family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL
+      not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all. But I want
+      to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help me to see I
+      got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it except the
+      good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of
+      course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I did that
+      night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help the family,
+      I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way. Well, what I
+      want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from being made a fool
+      of. I don't want to see the family just made use of and twisted around her
+      finger by somebody that's got no more heart than so much ice, and just as
+      sure to bring troubles in the long run as&mdash;as Edith's mistake is.
+      Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell you how it looks to me
+      and see if it don't strike you the same way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
+      wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
+      write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the
+      preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon
+      paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for
+      they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem,
+      and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it&mdash;he
+      would venture it upon an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day
+      would be of manual labor and thinking&mdash;he could think of his friend
+      and he could think in cadences for poems, to the crashing of the strong
+      machine&mdash;and if his father turned him out of home and out of the
+      Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere. His father had the
+      right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs&mdash;he faced the prospect of
+      a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He could find a
+      washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary
+      he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays&mdash;on
+      Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be
+      interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his
+      door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely
+      disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some
+      polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on, he started
+      violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but this
+      old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all THEY
+      got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a little longer.
+      Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the
+      streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he could call a 'position,'
+      and couldn't land it. You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while back,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;And now they're doin' the cookin', too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. &ldquo;I hope they find
+      something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy&mdash;of
+      all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
+      would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
+      happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
+      heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to him
+      that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically&mdash;and that
+      something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but
+      he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,&rdquo; said
+      Sibyl, sharply. &ldquo;Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+      started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not! They'd
+      got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs.
+      Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took the
+      daughter out auto-riding!&rdquo; She paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan,
+      but listening intently. There was no sound from within the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the truth,&rdquo; Sibyl declared, loudly. &ldquo;Oh, of course we were all crazy
+      about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up here, and
+      we thought she'd get us IN&mdash;but it didn't take ME long to read her!
+      Her family were down and out when it came to money&mdash;and they had to
+      go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
+      she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around to
+      Jim&mdash;and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
+      if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I
+      stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well&mdash;when Jim was
+      left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
+      Jim wasn't COLD&mdash;and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
+      but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
+      in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
+      with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I feel about it is,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it oughtn't to be allowed to go on.
+      It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made such a
+      fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of! I like
+      poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to
+      realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love
+      with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS&mdash;just
+      kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like men with some GO
+      to 'em&mdash;SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever looked at poor
+      Bibbs before, and neither'd she&mdash;no, SIR! not till she'd tried both
+      Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got desperate
+      that she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs&mdash;whiter than when he came from the sanitarium&mdash;opened the
+      door. He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
+      screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good heavens!&rdquo; cried Sibyl. &ldquo;Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. &ldquo;Come on,
+      mother Sheridan!&rdquo; she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
+      obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: &ldquo;Good gracious! Oh, I
+      wouldn't&mdash;too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
+      feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But, good
+      heavens&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the
+      stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+      following; he had gone back into his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&mdash;he looked&mdash;oh, terrible bad!&rdquo; stammered Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      wish&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
+      Come on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance
+      to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account
+      of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the
+      fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But as I told mother Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, in conclusion, &ldquo;it might turn
+      out for the very best that he did hear&mdash;just that way. Don't you
+      think so, father Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of
+      his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no sign
+      of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
+      character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl&mdash;it was Bibbs
+      whom she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure it was all for the best,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's over now, and he knows
+      what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a
+      thing that way, a person can tell it's SO&mdash;and he knows I haven't got
+      any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
+      the stairway. &ldquo;I wish&mdash;I wish I knew what he was doin',&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;He did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him that
+      was&mdash;I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did. He
+      looked&mdash;so queer. It was like you'd&mdash;&rdquo; She called down the hall,
+      &ldquo;George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil' him
+      nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.&rdquo; He departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you expect he wants a fire for?&rdquo; she asked, turning toward her
+      husband. &ldquo;The house is warm as can be, I do wish I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quit frettin'!&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&mdash;I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
+      meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
+      harm if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
+      family? Why, she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, I don't know,&rdquo; the troubled woman quavered. &ldquo;If he liked
+      her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't ever
+      taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there was
+      more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If she
+      wants to marry him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. &ldquo;She don't!&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, father Sheridan, didn't she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cut her short. &ldquo;That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
+      wrong. So do you, mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl cried out, &ldquo;Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not,&rdquo; he said, curtly. &ldquo;She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
+      down cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's impossi&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not. I KNOW she did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And YOU needn't worry,&rdquo; he said, turning to his wife. &ldquo;This won't have
+      any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
+      D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs&mdash;after she wouldn't
+      take JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
+      but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
+      think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has&mdash;he'd 'a' been
+      at me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
+      on. There's nothin' in it&mdash;and I've got the same old fight with him
+      on my hands I've had all his life&mdash;and the Lord knows what he won't
+      do to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
+      stubborn, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SH!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. &ldquo;That's his
+      step&mdash;he's comin' down-stairs.&rdquo; She shrank away from the door as if
+      she feared to have Bibbs see her. &ldquo;I&mdash;I wonder&mdash;&rdquo; she said,
+      almost in a whisper&mdash;&ldquo;I wonder what he's goin'&mdash;to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose, frowning,
+      but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who
+      stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as the slow steps
+      descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
+      slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
+      father. Then he came and stood before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,&rdquo; he said, gently. &ldquo;You
+      won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not speak&mdash;he stared, astounded and incredulous; and
+      Bibbs had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound,
+      though he went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move.
+      She went nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs
+      had gone from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+      before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant&mdash;something in
+      her mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had
+      been done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+      charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large
+      upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
+      note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up
+      the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow&mdash;and that he had given
+      it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have done&mdash;and
+      yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a little before
+      she went down-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage
+      upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad,
+      thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual
+      wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing
+      the third&mdash;and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit
+      to dine with the wife's relatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?&rdquo; the husband
+      whispered. &ldquo;He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. &ldquo;Well, I don't know,&rdquo; she returned.
+      &ldquo;He looks to me like he had his own troubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect he has, like anybody else,&rdquo; said the young husband, &ldquo;but I guess
+      we could stand a good deal if we had his money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed as
+      the Sheridans. You can't tell.&rdquo; She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned
+      north. &ldquo;He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,&rdquo; said the young
+      husband, with bitter admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+      started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;What is the matter? I saw something was terribly
+      wrong when I&mdash;You look&mdash;&rdquo; She paused, and he came in, not
+      lifting his eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had
+      come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. &ldquo;Ah, poor boy!&rdquo;
+       she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity. &ldquo;I know what it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't tell me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They've made you give up. Your father's
+      won&mdash;you're going to do what he wants. You've given up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be glad
+      you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come because
+      you were happy.&rdquo; She did not speak again for a little while; then she
+      said: &ldquo;Bibbs&mdash;dear&mdash;could you tell me about it? Do you want to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a
+      question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;could you marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, Bibbs?&rdquo; she asked, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone and attitude did not change. &ldquo;Will you marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks&mdash;she grew red and then white.
+      She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+      incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in
+      her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
+      strangeness in the long silence&mdash;the two were so strange to each
+      other. At last she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, look at me!&rdquo; Her voice was loud and clear. &ldquo;What made you say
+      that? Look at me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it that made you?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want you to tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+      intensity of wonder. &ldquo;You've given up&mdash;to your father,&rdquo; she said,
+      slowly, &ldquo;and then you came to ask me&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you
+      want me to marry you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, just audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it that's
+      happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let me think. It's something that happened since our
+      walk this morning&mdash;yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
+      that&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement
+      and dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
+      House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, &ldquo;I do&mdash;I do want you
+      to&mdash;marry me, if&mdash;if&mdash;you could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you&mdash;&rdquo; Her
+      voice was as unsteady as his&mdash;little more than a whisper. &ldquo;Do you
+      think I'm&mdash;in love with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did
+      not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had nothing but dreams,&rdquo; Bibbs said, desolately, &ldquo;but they weren't
+      like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me.&rdquo; He smiled faintly,
+      though still he did not look at Mary. &ldquo;And when I first came home Edith
+      told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
+      meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed either
+      of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as&mdash;well, not as
+      particularly captivating!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. &ldquo;Those two!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: &ldquo;Lamhorn!
+      That's like them!&rdquo; She turned away, went to the bare little black mantel,
+      and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: &ldquo;WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe
+      Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary drew a deep breath. &ldquo;I think I'm beginning to understand&mdash;a
+      little.&rdquo; She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in
+      her voice. &ldquo;Answer me once more,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you know now why I
+      stopped wearing my furs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I heard her say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what happened, now.&rdquo; Mary's breath came fast and her voice
+      shook, but she spoke rapidly. &ldquo;You 'heard her say' more than that. You
+      'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried
+      first to marry your brother&mdash;and then&mdash;&rdquo; But now she faltered,
+      and it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. &ldquo;And
+      then&mdash;that I tried to marry&mdash;you! You 'heard her say' that&mdash;and
+      you believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for
+      you&mdash;but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was&mdash;that
+      you&mdash; And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you&mdash;except
+      for my 'extremity'&mdash;you took your father's offer and then came to ask
+      me&mdash;to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon
+      the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, Mary!&rdquo; he cried, helplessly. &ldquo;Oh NO&mdash;you&mdash;you don't
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, though!&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came and stood beside her. &ldquo;You kill me!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can't make it
+      plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
+      always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent&mdash;I did
+      nothing but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all
+      about my idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of
+      wonderful being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy.
+      You seemed to lean down&mdash;out of a rosy cloud&mdash;to be kind to me.
+      I never dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could
+      need anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that&mdash;that
+      you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard that I needed to marry&mdash;some one&mdash;anybody&mdash;with
+      money,&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;And you thought we were so&mdash;so desperate&mdash;you
+      believed that I had&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he said, quickly. &ldquo;I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for me&mdash;for
+      that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except generously&mdash;to
+      give. I said I couldn't make it plain!&rdquo; he cried, despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously,
+      like a child. &ldquo;Help me up, Bibbs.&rdquo; Then, when she was once more upon her
+      feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but
+      reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not
+      meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so
+      faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered
+      them no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me tell you what you want to tell me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can't, because
+      you can't put it into words&mdash;they are too humiliating for me and
+      you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You didn't
+      believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! Never for an instant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared
+      for you&mdash;but you didn't think I might be&mdash;in love with you. But
+      you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you because
+      you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, I only knew&mdash;for the first time&mdash;that you&mdash;that you
+      were&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were desperately poor,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can't even say that! Bibbs, it was
+      true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!&rdquo; And she sank down
+      into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;I didn't know you COULD cry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Listen till I get through&mdash;I want you to
+      understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had been,
+      and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was plenty,
+      but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town; he
+      wanted to be richer, but instead&mdash;well, just about the time your
+      father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything. People say
+      that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with
+      other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't anything&mdash;we
+      hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything. You might
+      wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'&mdash;and I wonder myself
+      why, when a family loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought
+      to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!&mdash;as if a wave of the hand
+      made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either married
+      comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry. The poverty
+      came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there&mdash;and I didn't
+      know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to be anything except a
+      well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife&mdash;and I couldn't be a
+      well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how
+      to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I did it openly, at
+      least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your brother I had meant
+      to fascinate him and that I was not in love with him, but I let him think
+      that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I did mean to marry him. I had
+      never cared for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T
+      anything more than a kind of excited fondness. I can't be sure, but I
+      think that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it,
+      because that sort of a marriage is&mdash;it's sacrilege&mdash;something
+      would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law,
+      Sibyl. She meant no harm&mdash;but she was horrible, and she put what I
+      was doing into such horrible words&mdash;and they were the truth&mdash;oh!
+      I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me&mdash;and I
+      couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so
+      cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I
+      left her, and I wrote to your brother&mdash;just a quick scrawl. I told
+      him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I said I would not marry
+      him. I posted the letter, but he never got it. That was the afternoon he
+      was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know what I did&mdash;and you know&mdash;ME!&rdquo;
+       She pressed her clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far
+      forward, her head bowed before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. &ldquo;Couldn't
+      you&mdash;Isn't there&mdash;Won't you&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Mary, I'm
+      going with father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without&mdash;without&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a choked little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gave me something to live for,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You kept me alive, I think&mdash;and
+      I've hurt you like this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not you&mdash;oh no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could forgive me, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a thousand times!&rdquo; Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture,
+      and just touched his own for an instant. &ldquo;But there's nothing to forgive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you can't&mdash;you can't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't what, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You couldn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry you?&rdquo; she said for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she
+      did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a
+      little. &ldquo;I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more&mdash;please&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MARY&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never, never!&rdquo; she cried, in a passion of tears. &ldquo;You mustn't come
+      any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
+      got himself to the door and out of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to the
+      New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but so that
+      the others might hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would be
+      apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me. It
+      proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
+      refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
+      had entered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's SO queer!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan gasped. &ldquo;Who on earth would thought of his
+      doin' THAT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; said her husband, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't tell us he'd go over there and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+      didn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was altogether taken aback. &ldquo;Do you supose it's true? Do you suppose
+      she WOULDN'T?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed up
+      fine with his girl,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Not to me, he didn't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; he interrupted, angrily, &ldquo;she ain't that kind of a girl! If
+      you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with, though
+      I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about my dead
+      boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him, and it was
+      a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he never saw it.
+      She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,&rdquo; said
+      Roscoe. &ldquo;Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it&mdash;I was
+      waiting for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It
+      was just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
+      and called me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down, for,
+      although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were
+      dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed&mdash;after some
+      further fragmentary discourse&mdash;visibly elated. After all, the guilty
+      had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely,
+      that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a contented
+      glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the
+      street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
+      she said, uneasily, &ldquo;Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
+      about that letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he answered, walking moodily to the window. &ldquo;I been
+      thinkin' about it.&rdquo; He came to a decision. &ldquo;I reckon I will.&rdquo; And he went
+      up to Bibbs's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you goin' back on what you said?&rdquo; he inquired, brusquely, as he
+      opened the door. &ldquo;You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't know
+      as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord
+      knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!&rdquo; Sheridan was
+      baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
+      unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
+      abuse went on in spite of him. &ldquo;I can't say I expect much of you&mdash;not
+      from the way you always been, up to now&mdash;unless you turn over a new
+      leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do THAT!
+      If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the whole
+      office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any, you
+      better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I'll try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You better, if it's in you!&rdquo; Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
+      always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
+      bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
+      angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
+      like a drudge-driver. &ldquo;You better come down there with your mind made up
+      to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you, or you'll
+      not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get ahead&mdash;and
+      you better set it down in your books&mdash;the way to get ahead is to do
+      ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But you don't
+      know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand around and
+      feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home and take a bath
+      and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty different
+      proposition now, and if you're worth your salt&mdash;and you never showed
+      any signs of it yet&mdash;not any signs that stuck out enough to bang
+      somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice&mdash;well, I
+      want to say, right here and now&mdash;and you better listen, because I
+      want to say just what I DO say. I say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a
+      hopeless blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked up patiently&mdash;an old, old look. &ldquo;Yes, father; I'm
+      listening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all,&rdquo; said Sheridan, frowning heavily. &ldquo;That's all I came to say,
+      and you better see't you remember it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him
+      with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure. He
+      stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more. Then
+      abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead liberally
+      covered with perspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;That girl over yonder wrote Jim a letter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;She told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it&mdash;&rdquo; The door
+      closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence was
+      nevertheless audible&mdash;&ldquo;if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin'
+      and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to inquire
+      what Bibbs &ldquo;said,&rdquo; but after a second thought she decided not to speak at
+      all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal communication was
+      given over between them for the rest of that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next morning,
+      and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she worried about
+      what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She felt that
+      everything depended on how Bibbs &ldquo;took hold,&rdquo; and upon her husband's
+      return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity to ask him how
+      things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody tell by the
+      first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right at the start
+      and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair the first day or
+      so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as it was&mdash;Bibbs,
+      in fact&mdash;had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe had done;
+      and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position in the
+      Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks
+      of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant
+      where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this
+      to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the
+      table, and her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business,
+      although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the
+      evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner. Usually Bibbs was
+      silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the
+      third week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently
+      been the subject of previous argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+      father,&rdquo; he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. &ldquo;Abercrombie
+      agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen,&rdquo; Sheridan returned, &ldquo;but
+      you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof fell
+      because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions.
+      I want that building put just the way Jim planned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't have it,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;You can't, because Jim planned for the
+      building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one&mdash;the one that
+      didn't fall&mdash;is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for
+      storage. It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both
+      buildings down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and
+      cheapest in the long run for that type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked sarcastic. &ldquo;Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+      while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rent,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, promptly. &ldquo;We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+      anyhow&mdash;they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse
+      matter your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount
+      of stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until we
+      could patch up those process perils&mdash;and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+      Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on it
+      for us this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan's expression was queer. &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; he said, sharply. &ldquo;Did you
+      go and do that without consulting me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It didn't cost anything,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It's only until to-morrow
+      afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you did?&rdquo; Sheridan's tone was sardonic. &ldquo;Well, just suppose you
+      couldn't convince me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, though&mdash;and I intend to,&rdquo; said Bibbs, quietly. &ldquo;I don't think
+      you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, see here,&rdquo; said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; &ldquo;suppose I had my mind
+      set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was&mdash;well,
+      kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at him compassionately. &ldquo;I'm sorry if you have a sentiment
+      about it, father,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But whether you have or not can't make a
+      difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and
+      that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want one
+      that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend
+      sentiment in this particular kind of affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. &ldquo;Why are you 'sorry'?&rdquo; he asked,
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon,&rdquo; said Bibbs,
+      &ldquo;and I had him condemn both those buildings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us&mdash;afraid
+      you'd see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them&mdash;they've got
+      to come down now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+      Finally he said, &ldquo;How long did they give you on that option to convince
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Sheridan, not relaxing. &ldquo;I'm convinced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped up. &ldquo;I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch
+      agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle it
+      this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+      expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that
+      startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything
+      resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound&mdash;although it was grim
+      and dry&mdash;bore that resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brightened eagerly. &ldquo;Looks like he was startin' right well don't it,
+      papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I wanted&mdash;that's
+      why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat before we even
+      started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't reasonably defend
+      SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option for Us'! 'Stuff
+      piled up on Us'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;I don't just like the way he
+      looks, though, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you
+      start to frettin' about IT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+      &ldquo;You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And he'd
+      begun to fill out some, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
+      her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
+      still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. &ldquo;That's the way
+      it is with you, mamma&mdash;got to take your frettin' out one way if you
+      don't another!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he begun
+      to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he may 'a' lost something,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;I expect he's lost a
+      whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
+      poetry and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; his wife persisted. &ldquo;I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
+      when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
+      readin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, here!&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there the
+      rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did one
+      big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had to go
+      and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over there, and
+      it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty fair pay for
+      what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get over worries
+      like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the
+      procession nowadays&mdash;and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs
+      might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a year from now I'll
+      bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he
+      funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant
+      was, think about something useless. Well, I guess he's keepin' his mind
+      pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes, sir, it took a pretty
+      fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but it certainly did the
+      business.&rdquo; He patted his wife's shoulder again, and then, without any
+      prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But
+      no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness, and
+      the changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The priests wore
+      that &ldquo;settish&rdquo; look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning to develop about his
+      mouth and eyes&mdash;a wary look which she could not define, but it comes
+      with service at the temple; and it was the more marked upon Bibbs for his
+      sharp awakening to the necessities of that service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did as little &ldquo;useless&rdquo; thinking as possible, giving himself no time
+      for it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work
+      when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his
+      work. But he did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people
+      were not allowed to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of
+      hideous uproar&mdash;they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder
+      the thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they could
+      walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or screeching,
+      as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with business; though
+      street musicians were not tolerated, being considered a nuisance and an
+      interference. A man or woman who went singing for pleasure through the
+      streets&mdash;like a crazy Neopolitan&mdash;would have been stopped, and
+      belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen is allowed to
+      do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The streets were
+      dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing! and the Motor
+      Federation issued public warnings declaring that the pedestrian's life was
+      in his own hands, and giving directions how to proceed with the least
+      peril. However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to sing in the streets, or
+      anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy that, for the start, at
+      least, was bitter, and there was no song left in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among them he
+      found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period of neighborliness,
+      &ldquo;pioneer stock,&rdquo; usually; and there were men&mdash;particularly among the
+      merchants and manufacturers&mdash;&ldquo;so honest they leaned backward&rdquo;;
+      reputations sometimes attested by stories of heroic sacrifices to honor;
+      nor were there lacking some instances of generosity even nobler. Here and
+      there, too, were book-men, in their little leisure; and, among the
+      Germans, music-men. And these, with the others, worshiped Bigness and the
+      growth, each man serving for his own sake and for what he could get out of
+      it, but all united in their faith in the beneficence and glory of their
+      god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in
+      life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the
+      dangerous illness of a wife or child. In the way of &ldquo;relaxation&rdquo; some of
+      the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took &ldquo;shows&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      mixture of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some
+      took an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards; and some
+      took nothing. The high priests were vigilant to watch that no &ldquo;relaxation&rdquo;
+       should affect the service. When a man attended to anything outside his
+      business, eyes were upon him; his credit was in danger&mdash;that is, his
+      life was in danger. And the old priests were as ardent as the young ones;
+      the million was as eager to be bigger as the thousand; seventy was as busy
+      as seventeen. They strove mightily against one another, and the old
+      priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the most dangerous.
+      Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these&mdash;he must wear a
+      thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves
+      and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but these
+      were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had a good guide
+      to point them out to him. They were useful sometimes, he learned, and many
+      of them served as go-betweens in matters where business must touch
+      politics. He learned also how breweries and &ldquo;traction&rdquo; companies and banks
+      and other institutions fought one another for the political control of the
+      city. The newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political
+      influence, especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a
+      skeptical humor, believing the journals either to be retained partisans,
+      like lawyers, or else striving to forward the personal ambitions of their
+      owners. The control of the city lay not with them, but was usually
+      obtained by giving the hordes of negroes gin-money, and by other
+      largesses. The revenues of the people were then distributed as fairly as
+      possible among a great number of men who had assisted the winning side.
+      Names and titles of offices went with many of the prizes, and most of
+      these title-holders were expected to present a busy appearance at times;
+      and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and faithfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known and
+      customary, astonished him at first, and once&mdash;in a brief moment of
+      forgetting that he was done with writing&mdash;he thought that if he had
+      known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation of
+      them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and
+      sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it&mdash;it was a permeation;
+      the newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning
+      to stammer a few words of the local language. Everywhere the people
+      shouted of the power, the size, the riches, and the growth of their city.
+      Not only that, they said that the people of their city were the greatest,
+      the &ldquo;finest,&rdquo; the strongest, the Biggest people on earth. They cited no
+      authorities, and felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus
+      celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that
+      there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and
+      supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the
+      critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for
+      they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them,
+      harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them. For the
+      voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs, and
+      the door between the two rooms usually stood open&mdash;the father had
+      established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was alone,
+      Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when I
+      do I usually wish I hadn't&mdash;but for Heaven's sake what have you been
+      buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs leaned back from his desk. &ldquo;For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+      dollars. That's all it cost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to
+      know that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader'n Adam's cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be worth something&mdash;some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It mightn't be so dead&mdash;not if we went into it,&rdquo; said Bibbs, coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, &ldquo;Who'd you buy it
+      from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A broker&mdash;Fansmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+      soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It belonged to Mr. Vertrees,&rdquo; said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to
+      his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So!&rdquo; Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Your business.&rdquo; And he went back to his own room. But presently he looked
+      in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day&rdquo;&mdash;he was shuffling
+      himself into his overcoat&mdash;&ldquo;because I just thought I'd go up to the
+      house and get THIS over with mamma.&rdquo; He glanced apologetically toward his
+      right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The bandages had
+      been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three fingers&mdash;the
+      forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated. &ldquo;She's bound to
+      make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than her dinner. I'll be
+      back about two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately
+      that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from the
+      lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his overcoat
+      in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, papa?&rdquo; she asked, quickly. &ldquo;Has anything gone wrong?
+      You ain't sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo; He laughed loudly. &ldquo;Me SICK?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had lunch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffee, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn
+      she said querulously, &ldquo;I just know there's something wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' in the world,&rdquo; he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the head
+      of the table. &ldquo;I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you, that's
+      all. It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. &ldquo;I guess it's time you had him, too.
+      I KNEW Bibbs&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+      anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances
+      with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole
+      Gurney had a talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on me
+      what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then I thought
+      he must want to get something out o' me, he got so flattering&mdash;for a
+      minute! 'Bibbs couldn't help havin' business brains,' he says, 'bein' YOUR
+      son. Don't be surprised,' he says&mdash;'don't be surprised at his makin'
+      a success,' he says. 'He couldn't get over his heredity; he couldn't HELP
+      bein' a business success&mdash;once you got him into it. It's in his
+      blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH brains,' he says, 'an only
+      third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but it does need a special KIND o'
+      brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire. I mean,' he says, 'when a man's
+      given a start. If nobody gives him a start, why, course he's got to have
+      luck AND the right kind o' brains. The only miracle about Bibbs,' he says,
+      'is where he got the OTHER kind o' brains&mdash;the brains you made him
+      quit usin' and throw away.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what'd he say about his health?&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan demanded, impatiently,
+      as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband. Sheridan helped
+      himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm comin' to that,&rdquo; he returned, placidly. &ldquo;See how easy I manage this
+      cup with my left hand, mamma?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You been doin' that all winter. What did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's wonderful,&rdquo; he interrupted, admiringly, &ldquo;what a fellow can do with
+      his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could with
+      my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I believe I
+      RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write, anyway&mdash;just
+      the signature. Rest's all dictatin'.&rdquo; He blew across the top of the cup
+      unctuously. &ldquo;Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole Gurney says he
+      believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o' mind he was in
+      about the machine-shop&mdash;that is, if he could some way get to feelin'
+      about business the way he felt about the shop&mdash;not the poetry and
+      writin' part, but&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, supplementing his remarks with a
+      motion of his head toward the old house next door. &ldquo;He says Bibbs is older
+      and harder'n what he was when he broke down that time, and besides, he
+      ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was then&mdash;and I should say he AIN'T!
+      I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age that's any wider awake! But he
+      says Bibbs's health never need bother us again if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. &ldquo;I don't see any help THAT way. You know
+      yourself she wouldn't have Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him
+      LOOK at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that
+      she won't let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy, and
+      some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the Bible,
+      but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o' thinkin' that if she'd let him
+      come back and set around with her an evening or two sometimes&mdash;not
+      reg'lar, I don't mean&mdash;why&mdash;Well, I just thought I'd see what
+      YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk about it to Bibbs himself&mdash;I
+      don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow&mdash;but I thought maybe you could
+      kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a little talk
+      with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land lays, and ask
+      her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ME!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. &ldquo;No.&rdquo; She shook
+      her head decidedly. &ldquo;It wouldn't do any good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't try it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
+      believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T&mdash;and,
+      what's more, it'd only make things worse. If people find out you're
+      runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as much
+      for you as if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and I
+      couldn't do it if it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed with resignation. &ldquo;All right, mamma. That's all.&rdquo; Then, in a
+      livelier tone, he said: &ldquo;Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+      morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's splendid, papa!&rdquo; she cried, beaming. &ldquo;I was afraid&mdash;Let's
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket.
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute,&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;Now it may give you just a teeny bit
+      of a shock, but the fact is&mdash;well, you remember that Sunday when
+      Sibyl came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'&mdash;it was the
+      day after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's telegram came&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see your hand!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now wait!&rdquo; he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+      &ldquo;The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning, when
+      you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office&mdash;he'd told
+      me to, you see&mdash;and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything.&rdquo; And he
+      held out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. &ldquo;You see, these days
+      when it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple o'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to jump for her&mdash;she went over backward. For the second time
+      in her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own
+      room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat that
+      the &ldquo;fuss&rdquo; she was making irked him far more than his physical loss. He
+      permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his office, but
+      when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in attendance to
+      await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he himself proceeded
+      on foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as manna in
+      the wilderness; it came from heaven&mdash;by what agency he did not
+      particularly question. The broker informed him that &ldquo;parties were
+      interested in getting hold of the stock,&rdquo; and that later there might be a
+      possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his client.
+      It might go &ldquo;quite a ways up&rdquo; within a year or so, he said, and he advised
+      &ldquo;sitting tight&rdquo; with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+      again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and his
+      wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her piano,
+      and as for furs&mdash;spring was on the way, she said. But they paid the
+      butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook once more.
+      It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and presently
+      assured him that Miss Vertrees would &ldquo;be down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed
+      and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the cook.
+      She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second, but it
+      vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes by a
+      soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be surprised,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+      business I looked in here. It'll only take a minute, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+      neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so&mdash;lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I could manage that much.&rdquo; And they sat down, facing each other
+      and not far apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly,&rdquo; he said, more
+      gravely. &ldquo;Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed
+      to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it
+      myself and explain how I happened to have it. It's this&mdash;this letter
+      you wrote my boy.&rdquo; He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left
+      hand, and she took it gently from him. &ldquo;It was in his mail, after he was
+      hurt. You knew he never got it, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed. &ldquo;I'm glad he didn't. Not,&rdquo; he added, quickly&mdash;&ldquo;not but
+      what you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other
+      way when it came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you&mdash;you
+      were above-board all through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said, &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all his
+      mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it all&mdash;once
+      I got started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;he leaned forward as if to rise&mdash;&ldquo;I guess that's about
+      all. I just thought you ought to have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you for bringing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might
+      have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this glance,
+      and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office,&rdquo; he said, rising
+      desperately. &ldquo;I told&mdash;I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock,
+      and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind
+      time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days&mdash;with
+      THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary rose with him. &ldquo;I've always heard YOU were the hard driver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He guffawed derisively. &ldquo;Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
+      couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end
+      o' the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some
+      day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is&mdash;once he
+      goes AT a thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she smiled. &ldquo;I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, looking away from her. &ldquo;It's just my way o' speakin' o' that
+      boy o' mine, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+      careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, &ldquo;How IS
+      Bibbs?&rdquo; but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the silence
+      became embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there,&rdquo; he said, at last. &ldquo;He
+      might worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by&mdash;and thank you,&rdquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he said, blankly. &ldquo;You're welcome. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary put out her hand. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to excuse my left hand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had a little accident to
+      the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a pitying cry as she saw. &ldquo;Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.&rdquo; He laughed
+      jovially. &ldquo;Did anybody tell you how it happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you hurt your hand, but no&mdash;not just how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was this way,&rdquo; he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down
+      again. &ldquo;You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the
+      youngest o' my boys&mdash;the one that used to come to see you sometimes,
+      after Jim&mdash;that is, I mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my
+      partner; and the truth is that's what it's just about goin' to amount to,
+      one o' these days&mdash;if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I
+      expect, I had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd
+      kind o' sneak in there and see how he was gettin' along. Take a doctor
+      with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole
+      Doc Gurney&mdash;I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to
+      show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I wouldn't
+      listen, and I didn't look out&mdash;and that's how I got my hand hurt,
+      tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and I didn't.
+      Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS hurt&mdash;and
+      so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical measures with
+      me. He's a right good doctor, too. Don't you think so, Miss Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is so!&rdquo; Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip
+      with all day on his hands. &ldquo;Take him on Bibbs's case. I was talkin' about
+      Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to hear the way ole
+      Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a friend as he is
+      doctor&mdash;and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the
+      family. He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and he thinks he could
+      stand the pace and get fat on it if&mdash;well, this is what'd made YOU
+      laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees&mdash;honest it would!&rdquo; He paused
+      to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing straight before her
+      at the wall; her lips were parted, and&mdash;visibly&mdash;she was
+      breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing furiously
+      angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went on, determined
+      now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his voice to one of
+      confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone which
+      indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only a joke he shared with
+      her. &ldquo;Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed! Why, that ole man thinks
+      YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to blame it on him, young
+      lady, if it makes you feel like startin' out to whip somebody! He's
+      actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to gettin' better while he
+      worked over there at the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin'
+      good. And he says if you could manage to just stand him hangin' around a
+      little&mdash;maybe not much, but just SOMEtimes&mdash;again, he believed
+      it'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good. 'Course, that's only what the doctor
+      said. Me, I don't know anything about that; but I can say this much&mdash;I
+      never saw any such a MENTAL improvement in anybody in my life as I have
+      lately in Bibbs. I expect you'd find him a good deal more entertaining
+      than what he used to be&mdash;and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing
+      to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to ask you to
+      stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc GURNEY,
+      he's got you on his brain so bad&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary jumped. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed profoundly. &ldquo;There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I didn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But I don't understand&mdash;and I think you
+      don't. What is it you want me to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed again, but this time with relief. &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're
+      right. It'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could with you,
+      all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you sometimes,
+      once more. Could you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't understand.&rdquo; She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+      gesture. &ldquo;Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make your
+      oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me
+      to marry him&mdash;because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him any
+      more,&rdquo; she cried in distress. &ldquo;I CAN'T!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. &ldquo;You mean because he thought
+      that about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! What he thought was TRUE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;you mean he was so much in&mdash;you mean he thought so much
+      of you&mdash;&rdquo; The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's
+      tongue; he seemed to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a
+      ghastly pause he bravely repeated them. &ldquo;You mean he thought so much of
+      you that you just couldn't stand him around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+      respected me&mdash;too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like,
+      and he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he
+      knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But the cheap,
+      bad things one has done seem always to come back&mdash;they wait, and pull
+      you down when you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn't
+      'in love' with me at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to do&mdash;it
+      was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad&mdash;he just threw
+      it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never would&mdash;just
+      for you. And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that must think quite a
+      heap o' the girl he does it for! You say it was only because he was sorry,
+      but let me tell you there's only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!
+      Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Bibbs isn't like other men&mdash;he would do anything
+      for anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan grinned. &ldquo;Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in 'sentiment
+      in business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he wanted was, just
+      plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was afraid his thinkin' so
+      much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him&mdash;the way it does
+      sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that ain't the
+      trouble.&rdquo; He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. &ldquo;Now here, Miss
+      Vertrees, I don't have to tell you&mdash;because you see things easy&mdash;I
+      know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to make Bibbs go
+      my way instead of his own&mdash;I had to do it for the sake o' my business
+      and on his own account, too&mdash;and I expect you got some idea how it
+      hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in half-hearted
+      or mean; he came in&mdash;all the way! But there isn't anything in it to
+      him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust
+      in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work
+      FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, and I believe&mdash;honest&mdash;that's
+      what hurt him the worst. Now you said we'd talk plain. Why can't you let
+      him come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She covered her face desperately with her hands. &ldquo;I can't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I mustn't press you,&rdquo; he said, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face.
+      &ldquo;Ah! He was only sorry for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty, and
+      it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear that
+      even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a change
+      came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't! Don't&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You mustn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't tell him,&rdquo; said Sheridan, from the doorway. &ldquo;I won't tell anybody
+      anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+      sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+      thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
+      sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
+      liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their
+      wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was visible in
+      the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke than there had
+      been this day of February a year earlier; there was more noise; and the
+      crowds were thicker&mdash;yet quicker in spite of that. The traffic
+      policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent&mdash;they
+      retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross the
+      street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more frequently
+      than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the motormen, the
+      chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane nervousness. So the
+      traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves were killed, of
+      course, with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that they
+      could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally
+      perilous to go about their city. It was strange, for there were probably
+      no citizens of any length of residence who had not personally known either
+      some one who had been killed or injured in an accident, or some one who
+      had accidentally killed or injured others. And yet, perhaps it was not
+      strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of the faces&mdash;the people had
+      something on their minds; they could not stop to bother about dirt and
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+      until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
+      with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
+      department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
+      Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
+      some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
+      into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy and
+      repellent; it had nothing but strength and size&mdash;but in that
+      consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty.
+      Sheridan had made some of the things he said emphatic enough to remain
+      with her. She went over and over them&mdash;and they began to seem true:
+      &ldquo;Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!&rdquo; &ldquo;Gurney says he's got you on
+      his brain so bad&mdash;&rdquo; The man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.
+      The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+      traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the
+      passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from the
+      crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore black;
+      one was tall and broad and thick, and the other was taller, but noticeably
+      slender. And Mary caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and his father.
+      They did not see her, and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's mellow voice,
+      which had taken a crisper ring: &ldquo;Sixty-eight thousand dollars? Not
+      sixty-eight thousand buttons!&rdquo; It startled her queerly, and as there was a
+      glimpse of his profile she saw for the first time a resemblance to his
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead of
+      his father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of a
+      truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country
+      women who were in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs, and
+      shoved backward upon him violently. To extricate himself from them he
+      stepped back, directly in front of a moving trolley-car&mdash;no place for
+      absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still absorbed in thoughts concerned with
+      what he had been saying to his father. There were shrieks and yells; Bibbs
+      looked the wrong way&mdash;and then Mary saw the heavy figure of Sheridan
+      plunge straight forward in front of the car. With absolute disregard of
+      his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a football-player shunting
+      off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed that they both went down together.
+      But that was all she could see&mdash;automobiles, trucks, and wagons
+      closed in between. She made out that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and
+      she saw a policeman breaking his way through the instantly condensing
+      crowd, while the traffic came to a standstill, and people stood up in
+      automobiles or climbed upon the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a
+      chance of seeing anything horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to help
+      the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again. The
+      crowd became pliant, dispersing&mdash;there was no figure upon the ground,
+      and no ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by the
+      clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What IS the matter, lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are they?&rdquo; Mary cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His SON&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him&mdash;oh, he's not
+      bad off, I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The
+      fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook up.
+      They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse me,
+      lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+      ascending. &ldquo;Whisk-broom up in the office,&rdquo; Sheridan was saying. &ldquo;You got
+      to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got any
+      call to blow, though&mdash;because I tried to cross after you did. That's
+      how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out
+      after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand
+      flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather take
+      it that way, and I don't know but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; &ldquo;he won't get it.
+      Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you in five
+      minutes.&rdquo; He followed his father into the office anteroom&mdash;and
+      convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color,
+      Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his
+      side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he
+      wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again. He
+      knew that his father had not &ldquo;happened&rdquo; to run into him; he knew that
+      Sheridan had instantly&mdash;and instinctively&mdash;proved that he held
+      his own life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir.
+      Bibbs had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for
+      Sheridan, just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside&mdash;as of no
+      importance, since all was well&mdash;reverting immediately to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he had never
+      perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and indomitable&mdash;and
+      lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's very self; laughing at
+      the lightning and at wounds and mutilation; conquering, irresistible&mdash;and
+      blindly noble. For the first time in his life Bibbs began to understand
+      the meaning of being truly this man's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said,
+      Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He had
+      given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary Vertrees
+      in her need. And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking how he had
+      gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him&mdash;with his head on
+      his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had not known
+      her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his real
+      awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein he
+      dreamily celebrated the superiority of &ldquo;friendship&rdquo;! The sleep-walker had
+      wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a failure in
+      both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the sacrifice had
+      been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for him was the work
+      he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in that, though it was
+      indeed no more than &ldquo;dust in his mouth.&rdquo; If there had been anything &ldquo;to
+      work for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+      below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+      across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast,
+      foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly
+      against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while
+      tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings would
+      overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here,
+      where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and
+      how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had
+      begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them that
+      they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live
+      in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well, their
+      posterity was here&mdash;and there was only turmoil. Where was the
+      promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it
+      had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the
+      very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and
+      sacrificing in turn&mdash;for what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+      beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in it&mdash;a
+      broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like a titanic
+      voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic&mdash;the voice of the god,
+      Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and work!&rdquo; it seemed to yell. &ldquo;Come and work for Me, all men! By
+      your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
+      summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
+      your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
+      your hope of children I summon you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
+      Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
+      You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
+      worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
+      children shall perish knowing no other god!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
+      voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but the
+      tone was exultant&mdash;and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
+      hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of Bigness
+      to some visitor from out-of-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But with
+      the old, old thought again, &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; Bibbs caught a glimmer of far,
+      faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled and
+      conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
+      conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served blindly&mdash;but
+      was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not he who had been
+      in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired before the vase is
+      glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble in a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of some
+      high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. &ldquo;Ugly I am,&rdquo; it seemed to
+      say to him, &ldquo;but never forget that I AM a god!&rdquo; And the voice grew in
+      sonorousness and in dignity. &ldquo;The highest should serve, but so long as you
+      worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man who makes me
+      ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him, I should be
+      beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself&mdash;in
+      the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs&mdash;a
+      gigantic figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and
+      shoulders disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly
+      blackened with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further&mdash;for there
+      was still a little poet lingering in the back of his head&mdash;and he
+      thought that up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with
+      his hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+      there&mdash;perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+      were children now&mdash;a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted the thing from his desk and answered&mdash;and as the small
+      voice inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
+      violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong&mdash;he
+      had been mistaken&mdash;yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice;
+      startlingly kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to
+      hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; he said, his own voice shaking&mdash;like his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: &ldquo;IS IT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs&mdash;I wanted to&mdash;just to see if you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs. They
+      said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I wasn't hurt at all&mdash;Mary. It was father who came nearer
+      it. He saved me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
+      you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;would you&mdash;have minded?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long interval before she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what to say,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It's so wonderful to hear your
+      voice again&mdash;I'm shaking, Mary&mdash;I&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I
+      don't know anything except that I AM talking to you! It IS you&mdash;Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;I've seen you from my window at home&mdash;only five times
+      since I&mdash;since then. You looked&mdash;oh, how can I tell you? It was
+      like a man chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary.
+      Mary, won't you&mdash;let me see you again&mdash;near? I think I could
+      make you really forgive me&mdash;you'd have to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I DID&mdash;then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not really&mdash;or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me
+      any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't the reason.&rdquo; The voice was very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, even more tremulously than before, &ldquo;I can't&mdash;you
+      COULDN'T mean it was because&mdash;you can't mean it was because you&mdash;care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary?&rdquo; he called, huskily. &ldquo;If you mean THAT&mdash;you'd let me see you&mdash;wouldn't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but if
+      it did, the words were, &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs&mdash;dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the voice was not in the instrument&mdash;it was so gentle and so
+      light, so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air&mdash;and it came
+      from the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly and incredulously he turned&mdash;and glory fell upon his shining
+      eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary stood upon the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE END <br /><br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1098 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5cb47e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1098 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1098)
diff --git a/old/1098-0.txt b/old/1098-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96be54f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10533 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Turmoil
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Posting Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #1098]
+Release Date: December, 1997
+[Last updated: November 25, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TURMOIL
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+1915.
+
+
+To Laurel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
+must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
+him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
+it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
+loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
+tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked
+and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of
+dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has
+the meager alternative of suicide.
+
+The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
+to one tune: “Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
+Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
+dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean--but I
+will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall
+be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!” And yet it
+is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is
+hasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for
+wealth is in the smoke.
+
+Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much
+of the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place--“homelike,” it
+was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State Asylum
+for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from a
+little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
+were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for
+a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the
+air was clean, and there was time to live.
+
+But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+American hearts--Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
+
+In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound
+longing for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became
+an accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
+Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became
+a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax
+them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get
+them! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of
+people; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag!
+Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is
+patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is
+Money! We want Bigness!
+
+They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
+years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people
+and yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
+thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than
+they could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came,
+the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish,
+Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes,
+Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians,
+Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and
+every hybrid that these could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos
+nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might furnish failed
+to swim and bubble in this crucible?
+
+With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
+roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under
+the tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of
+the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney
+type began to emerge discernibly--a cynical young mongrel barbaric
+of feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned
+apparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians.
+The female of his kind came with him--a pale girl, shoddy and a little
+rouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and
+elisions. Nay, the common speech of the people showed change: in
+place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean, and not
+unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to
+be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by the
+public journals.
+
+The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,
+and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its
+vitals, like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body
+of a man, missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to the
+saloons and all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation
+and ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase by the
+venturesome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimes
+killed; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; while
+house-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality. Life
+itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it was in
+medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer was more
+like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath the wheels lay
+in ambush at every crossing.
+
+The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did
+not matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!
+They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke.
+They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; though
+sometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new laws
+that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget both new and old.
+Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes--or wherever it was too
+much to bother--it became a joke. Influence was the law.
+
+So the place grew. And it grew strong.
+
+Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
+  Power to get more power!
+  Riches to get more riches!
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He
+had come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and
+he had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; but
+each time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally,
+after a year of overwork and anxiety--the latter not decreased by a
+chance, remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in the
+penitentiary--he found himself on top, with solid substance under
+his feet; and thereafter “played it safe.” But his hunger to get was
+unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew fiercer.
+
+He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And
+when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. “It's
+good! It's good!” he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. “Good, clean
+soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!” The smoke was one of his
+great enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who
+called to beg his aid against it. “Smoke's what brings your husbands'
+money home on Saturday night,” he told them, jovially. “Smoke may hurt
+your little shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhal
+climate and the adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makes
+the climate better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people wash
+more. They have to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You go
+home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' the
+pay-roll--and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out more
+smoke instead o' chokin' it off!”
+
+It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection
+in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and
+unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out
+he believed it was the finest city in the world. “Finest” was his word.
+He thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family;
+and just as profoundly believed his city to be the finest city in
+the world, so did he believe his family to be--in spite of his son
+Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a matter of fact, he knew
+nothing worth knowing about either.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered
+the failure--the “odd one”--of the family. Born during that most
+dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and
+the father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and
+grew meagerly, only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At his
+christening he was committed for life to “Bibbs” mainly through lack of
+imagination on his mother's part, for though it was her maiden name, she
+had no strong affection for it; but it was “her turn” to name the baby,
+and, as she explained later, she “couldn't think of anything else she
+liked AT ALL!” She offered this explanation one day when the sickly boy
+was nine and after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for
+his name's being Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to
+be allowed to exchange names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling
+Sheridan, or with the oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being
+refused went down into the cellar and remained there the rest of
+that day. And the cook, descending toward dusk, reported that he had
+vanished; but a search revealed that he was in the coal-pile, completely
+covered and still burrowing. Removed by force and carried upstairs,
+he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to utter a syllable of
+explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing was wholly a
+mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to trace and
+connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and mysterious
+fool, an impression not effaced as the years went by.
+
+At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding
+of a man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked,
+long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired
+and dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at
+first sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for
+he seemed upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not
+grief, but mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching
+scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he seemed about to burst out
+crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but it
+was impossible to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion of his
+life, either laughed aloud or wept.
+
+He was a “disappointment” to his father. At least that was the parent's
+word--a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to make
+a “business man” of the boy. He sent Bibbs to “begin at the bottom and
+learn from the ground up” in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic
+Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs
+to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.
+
+“You needn't worry, mamma,” Sheridan told his wife. “There's nothin' the
+matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put
+him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well
+as the next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.
+Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He
+makes me tired!”
+
+Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease
+was incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack
+of physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some
+subtle weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or
+slyness. He understood typhoid fever, pneumonia, and appendicitis--one
+had them, and either died or got over them and went back to work--but
+when the word “nervous” appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly
+suspicious: he had the feeling that there was something contemptible
+about it, that there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+
+“Look at me,” he said. “Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
+twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin'
+wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a
+country grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR
+because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man
+he wouldn't be sick.”
+
+He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental
+discussions--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and
+gesticulating to his bedded spouse. “My Lord!” he said. “If a little,
+teeny bit o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for
+anything! It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I
+won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of
+it's put on!”
+
+“Bibbs didn't want the doctor,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “It was when he was
+here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
+Honey, you better come to bed.”
+
+“Eat!” he snorted. “Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
+imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for
+that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice
+about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs.
+Sheridan: busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick.
+You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the
+sick people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!”
+
+“Honey,” she said again, drowsily, “you better come to bed.”
+
+“Look at the other boys,” her husband bade her. “Look at Jim and Roscoe.
+Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies.
+Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my
+shoulders already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter
+business man in this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me
+something to push AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look
+at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that boy's done for himself, and barely
+twenty-seven years old--married, got a fine wife, and ready to build
+for himself with his own money, when I put up the New House for you and
+Edie.”
+
+“Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet,” she murmured. “You better
+come to bed.”
+
+“And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl,” he continued, emphatically,
+“as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good
+wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in
+the United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school
+and took the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and
+she'd never even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I
+ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough
+literary judge for me--turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any
+man in the city. I tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me
+to get me to promise the New House--and I guess you had your finger
+in that, too, mamma! This old shack's good enough for me, but you and
+little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and push her
+the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them
+three chuldern! But Bibbs--” He paused, shaking his head. “Honest,
+mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth
+their salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget
+about Bibbs.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. “You did the
+best you could, papa,” she said, impatiently, “so come to bed and quit
+reproachin' yourself for it.”
+
+He glared at her indignantly. “Reproachin' myself!” he snorted. “I ain't
+doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want
+to reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was
+the best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was
+in him and make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous
+dyspepsia' on me!”
+
+He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and
+muttered his way morosely into bed.
+
+“What?” said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+
+“More like hook-worm, I said,” he explained, speaking louder. “I don't
+know what to do with him!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and “zwieback” as the
+basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he
+was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a
+nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the
+building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode
+of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was
+found sufficient to his support.
+
+Edith met him at the station. “Well, well, Bibbs!” she said, as he came
+slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.
+She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick
+glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. “Do
+you think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!”
+
+“But I certainly do look better,” he returned, in a voice as slow as
+his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak
+quickly he stammered. “Up to about a month ago it took two people to see
+me. They had to get me in a line between 'em!”
+
+Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
+quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
+troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some
+obligation of business to visit a “bad” ward in a hospital. She was
+nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness
+of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close
+upon beauty. Her movements were eager and restless: there was something
+about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was
+something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was
+a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her
+a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an
+automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+
+“That's the new car,” she said. “Everything's new. We've got four now,
+besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two.”
+
+“Edith, you look--” he began, and paused.
+
+“Oh, WE're all well,” she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
+his tone had caught her as significant, “Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?”
+
+“You look--” He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
+brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
+and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
+mode--all suited to the October day.
+
+“How do I look?” she insisted.
+
+“You look,” he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
+watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, “you look--expensive!” That
+was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
+preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
+glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+intimacies.
+
+“I expect I am!” she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
+glance. “Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening
+thing, for the theater--but my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby
+Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want
+Claus to help you in?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Bibbs. “I'm alive.” And after a fit of panting subsequent
+to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, “Of course, I have to
+TELL people!”
+
+“We only got your telegram this morning,” she said, as they began to
+move rapidly through the “wholesale district” neighboring the station.
+“Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month.”
+
+“They seemed to be through with me up there in the country,” he
+explained, gently. “At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep
+me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They
+told me to go home--and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
+right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day.”
+
+“Pshaw!” She laughed nervously. “Of course we're all of us glad to have
+you back.”
+
+“Yes?” he said. “Father?”
+
+“Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?” She did not turn
+to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly
+forward.
+
+“No,” he said; “father hasn't written.”
+
+She flushed a little. “I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one
+of the boys--”
+
+“Oh no; that was all right.”
+
+“You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often
+planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would turn
+up. And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of
+course we knew mamma was writing often and--”
+
+“Of course!” he said, readily. “There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
+glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
+forgotten how sooty it is here.”
+
+“We've been having very bright weather this month--for us.” She blew the
+flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+
+He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like
+a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a
+decoration. “Yes,” said Bibbs. “It's very gay.” A few moments later, as
+they passed a corner, “Aren't we going home?” he asked.
+
+“Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?”
+
+“No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?”
+
+“No. This is right. We're going straight home.”
+
+“But we've passed the corner. We always turned--”
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried. “Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know
+we were in the New House?”
+
+“Why, no!” said Bibbs. “Are you?”
+
+“We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--” She broke
+off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: “Of course, mamma's never
+been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but
+keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's
+got some of his business friends and people from around the
+OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and
+'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all on her
+hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa would have
+her up again before--”
+
+“Of course,” said Bibbs. “Do you like the new place, Edith?”
+
+“I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
+finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa
+bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's
+perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the
+front hall, and it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old
+fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new
+dining-room. You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced open,
+and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with two dead
+prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-store years and
+years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the
+museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of
+date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn
+giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told
+papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he
+did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me
+tired! Sibyl!”
+
+Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full
+gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation
+of her sister-in-law.
+
+“SIBYL!” she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
+to strike fire on her lips. “I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
+married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good! He could
+have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and
+Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of
+that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully
+nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last
+spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even HEARD of 'em!”
+
+“I thought you were great friends with Sibyl,” Bibbs said.
+
+“Up to the time I found her out!” the sister returned, with continuing
+vehemence. “I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
+lately--”
+
+“It's only lately?”
+
+“Well--” Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. “Of course, I
+always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
+ROSCOE!”
+
+“It seems,” said Bibbs, in laconic protest, “that she married him.”
+
+The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: “Why, she'd have
+married YOU!”
+
+“No, no,” he said; “she couldn't be that bad!”
+
+“I didn't mean--” she began, distressed. “I only meant--I didn't mean--”
+
+“Never mind, Edith,” he consoled her. “You see, she couldn't have
+married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
+mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even
+had to lend me the money for my ticket home.”
+
+“I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU,” Edith babbled. “I only
+meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
+marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Bibbs, “it's all straight.” And, perceiving that
+his sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set
+matters perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+
+“Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her,” she continued, a moment later. “Too
+lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
+MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!”
+
+“'Behave'?”
+
+“Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere,” said Edith, characteristically
+evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and
+in this not unique of her sex.
+
+Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. “Business
+is crawling up the old streets,” he said, his long, tremulous hand
+indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. “The boarding-houses
+come first and then the--”
+
+“That isn't for shops,” she informed him. “That's a new investment of
+papa's--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'”
+
+“Well, well,” he murmured. “I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+known here already.”
+
+“Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!” she said, impatiently. “I guess
+there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't
+know who we are. But we aren't in with the right people.”
+
+“No!” he exclaimed. “Who's all that?”
+
+“Who's all what?”
+
+“The 'right people.'”
+
+“You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people
+that have the real social position in this town and that know they've
+got it.”
+
+Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. “I
+thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it
+didn't know it,” he said. “I've always understood that it was very
+unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and
+if you had it you didn't know it.”
+
+“That's just bosh,” she retorted. “They know it in this town, all right!
+I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building
+out in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
+society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't
+all belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their
+clubs--but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling
+and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about
+anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and
+the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and--”
+
+“I see,” Bibbs interrupted, gravely. “Their ancestors fled together
+from many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I
+always understood the first house was built by an old party of the name
+of Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to
+these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him.”
+
+Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. “You mustn't repeat that
+story, Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and
+of course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before
+Mary Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this
+settlement. He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives
+there YET--some of the best people in Lynn!”
+
+“No!” exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+
+“And there are other old families like the Vertreeses,” she went on,
+not heeding him; “the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston
+Smiths--”
+
+“Strange names to me,” he interrupted. “Poor things! None of them have
+my acquaintance.”
+
+“No, that's just it!” she cried. “And papa had never even heard the name
+of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see
+him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his
+wages from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I
+thought I just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr.
+Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of
+course. They're the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And
+to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees
+country mansion--it's in the very heart of the best new residence
+district now, and that's where the New House is, right next door to
+them--and I must say it makes their place look rather shabby! I met Mary
+Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers, but she never did
+any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break I doubt if
+she'll do that! They haven't called.”
+
+“And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing
+Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--”
+
+“Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him
+understand that,” said Edith, demurely, “and he's promised to try and
+meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't
+know THEM, it's practically no use in our having built the New House;
+and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the
+right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told
+Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but
+it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees
+decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs Lamhorn'll never come. That's
+ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage! She SAID Bobby offered to bring his
+mother--”
+
+“You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?” Bibbs asked.
+
+“Oh, he's a friend of the whole family,” she returned, with a petulance
+which she made an effort to disguise. “Roscoe and he got acquainted
+somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night.
+Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps--” She broke off with an angry
+little jerk of the head. “We can see the New House from the second
+corner ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you
+know. Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes--the way
+she pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets
+anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him
+behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She got
+him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it
+was--”
+
+“Good heavens!” said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and
+the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. “Is that the
+New House?”
+
+“Yes. What do you think of it?”
+
+“Well,” he drawled, “I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+bigger; I can't be certain till I measure.”
+
+And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+“But it's beautiful!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect
+who loved the milder “Gothic motives” had built what he liked: it was to
+be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
+picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
+time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
+accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look
+of newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at
+least one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was
+thinner in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart
+of the town, it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather
+could be malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and
+corn had been growing not ten years gone.
+
+Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
+successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing
+of the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses
+that cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every
+inch of mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no
+matter what be done to it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the
+old name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind
+to change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places
+of its type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides;
+rich families, one after another, take title and occupy such houses as
+fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to
+imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New
+House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it--“beautiful.”
+
+What the architect thought of the “Golfo di Napoli,” which hung in its
+vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
+be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
+
+“Edith, did you say only eleven feet?” Bibbs panted, staring at it, as
+the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
+overcoat.
+
+“Eleven without the frame,” she explained. “It's splendid, don't you
+think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before.”
+
+“No gloom now!” said Bibbs.
+
+“This statue in the corner is pretty, too,” she remarked. “Mamma and I
+bought that.” And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
+grove of tubbed palms, a “life-size,” black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
+composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his
+chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped
+spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
+
+“Hallelujah!” was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
+saying she would “find mamma,” left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
+after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood
+waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. “What do YOU think of it?”
+ Bibbs asked, solemnly.
+
+“Gran'!” replied the servitor. “She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
+'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'.”
+
+“I expect she must be,” said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
+to the black bull beard for a moment. “Is there a place anywhere I could
+lie down?”
+
+“Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
+staihs, suh. Nice room.”
+
+He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to
+rest, and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the
+exodus from the “old” house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the
+patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly
+enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+
+“Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,” Bibbs's
+guide explained, chuckling. “Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
+doin's!”
+
+The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in
+every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
+pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have
+seemed pleasant to him after his journey. He stretched himself flat
+immediately, and having replied “Not now” to the attendant's offer to
+unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
+
+White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
+an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
+overseer--in the hall without. Said the emerging one: “He mighty shaky,
+Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all black.
+Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I change
+'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an'
+keep out the ground!”
+
+Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. “Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+somebody awready laid out,” he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
+near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
+pessimistic.
+
+“Hech!” said one, lamenting in a whisper. “It give me a turn to see him
+go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
+make ye kind o' sick to look at um?”
+
+“Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!”
+
+“Well,” said the other, “I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--”
+ She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+
+It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+
+She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
+like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
+husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
+she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
+two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
+absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and
+Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago
+become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his. She
+invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when she
+did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost
+spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not comprehend it
+and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one actual
+altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the early
+days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
+impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he
+had thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of “The
+Black Crook.” But she had not once referred to this during the last ten
+years.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
+more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time
+and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down
+over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's
+door.
+
+At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+
+“Don't go, mother,” he said. “I'm not asleep.” He swung his long legs
+over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
+restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+
+“No,” she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, “I just come for a
+minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--”
+
+“Poor Edith!” he murmured. “She couldn't look at me. She--”
+
+“Nonsense!” Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
+back to the bedside. “You look a great deal better than what you did
+before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body
+can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't
+got much color--”
+
+“No,” he said, “I haven't much color.”
+
+“But you will have when you get your strength back.”
+
+“Oh yes!” he responded, cheerfully. “THEN I will.”
+
+“You look a great deal better than what I expected.”
+
+“Edith must have a great vocabulary!” he chuckled.
+
+“She's too sensitive,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “and it makes her exaggerate
+a little. What about your diet?”
+
+“That's all right. They told me to eat anything.”
+
+“Anything at all?”
+
+“Well--anything I could.”
+
+“That's good,” she said, nodding. “They mean for you just to build up
+your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you
+at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's
+only a little time ago. How long was it?”
+
+“Eight months, I think.”
+
+“No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
+longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
+even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
+along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
+Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up
+pretty well on the home news.”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“What I think you need,” said the mother, gravely, “is to liven up a
+little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
+morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
+appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--”
+
+“Plans?” Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
+with his hand, so that he might see her better. “What--” He paused.
+“What plans is he making for me, mother?”
+
+She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
+“Well, you better talk it over with HIM,” she said, with perceptible
+nervousness. “He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any
+call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway.”
+ She came and stood by the bedside once more. “But you must remember,
+Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and
+wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always find he's
+right in the end.”
+
+He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
+she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.
+“You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night.”
+
+“You--you mean--he--” Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
+quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly,
+“Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?”
+
+“Well, I think he does,” she answered. “You see, it's the
+'house-warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern
+ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's
+just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You
+don't feel too bad to come down, do you?”
+
+“Mother?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Take a good look at me,” he said.
+
+“Oh, see here!” she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. “You're not so bad
+off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
+any harm to please your--”
+
+“It isn't that,” he interrupted. “Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
+spoil somebody's appetite. Edith--”
+
+“I told you the child was too sensitive,” she interrupted, in turn.
+“You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look
+like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all
+there is to it.”
+
+“All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
+can!”
+
+“It 'll do you good,” she returned, rustling into the hall. “Now take
+a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
+dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!”
+
+Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something
+she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+interminably. “His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
+you--his plans for you--” And then, taking the place of “his plans for
+you,” after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice came
+back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: “He loves his
+chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern”--“you'll find
+he's always right--you'll find he's always right--” Until at last, as he
+drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted realities, the voice
+seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that came out of the
+wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing within the room,
+and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky, bridging the
+whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke, and out
+of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over, “His
+plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--” And then there
+was nothing.
+
+He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
+against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting
+to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that
+it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+
+He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
+next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, “the old Vertrees
+country mansion.” It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the
+Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box
+of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been
+spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of
+it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and
+the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
+
+The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of
+the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly
+opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make
+a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic “summer-house.” It was
+almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and
+it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses
+in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the
+juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the “summer-house” was
+pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little
+girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and “housekeeping,”
+ or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm
+afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
+dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
+
+Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
+with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the
+window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He
+looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end
+to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic
+seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an
+entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared
+to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again
+and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete
+disapproval.
+
+“You certainly are one horrible sight!” he said, aloud.
+
+And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly,
+he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a
+rustic aperture of the “summer-house” and staring full into his
+window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
+a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
+Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her
+action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in
+the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending,
+and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any
+other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she
+had allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of
+things of which she was in reality unconscious.
+
+Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the
+same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan
+or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained
+composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of
+the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door
+and came to meet her.
+
+“Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?”
+
+“Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows,” said Mary
+Vertrees. “I got caught at it.”
+
+“Mary!” cried her mother. “Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!”
+
+“We'll go, just the same,” the daughter returned. “I suppose those women
+would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground.”
+
+“But WHO saw you?” insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+
+“One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
+At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
+about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
+Then he looked out and caught me.”
+
+“What did he--”
+
+“Nothing, of course.”
+
+“How did he look?”
+
+“Like a ghost in a blue suit,” said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
+street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who
+was observing them from the window of his library. “Rather tragic and
+altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!”
+
+And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
+their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who
+had something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and
+began to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was
+about sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little
+sketch of an elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache--relic of a
+forgotten Anglomania--had been profoundly black, but now, like his
+smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though
+his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for
+greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow
+black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket,
+a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling
+him the descendant of patriot warriors.
+
+The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
+marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
+“Eastlake” bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
+incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless “woodwork” everywhere,
+and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
+sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
+“very fine things.” They had been the first people in town to possess
+Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
+had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when
+Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's
+houses he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he
+found an edition of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final
+corroboration of culture, he would say, inevitably, “Those people know
+good pictures and they know good books.”
+
+The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
+had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin
+to grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody.
+Mr. Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At
+about the time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance,
+an office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
+winter; and he had a country place--a farm of four hundred acres--where
+he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
+home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit
+still and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but,
+strangely enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall
+down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the
+role of Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of
+the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
+buying bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers
+and read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained
+milkers milked her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and
+the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then
+he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to pay the
+taxes on the suburban lots and to “keep them up.” The lots refused to
+stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his family up,
+so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully the next year)
+for “traction stock” that was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased
+to buy and sell. Thus he disappeared altogether from the commercial
+surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top; and
+Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her “anti-smoke”
+ committee, had never heard the name.
+
+Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+“managed somehow” on the dividends, though “managing” became more and
+more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But
+there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took
+greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long
+after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there
+was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the “traction stock” henceforth
+was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help
+“manage somehow” according to his conception of his “position in
+life”--one of his own old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the
+completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses
+and the worn Victoria and “station-wagon,” to pay the arrears of his two
+servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--and a
+pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
+ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service.
+Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in
+all the buzzing city--he could do nothing.
+
+It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come
+in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if
+his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+
+The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
+closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round
+about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone
+of firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
+rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
+ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
+return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
+
+She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
+the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
+Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary,
+she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite
+certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
+
+“Papa! Oh, oh!” And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
+her eyes. “I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it--”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. “I suppose I'm very dull,” she said,
+gently. “I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the
+house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--”
+
+“Papa!” Mary cried, breaking in. “They asked us to DINNER!”
+
+“What!”
+
+“And I'm GOING!” she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
+“Think of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the
+daughter--and just BARELY met her--”
+
+“What about you?” interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his
+wife.
+
+She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
+not agree with her. “I couldn't!” she said. “I--”
+
+“Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!”
+ cried Mary, choking. “And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn
+it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a
+squeal!”
+
+“I suppose,” said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, “that Mary will have an
+uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--”
+
+Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
+and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her
+shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
+
+“THEY didn't notice anything,” she said. “So far as they were concerned,
+mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.”
+
+“Who were 'they'?” asked her father. “Whom did you see?”
+
+“Only the mother and daughter,” Mary answered. “Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy
+and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the
+fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have
+their pictures in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very
+successfully--partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly
+because she began too late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted
+plaster or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was
+to her credit that she selected it!”
+
+“They have oil-paintings, too,” added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+gentle pride at the Landseers. “I've always thought oil-paintings in a
+private house the worst of taste.”
+
+“Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!” said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
+the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. “Go on,
+Mary. None of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
+or--” He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with
+the poker. “Or one of the sons?”
+
+Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
+He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+
+“No,” she said, “no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
+sons thoroughly!”
+
+“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+
+“Oh, most adroitly, too!” laughed the girl. “Only she couldn't help
+unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!”
+
+“Mary Vertrees!”
+
+“Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
+could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
+same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
+oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is
+very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me
+that 'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one,
+caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem
+to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan
+mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,'
+and had been to some cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the
+subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me! The other
+brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house
+across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert,
+goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch with
+Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim'
+still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night. Papa--” She
+stepped nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were
+troubled as he did. There may have been a trouble deep within her own,
+but she kept their surface merry with laughter. “Papa, Bibbs is the
+youngest one's name, and Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a
+lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does it have to be Jim?”
+
+“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. “You're outrageous! That's a
+perfectly horrible way of talking!”
+
+“Well, I'm close to twenty-four,” said Mary, turning to her. “I haven't
+been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
+never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
+my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began
+to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything--but
+something's got to be done.”
+
+“But you needn't talk of it like THAT!” insisted the mother,
+plaintively. “It's not--it's not--”
+
+“No, it's not,” said Mary. “I know that!”
+
+“How did they happen to ask you to dinner?” Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+uneasily. “'Stextrawdn'ry thing!”
+
+“Climbers' hospitality,” Mary defined it. “We were so very cordial and
+easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
+old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who
+did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's
+in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it
+might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort of
+house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it--and
+then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And
+mamma--” Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment.
+“Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I
+mean you coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had
+promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
+daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am,
+and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at
+seven-thirty!”
+
+And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture
+of flying grace as she sped.
+
+When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
+the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
+the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
+was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded
+gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+
+“At least no one could suspect me to-night,” she said. “I LOOK rich,
+don't I, papa?”
+
+She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+“regal.” A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
+poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were
+like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and
+livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
+
+“Don't I look too rich to be suspected?” she insisted.
+
+“You look everything beautiful, Mary,” he said, huskily.
+
+“And my dress?” She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
+of white and silver. “Anything better at Nice next winter, do you
+think?” She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again.
+“Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over.”
+
+“You can do anything, Mary.”
+
+There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
+significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
+he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
+breath.
+
+And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted
+her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he
+should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+
+“Don't worry,” she said, in a low voice and gravely. “I know exactly
+what you want me to do.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
+was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room,
+and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to
+converse--necessarily at the tops of their voices. The whole company
+of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the occasion by
+carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed
+a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of crystal and
+silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
+white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
+marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end,
+white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing.
+They were models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan
+Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the
+guests recognized them without having to be told what they were, and
+pronounced the likenesses superb.
+
+The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
+great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
+then on each side came the neighbors of the “old” house, grading down to
+vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments,
+and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a
+consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the thralls and
+bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could
+look at him and eat.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
+for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
+devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked
+at Bibbs.
+
+He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
+effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
+fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when
+each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health,
+turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the talk
+went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the
+orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass,
+and there was a mighty babble.
+
+“Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.”... “Yellow flounces on the
+overskirt--“... “I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
+this year,' I says.”... “Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
+weeks.”... “One of the biggest men in the biggest--“... “The wife says
+she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--“... “Say, did you see
+that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever--“...
+“Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I
+says, and so he ups and--“... “Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost
+now.”... “Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.”... “Yes,
+sir! Not a dollar to his name, and look at what--“... “You wait! The
+population of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she
+stops.”... “Well, if you can show me a bigger deal than--”
+
+And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+sentence, “Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+just what'll do it for my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass
+grow where one grew before!” It was his familiar flourish, an old
+story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary
+Vertrees.
+
+It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave. He sat
+there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
+smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
+simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health,
+of good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none
+bought, and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was
+thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big
+beneath its vast facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds
+twinkled, circling three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong,
+and he used them freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and,
+though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the
+look of readiness and activity.
+
+He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at
+every one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they
+were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure,
+and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
+discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a
+band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out
+for a band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra
+they hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
+
+He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the
+table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
+or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
+real business of eating and shouting.
+
+“Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!” he would bellow down the length of
+the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the
+“Toreador” song, perhaps. “Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy
+Lee'!” And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer
+to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the “Toreador” continuing
+vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments of “Nancy
+Lee,” naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that uxorious
+tribute.
+
+“Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's
+wife a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy
+Lee! Oh, Na-hancy Lee!”
+
+“HAY, there, old lady!” he would bellow. “Tell 'em to play 'In the
+Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they
+don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S
+good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin,
+get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter you
+folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!”
+
+“What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
+watch, ahoy!”
+
+No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
+conviction, it bore none now; though “mineral waters” were copiously
+poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
+wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
+could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
+Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
+said, he had “plans for Bibbs”--plans which were going to straighten out
+some things that had gone wrong.
+
+So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps,
+turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the
+table at his right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less
+naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired
+the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her--it needed but the
+sight of her.
+
+The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the
+jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the
+rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court
+to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the
+sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and
+admiration. “Wonder who that lady is--makin' such a hit with the old
+man.” “Must be some heiress.” “Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it
+to marry rich, then!”
+
+Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
+with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
+Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
+but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
+She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
+she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
+bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It
+enchanted him.
+
+As he proclaimed to the table, she had “a way with her.” She had,
+indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the
+feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed
+upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the
+look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech to him--
+
+“I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!”
+
+Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and “Why?” was all he managed to say.
+
+She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
+mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one,
+reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would
+“really flirt” with married men--she was obviously the “opposite of all
+that.” Edith defined her as a “thoroughbred,” a “nice girl”; and the
+look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and
+she was another whom it puzzled--though not because its recipient was
+married.
+
+“Because!” said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. “And
+also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times
+ahead for both of us if we don't get along.”
+
+Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+brought up to believe that when a man married he “married and settled
+down.” It was “all right,” he felt, for a man as old as his father to
+pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but
+for himself--“a young married man”--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
+friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+“flirted”--they were always very matter-of-fact with each other. Roscoe
+would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped he was
+susceptible.
+
+“Yes--we're neighbors,” he said, awkwardly.
+
+“Next-door neighbors in houses, too,” she added.
+
+“No, not exactly. I live across the street.”
+
+“Why, no!” she exclaimed, and seemed startled. “Your mother told me this
+afternoon that you lived at home.”
+
+“Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the
+street.”
+
+“But you--” she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into
+her cheek. “But I understood--”
+
+“No,” he said; “my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year,
+but that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.”
+
+“I--I see,” she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from
+him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
+name, “Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.” And from that moment Roscoe had little
+enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
+coquetries.
+
+Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor
+to “get through with old Roscoe,” as he thought of it, and give a
+bachelor a chance. “Old Roscoe” was the younger, but he had always been
+the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was “steady” enough, but was
+considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for
+Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
+“capable, hard-working young business men,” and the principal difference
+between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
+bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of
+hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches
+taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the
+father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have
+sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing “rich
+suitings in dark mixtures.”
+
+Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+color, which increased his approbation. “What's that old Roscoe saying
+to you, Miss Vertrees?” he asked. “These young married men are mighty
+forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.”
+
+“Am I blushing?” she said. “Are you sure?” And with that she gave him
+ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
+upon Roscoe. “I think you must be mistaken,” she continued. “I think
+it's your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.”
+
+“How?”
+
+She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
+confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. “By trying
+to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!”
+
+This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
+nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized
+that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was
+instantly snared by that realization.
+
+“By George!” he said. “I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+anything--yes, and get away with it, too!”
+
+She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
+laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
+she said: “But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not.
+I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away
+with YOU?”
+
+“More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!” Jim was inspired
+to reply. “Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making
+fun of me like that.”
+
+“I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,” she said, regarding him
+with sudden gravity.
+
+“Well,” said Jim, in simple honesty, “you're a funny girl!”
+
+Her gravity continued an instant longer. “I may not turn out to be funny
+for YOU.”
+
+“So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+manage to be satisfied.” And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
+turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+
+“Yes,” he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, “I can see
+you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
+means anything!”
+
+“'Laugh'!” she cried, gaily. “Why, it might be a matter of life and
+death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
+considering the mistake I made with your brother.”
+
+Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
+nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it;
+he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
+consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
+lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he
+mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
+
+“Put what question?” he said, breathlessly.
+
+“As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,” she returned,
+speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, “I think it would
+be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with
+any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?”
+
+“Not yet,” he gasped. “Are you?”
+
+“NO!” she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+
+Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
+lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
+Vertrees was “starting rather picturesquely with Jim.” And he added,
+languidly, “Do you suppose she WOULD?”
+
+For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+interested in the clasp of a long “rope” of pearls, a loop of which she
+was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
+and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
+clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty,
+but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
+accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize
+the wrongness of the wearer.
+
+“I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,”
+ repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+“I heard you.” There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
+eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
+now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. “Starting any
+stronger than you did with Edith?” she inquired.
+
+“Oh, keep the peace!” he said, crossly. “That's off, of course.”
+
+“You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely,” said
+Sibyl, looking at him steadily. “You've talked to her for--”
+
+“For Heaven's sake,” he begged, “keep the peace!”
+
+“Well, what have you just been doing?”
+
+“SH!” he said. “Listen to your father-in-law.”
+
+Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
+begun to play “The Rosary,” to his vast content.
+
+“I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,” he roared, beating the measures
+with his fork. “EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's
+the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
+thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--”
+
+“Mr. Sheridan,” she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, “you
+don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways,
+and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
+something important.”
+
+“I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!” the father
+threatened, more delighted with her than ever. “By gosh! if I was his
+age--or a widower right NOW--”
+
+“Oh, wait!” cried Mary. “If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
+Sheridan to hear.”
+
+“She'd say the same,” he shouted. “She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--”
+
+“You must listen to your father,” Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
+had grown red again. “He's going to tell us how, when he was your age,
+he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could
+see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!”
+
+At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. “Look here, young
+lady!” he roared. “Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or
+I'm goin' to kiss you!”
+
+Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed “too awful,” but
+Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+
+“Both!” she cried. “Both! The one to make me forget the other!”
+
+“But which--” he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+“Jim,” he roared, “if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
+you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!”
+
+And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
+little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew what his
+father's plans were now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Mrs. Vertrees “sat up” for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
+after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
+Landseers. Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for
+her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did
+the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a
+long vigil of it.
+
+She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her
+in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they
+had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
+the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her
+own room, which was directly over the “front hall.” There, book in hand,
+she employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief
+that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+
+Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought
+her--and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward
+because she did not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward
+this troubled couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which
+neither of them could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they
+had talked it over, day after day, from the very hour when they heard
+Sheridan was to build his New House next door. For--so quickly does
+any ideal of human behavior become an antique--their youth was of the
+innocent old days, so dead! of “breeding” and “gentility,” and no craft
+had been more straitly trained upon them than that of talking about
+things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital
+difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
+Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
+matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
+grocery while they were still dancing.
+
+It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+Mary's laugh, and “Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!”
+
+The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
+of cold and bracing air into her mother's room. “Yes,” she said, before
+Mrs. Vertrees could speak, “he brought me home!”
+
+She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
+pat upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+
+“Mamma!” Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that
+she had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. “Why don't you ask
+me?”
+
+This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. “I don't--” she
+faltered. “Ask you what, Mary?”
+
+“How I got along and what he's like.”
+
+“Mary!”
+
+“Oh, it isn't distressing!” said Mary. “And I got along so fast--” She
+broke off to laugh; continuing then, “But that's the way I went at it,
+of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?”
+
+“I don't know what you mean,” Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+plaintively.
+
+“Yes,” said Mary, “I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
+afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
+You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them while
+YOU pretend to run away!”
+
+“My dear, I don't know what to--”
+
+“What to make of anything!” Mary finished for her. “So that's all
+right! Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and
+tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures,
+but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned
+and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could manage at least twice
+as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone
+would have lasted us a couple of months. There they were, before me, but
+I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em, and so--well, so I did what I could!”
+
+She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. “It
+seemed to be a success--what I could,” she said, clasping her hands
+behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+accompaniment to her narrative. “The girl Edith and her sister-in-law,
+Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things on me.
+The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it. He's
+what he is. I like him.” She paused reflectively, continuing, “Edith's
+'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not stupid, but
+I think he's--” She interrupted herself with a cheery outcry: “Oh! I
+mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make Edith like him, I
+ought to respect him as a colleague.”
+
+“I don't understand a thing you're talking about,” Mrs. Vertrees
+complained.
+
+“All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that
+know. He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those
+people you wondered about at the theater, the last time we went--dressed
+in ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She
+flatters the father, and so did I, for that matter--but not that way. I
+treated him outrageously!”
+
+“Mary!”
+
+“That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of
+us follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the
+Palatine. He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em
+listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present of the
+house. What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples
+panorama in the hall. He made us look at all the plumbing--bath-rooms
+and everywhere else--and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples. He
+said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And
+he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken
+a prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed
+in mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful
+and nice--he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was
+modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
+after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street
+to her house with them--her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim
+Sheridan--”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. “'Jim'!” she exclaimed. “Mary, PLEASE--”
+
+“Of course,” said Mary. “I'll make it as easy for you as I can,
+mamma. Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe
+explained that 'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed
+that Mr. Lamhorn was the only one near death's door on that account.
+Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They
+were objectionably apologetic about it, and they seemed to think NOW we
+were going to have a 'good time' to make up for it. But I hadn't been
+bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and the 'good time' at Mrs.
+Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid.”
+
+“But, Mary,” her mother began, “is--is--” And she seemed unable to
+complete the question.
+
+“Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?
+I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise--Oh, what
+right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly
+my kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the
+Sheridan Building--”
+
+“Oh, no!” Mrs. Vertrees cried. “Surely not!”
+
+“Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what. But, after
+all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a palace
+in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver pieces
+had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I
+shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it picturesque and
+stately--I'd have been impressed. And what's the real difference? The
+icing is temporary, and that's much more modest, isn't it? And why is
+it vulgar to feel important more on account of something you've done
+yourself than because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides,
+if we go back a few generations, we've all got such hundreds of
+ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of
+ourselves about. Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to
+Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't see anything out of place
+in the Sheridan Building in sugar.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head
+gravely. “My dear, dear child,” she said, “it seems to me--It looks--I'm
+afraid--”
+
+“Say as much of it as you can, mamma,” said Mary, encouragingly. “I can
+get it, if you'll just give me one key-word.”
+
+“Everything you say,” Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, “seems to have the
+air of--it is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--”
+
+“Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+him.”
+
+“Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant,” said Mrs. Vertrees,
+speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. “But you said
+that--that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs.
+Sheridan's unentertaining--”
+
+“And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at
+dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I--”
+ And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+
+“Well,” she asked, gravely, “is there anything else I can do? You and
+papa don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is
+the only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress
+me. That's all there is about it, isn't it?”
+
+“But nothing MUST distress you!” the mother cried.
+
+“That's what I say!” said Mary, cheerfully. “And so it doesn't. It's all
+right.” She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
+the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet.
+“Mother, you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter
+whom a girl marries.”
+
+“No, no!” Mrs. Vertrees protested. “I never said such a--”
+
+“No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
+marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
+right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
+One man as well as another?”
+
+“Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I--”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mary, indulgently. “I don't mean you and papa. But
+isn't it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there
+must be something in it.”
+
+“Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that.” And Mrs. Vertrees
+lifted pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared. “It
+sounds--almost reckless!”
+
+Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. “Never fret,
+dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been
+too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our
+choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more
+than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house
+next door?”
+
+She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
+this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. “Oh,
+the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--”
+
+“Did he speak of it?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+
+“No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
+But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
+he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
+'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
+ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were
+in the Sheridan family”--she laughed a little ruefully--“he might be
+interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and
+bonds. I didn't see him after dinner.”
+
+“There must be something wrong with him,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “They'd
+have introduced him if there wasn't.”
+
+“I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people
+like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke of
+sending him back to a machine-shop of some sort; I suppose he meant
+when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr.
+Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me;
+and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic
+change came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!”
+
+“You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.”
+
+“No,” said Mary, thoughtfully, “I don't think he is; but he might be
+uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he
+once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy
+just then! I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--”
+
+“I wouldn't.” Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there
+was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. “I'd keep my mind on
+pleasanter things, Mary.”
+
+Mary laughed and nodded. “Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and
+probably, if all were known, too good--even for me!”
+
+And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Edith, glancing casually into the “ready-made” library, stopped
+abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the
+pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read
+it:
+
+                  FUGITIVE
+
+  I will forget the things that sting:
+    The lashing look, the barbed word.
+  I know the very hands that fling
+    The stones at me had never stirred
+  To anger but for their own scars.
+    They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars
+    Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like
+  These wounded ones I must not be,
+    For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free
+    Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+
+“Bibbs!” Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she
+came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful
+than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her
+coat.
+
+Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed
+by the poem. “Pretty young, isn't it?” he said. “There must have been
+something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe
+the poem did it.”
+
+She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a
+low voice: “I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all,
+Bibbs. I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't
+want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about
+it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it
+aloud to the whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what
+other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more,
+and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought
+I'd die of shame!”
+
+“You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp,” Bibbs suggested.
+
+“I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every
+time anybody speaks of the thing.”
+
+Bibbs looked grieved. “The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
+only seventeen when you wrote it.”
+
+“Oh, hush up!” she snapped. “I wish it had burnt my fingers the first
+time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where
+it was. I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--”
+
+“No, no,” he said, comfortingly. “It was the very most flattering thing
+ever happened to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
+machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--”
+
+“But I DON'T like it!” she exclaimed. “I don't even understand it--and
+papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
+truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize.”
+
+“Maybe they expected father to endow the school,” Bibbs murmured.
+
+“Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!
+I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how
+I 'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
+thing, the way he says it. I hate it!”
+
+“You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another
+name you might find--”
+
+“Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first
+chance I get.” She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. “I'd like
+to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!”
+
+“Edith!” he called, as she went into the hall.
+
+“What's the matter?”
+
+“I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used
+to me?”
+
+“What on earth do you mean?” she said, coming back as far as the
+threshold.
+
+“When I first came you couldn't look at me,” Bibbs explained, in his
+impersonal way. “But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if
+I'd--”
+
+“It's because you look so much better,” she told him, cheerfully. “This
+month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change.”
+
+“Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change.”
+
+“You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw,” said Edith, with supreme
+candor. “But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
+life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you
+mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say.
+But you're right about my not being able to look at you at first. You
+had a kind of whiteness that--Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose,
+but you've got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody
+could look at you now, Bibbs, and no--not get--”
+
+“Sick?”
+
+“Well--almost that!” she laughed. “And you're getting a better color
+every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly.”
+
+“I--I'm afraid so,” he said, ruefully.
+
+“'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean
+father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.
+I heard him say something about it the night of the--” The jingle of
+a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. “Bobby
+Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the country.
+Afternoon, Bibbs!”
+
+When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf,
+his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted
+almost entirely of handsome “uniform editions”: Irving, Poe, Cooper,
+Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon,
+Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert,
+Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves
+of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of “famous classics,” of “Oriental
+masterpieces,” of “masterpieces of oratory,” and more shelves of
+“selected libraries” of “literature,” of “the drama,” and of “modern
+science.” They made an effective decoration for the room, all these
+big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a
+reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace;
+but Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them
+considered them a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a
+burden of dust, and that nobody else considered them at all. Himself, he
+disturbed not one.
+
+There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house,
+and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.
+“Awready, Mist' Bibbs,” he announced. “You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you'
+ride, an' she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at
+fo' 'clock. Aw ready, suh.”
+
+He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in
+the manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the
+hall they passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket
+opened the door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the
+chauffeur in the car which stood waiting in the driveway.
+
+“It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I
+first came home, George,” said Bibbs, thoughtfully. “What did you tell
+me?”
+
+“Yessuh!” George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. “You
+ast me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty
+near ev'y day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me
+twicet.” He shook his head solemnly. “Look to me mus' be somep'm might
+lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!”
+
+“Mighty what?”
+
+“Mighty lamiDAL!” George, burst out laughing. “What DO 'at word mean,
+Mist' Bibbs?”
+
+“It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?”
+
+“I nev' DID hear it!” said George. “I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f
+an' she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so good,
+seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!”
+
+“Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes--”
+
+“Do she?” cried George. “WHAT she mean?”
+
+“It's exactly the word for the statue,” said Bibbs, with conviction, as
+he climbed into the car. “It's a lamiDAL statue.”
+
+“Hiyi!” George exulted. “Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!”
+
+“I expect she is!” said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from sight.
+
+George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in
+the hallway. “Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she is!'
+Ev'y day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways,
+las' thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git
+well, 'at young man go' be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh,
+right now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!”
+
+“Look out with all 'at money, George!” Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+“White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you. You the on'y man
+bettin' on 'im!”
+
+“I risk it!” cried George, merrily. “I put her all on now--ev'y cent!
+'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!”
+
+This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for
+the meaning of “lamiDAL,” differed radically from another prediction
+concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some
+twenty minutes later.
+
+Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees
+beside him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon
+the highroad. The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the
+occupants of Jim's had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on
+the back seat--his white face startlingly white against cap and collar
+of black fur--but he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+
+Jim waved his left hand carelessly. “It's Bibbs, taking his
+constitutional,” he explained.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Mary. “I bowed to him, too, though I've never met
+him. In fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice. I hope he won't think
+I'm very bold, bowing to him.”
+
+“I doubt if he noticed it,” said honest Jim.
+
+“Oh, no!” she cried.
+
+“What's the trouble?”
+
+“I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them.”
+
+“Oh, I see!” said Jim. “Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is
+funny.”
+
+“Is he? How?” she asked. “He strikes me as anything but funny.”
+
+“Well, I'm his brother,” Jim said, deprecatingly, “but I don't know what
+he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS
+his brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half
+alive to me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we
+were too big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his
+own age. He'd rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself.
+Nobody could ever get him to DO anything; you can't get him to do
+anything now. He never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my
+brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever
+made! Father put him in the machine-shop over at the Pump Works--best
+thing in the world for him--and he was just plain no account. It made
+him sick! If he'd had the right kind of energy--the kind father's got,
+for instance, or Roscoe, either--why, it wouldn't have made him sick.
+And suppose it was either of them--yes, or me, either--do you think any
+of us would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it,
+but Bibbs Sheridan'll never amount to anything as long as he lives.”
+
+Mary looked thoughtful. “Is there any particular reason why he should?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
+believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much
+money his father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be
+carried on by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've
+got and see other fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things
+already, isn't it every man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger?
+Isn't it his duty? Don't we always want to get bigger and bigger?”
+
+“Ye-es--I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He
+looked so lonely--and sick.”
+
+“He's gettin' better every day,” Jim said. “Dr. Gurney says so. There's
+nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous
+diseases, because they don't have time to imagine 'em.”
+
+“You mean his trouble is really mental?”
+
+“Oh, he's not a lunatic,” said Jim. “He's just queer. Sometimes he'll
+say something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off
+the subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance,
+the other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The
+darky asked him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody
+else in the world would have just said what time they DID want it, and
+that would have been all there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says,
+and I heard him with my own ears. 'What time do I want the car?' he
+says. 'Well, now, that depends--that depends,' he says. He talks slow
+like that, you know. 'I'll tell you what time I want the car, George,'
+he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think of this statue!' That's
+exactly his words! Asked the darky what he thought of that Arab Edith
+and mother bought for the hall!”
+
+Mary pondered upon this. “He might have been in fun, perhaps,” she
+suggested.
+
+“Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work
+of art! Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just
+kind-hearted--and that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!” she laughed.
+
+“See here!” he cried. “Isn't there any way for us to get over this
+Mister and Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed
+to be with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you
+know how I feel by this time--”
+
+She looked panic-stricken immediately. “Oh, no,” she protested, quickly.
+“No, I don't, and--”
+
+“Yes, you do,” he said, and his voice shook a little. “You couldn't help
+knowing.”
+
+“But I do!” she denied, hurriedly. “I do help knowing. I mean--Oh,
+wait!”
+
+“What for? You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly
+WANTED me to feel that way--or else pretended--”
+
+“Now, now!” she lamented. “You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!”
+
+“'Spoilin' it!'” He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+squarely. “See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--”
+
+“Stop! Stop the car a minute.” And when he had complied she faced him as
+squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. “Listen. I don't want
+you to go on, to-day.”
+
+“Why not?” he asked, sharply.
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“You mean it's just a whim?”
+
+“I don't know,” she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest,
+and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+
+“Will you tell me something?”
+
+“Almost anything.”
+
+“Have you ever told any man you loved him?”
+
+And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. “No,”
+ she said. “And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that--or ever
+know what it means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan.”
+
+“Then you--you've just been flirting with me!” Poor Jim looked both
+furious and crestfallen.
+
+“Not one bit!” she cried. “Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant
+every single thing!”
+
+“I don't--”
+
+“Of course you don't!” she said. “Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start
+the car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I
+have not flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing
+more, and then I want you to take me straight home, talking about the
+weather all the way. I said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care'
+for any man, and that is true. I doubt the existence of the kind of
+'caring' we hear about in poems and plays and novels. I think it must be
+just a kind of emotional TALK--most of it. At all events, I don't feel
+it. Now, we can go faster, please.”
+
+“Just where does that let me out?” he demanded. “How does that excuse
+you for--”
+
+“It isn't an excuse,” she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+wholly desolate. “I haven't said I should never marry.”
+
+“What?” Jim gasped.
+
+She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+unfathomably sorrowful.
+
+“I promise nothing,” she said, faintly.
+
+“You needn't!” shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. “You needn't! By
+George! I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise
+whenever you're ready!”
+
+“Don't forget what I asked,” she begged him.
+
+“Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!” cried the
+happy Jim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields
+and sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean
+air beneath a glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so
+maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible
+for men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+
+Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.
+How largely this apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his
+face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the
+result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than
+the circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a
+month before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it
+seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to convey her forgiveness.
+
+There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
+his experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the
+impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her
+veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind--and that
+look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+
+By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed
+and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the
+smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon,
+that nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine
+shrouded in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very
+heart of it, for a commanded interview with his father, the distant
+cloud was like an implacable genius issuing thunderously in smoke from
+his enchanted bottle, and irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+
+They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of
+November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and
+here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray;
+the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there,
+nevertheless--impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And
+then, as the car drove on, the chimneys and stacks of factories came
+swimming up into view like miles of steamers advancing abreast, every
+funnel with its vast plume, savage and black, sweeping to the horizon,
+dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation over league on league already
+rich and vile with grime.
+
+The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar
+and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car
+passed two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways
+possible to make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and
+lurid the next with the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing
+blackened giants, half naked, in passionate action, struggling with
+formless things in the hot illumination. And big as these shops were,
+they were growing bigger, spreading over a third block, where two new
+structures were mushrooming to completion in some hasty cement process
+of a stability not over-reassuring. Bibbs pulled the rug closer about
+him, and not even the phantom of color was left upon his cheeks as he
+passed this place, for he knew it too well. Across the face of one of
+the buildings there was an enormous sign: “Sheridan Automatic Pump Co.,
+Inc.”
+
+Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and
+adding their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses
+of a thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots
+and nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from
+one another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch
+some night when the right wind blew. They were only waiting for that
+wind and a cigarette, and then they would all be gone together--a pinch
+of incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+
+Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there
+a forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people
+said it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure
+that asphalt and “improving” the streets did it; but Bigness was in
+too Big a hurry to bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles
+and telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the
+thousand to take their places. So he let the trees die and put up his
+poles. They were hideous, but nobody minded that; and sometimes the
+wires fell and killed people--but not often enough to matter at all.
+
+Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the
+town where the few solid old houses not already demolished were in
+transition: some, with their fronts torn away, were being made into
+segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into
+trade, brazenly putting forth “show-windows” on their first floors,
+seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped
+humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one story
+erected in the old front yards. Altogether, the town here was like a
+boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old ingredients
+were discernible.
+
+This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached
+the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing
+while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried
+before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of
+feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them,
+rising higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings
+were coming down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men
+worked underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs
+like spiders in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to
+split the wind like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way
+round swarming corners; motor-cars of every kind and shape known to
+man babbled frightful warnings and frantic demands; hospital ambulances
+clamored wildly for passage; steam-whistles signaled the swinging of
+titanic tentacle and claw; riveters rattled like machine-guns; the
+ground shook to the thunder of gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate
+sound of it all was the sound of earthquake playing accompaniments for
+battle and sudden death. On one of the new steel buildings no work
+was being done that afternoon. The building had killed a man in the
+morning--and the steel-workers always stop for the day when that
+“happens.”
+
+And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and
+the pagan women--there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For
+the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the
+rush and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+
+Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be “to the minute” or his father
+would consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's
+office marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with
+his entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under
+Sheridan's direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or
+audible suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to
+the new-comer. As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly
+stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that
+they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a
+disappointment, the “queer one” of the family, and that he had been
+summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly
+what they understood.
+
+“Sit down,” said Sheridan.
+
+It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
+
+Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his
+big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They
+were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as might be
+still damp from a basin.
+
+“Well, Bibbs,” he said at last, not altering his attitude, “do you know
+what I'm goin' to do with you?”
+
+Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon
+the ceiling. “I heard you tell Jim,” he began, in his slow way. “You
+said you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to
+Miss Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But--”
+
+“But what?” said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+
+“Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?”
+
+That brought his father sharply round to face him. “You beat the devil!
+Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?”
+
+“Liver, maybe,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+“Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you
+organically. No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter,
+and that's ALL the matter. Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put
+through the big deals! No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just
+sets out on the back fence and thinks about how much trouble there must
+be in the world! That ain't the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs;
+it's the kind that borrows fifteen cents from his wife's uncle's
+brother-in-law to get ten cent's worth o' plug tobacco and a nickel's
+worth o' quinine!”
+
+He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned
+again to the window.
+
+“Look out there!” he bade his son. “Look out o' that window! Look at the
+life and energy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
+tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young
+men are doin' in this town!” He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk
+in the middle of the room. “Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look
+at what your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look
+at Jim! I made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last
+New-Year's, with charge of every inch o' ground and every brick and
+every shingle and stick o' wood we own; and it's an example to any young
+man--or ole man, either--the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found
+out we wanted two more big warehouses at the Pump Works--wanted 'em
+quick. Contractors said it couldn't be done; said nine or ten months
+at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What'd Jim do? Took the
+contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process;
+kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day
+himself--and, by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week! Four
+months and a half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o'
+these fellers that make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young
+man can be like Jim, because there's mighty few got his ability, but
+every young man can go in and do his share. This town is God's own
+country, and there's opportunity for anybody with a pound of energy and
+an ounce o' gumption. I tell you these young business men I watch just
+do my heart good! THEY don't set around on the back fence--no, sir! They
+take enough exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball
+game once or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice
+families, with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the
+work--because the work's got to go ON! They're puttin' their life-blood
+into it, I tell you, and that's why we're gettin' bigger every minute,
+and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin' to keep ON
+gettin' bigger!”
+
+He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing
+that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still
+fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan
+was impelled to groan. “Oh, Lord!” he said. “This is the way you always
+were. I don't believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You
+don't LOOK as if you did. By George! it's discouraging!”
+
+“I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger,” said Bibbs,
+bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. “I don't see
+just why--”
+
+“WHAT?” Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+staring across it incredulously at his son.
+
+“I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?”
+
+“Great God!” shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+clenched fist. “A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the
+poorest day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question--”
+
+“I did once,” Bibbs interrupted; “when I was in the machine-shop. I--”
+
+“Wha'd he say?”
+
+“He said, 'Oh, hell!'” answered Bibbs, mildly.
+
+“Yes, I reckon he would!” Sheridan swung away from the desk. “I reckon
+he certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now,
+myself!”
+
+“It's the same answer, then?” Bibbs's voice was serious, almost
+tremulous.
+
+“Damnation!” Sheridan roared. “Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,
+you ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the
+word PROGRESS?”
+
+He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,
+his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. “Now then,” he said,
+huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, “what do you want to do?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What do you WANT to do, I said.”
+
+Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. “What--what do--I--what--”
+
+“If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you
+do?”
+
+Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound
+shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his
+shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to
+the desk in school.
+
+“What would you do? Loaf?”
+
+“No, sir.” Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it
+made was unquestionably a guilty sound. “I suppose I'd--I'd--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I suppose I'd try to--to write.”
+
+“Write what?”
+
+“Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps.”
+
+“That all?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I see,” said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+putting upon himself. “That is, you want to write, but you don't want to
+write anything of any account.”
+
+“You think--”
+
+Sheridan got up again. “I take my hat off to the man that can write
+a good ad,” he said, emphatically. “The best writin' talent in this
+country is right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for
+good writin'--look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for
+that kind o' writin'. Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried
+it, and I can't do it. I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes
+people do the hardest thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to
+make 'em give up their MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell
+you when it comes to the actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to
+make things HAPPEN, R. T. Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in
+a minute than George Waldo Emerson ever knew in his whole life!”
+
+“You--you may be--” Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered in
+a cough.
+
+“Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up
+with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'!
+My Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper
+without havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane
+Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why,
+look at Edith! I expect that poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water
+mark for you, young man, and it's the only one she's ever managed to
+write in her whole LIFE! When I wanted her to go on and write some more
+she said it took too much time. Said it took months and months. And
+Edith's a smart girl; she's got more energy in her little finger than
+you ever give me a chance to see in your whole body, Bibbs. Now look
+at the facts: say she could turn out four or five poems a year and you
+could turn out maybe two. That medal she got was worth about fifteen
+dollars, so there's your income--thirty dollars a year! That's a fine
+success to make of your life! I'm not sayin' a word against poetry. I
+wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith's;
+and poetry's all right enough in its place--but you leave it to the
+girls. A man's got to do a man's work in this world!”
+
+He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+Bibbs confidentially on the knee. “This city's got the greatest future
+in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're
+goin' to have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty fair share. I love
+this town. It's God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every
+day right along, I don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own
+business, and I'd fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family.
+It's a beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any
+district you want to; look at the park system we're puttin' through,
+and the boulevards and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she
+grows!” He had become intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. “Now,
+Bibbs, I can't take any of it--nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor
+bonds--away with me in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave
+my share in it to my boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and
+a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before,
+whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built
+big, and I want the buildin' to go on. And when my last hour comes I
+want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're fit
+to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want
+to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to take hold of big things.
+Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made
+mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my
+boys.”
+
+He leaned back, deeply moved. “There!” he said, huskily. “I've never
+spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you
+to understand--and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that
+way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs.”
+
+“I see,” said Bibbs. “At least I think I do. But--”
+
+“Wait a minute!” Sheridan raised his hand. “If you see the least bit
+in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set
+here and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you
+must understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have
+him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium
+because he couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs.
+I've had a whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time
+another, and I reckon I understand your case just about as well as he
+does, anyway! Now here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder
+than what I did the other boys, and that was for your own good, because
+I saw you needed to be shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of
+moody and mopish--and you needed work that'd keep you on the jump. Now,
+why did it make you sick instead of brace you up and make a man of you
+the way it ought of done? I pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look
+here, ain't it really because he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says,
+'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it, it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it,
+and that affects his nervous system. The more he tries it, the more he
+hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.' That
+ain't quite his words, but it's what he meant. And that's about the way
+it is.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, “that's about the way it is.”
+
+“Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to
+make you like it!”
+
+Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+ghostly. “I can't,” he said, in a low voice. “I can't.”
+
+“Can't go back to the shop?”
+
+“No. Can't like it. I can't.”
+
+Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
+exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father
+should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious
+stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from
+childhood. “By George, you will!” he cried. “You'll go back there and
+you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like it, and he
+says it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks as if it
+was about up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work
+doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you, whether you hate
+it or not. I've never made a mistake in a serious matter in my life,
+and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And
+I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back there and vindicate my
+judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin'
+to learn the right one! He says in a couple more months this fool thing
+that's been the matter with you'll be disappeared completely and you'll
+be back in as good or better condition than you were before you ever
+went into the shop. And right then is when you begin over--right in that
+same shop! Nobody can call me a hard man or a mean father. I do the best
+I can for my chuldern, and I take full responsibility for bringin' my
+sons up to be men. Now, so far, I've failed with you. But I'm not goin'
+to keep ON failin'. I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and
+I'm not goin' to begin with my own son. I'm goin' to make a MAN of you.
+By God! I am!”
+
+Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. “You say you
+give me a couple of months?” he said.
+
+Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. “Gurney said two months more
+would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself
+in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!”
+
+“Good-by, sir,” said Bibbs, meekly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the “lamidal”
+ George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of
+temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception
+of himself as a permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the
+mantelpiece the two photographs that he owned: one, a “group” twenty
+years old--his father and mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys--and the
+other a “cabinet” of Edith at sixteen. And upon a table were the books
+he had taken from his trunk: Sartor Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque,
+Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles. There were some other books in the
+trunk--a large one, which remained unremoved at the foot of the bed,
+adding to the general impression of transiency. It contained nearly all
+the possessions as well as the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs
+sat beside it, the day after his interview with his father, raking over
+a small collection of manuscripts in the top tray. Some of these he
+glanced through dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but one made
+him smile. Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to
+read it. It was written on paper stamped “Hood Sanitarium,” and bore the
+title, “Leisure.”
+
+  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace--
+
+Having read so far as the word “peace,” Bibbs suffered an interruption
+interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the
+hall just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel
+was in progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and
+continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+
+“Yes, you BETTER go home!” Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.
+“You better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!”
+
+“Edie, Edie!” he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+
+“You see here!” This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+tremulous. “Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother
+Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she
+thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good.”
+
+“Yes, you did!” And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. “Yes, you
+did! YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it
+up between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--”
+
+“Edie, Edie! Now, now!”
+
+“Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what
+about his not going to HER house. How--”
+
+“I've explained that to Mother Sheridan.” Sibyl's voice indicated that
+she was descending the stairs. “Married people are not the same. Some
+things that should be shielded from a young girl--”
+
+This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. “'Shielded from
+a young girl'!” she shrilled. “You seem pretty willing to be the shield!
+You look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!”
+
+Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+pacification were renewed. “Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,
+and you'd oughtn't to--”
+
+“Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa--”
+
+“Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--”
+
+“You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!” the girl cried, passionately.
+
+“Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll--”
+
+“No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!” And Edith,
+flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung
+round it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself,
+face down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no
+perception of Bibbs's presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a
+passion of tears, she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched
+fists. “Sneak!” she babbled aloud. “Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!”
+
+Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward
+the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some
+sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+
+“Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago.”
+
+“Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry--”
+
+“Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?”
+
+“Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going
+out.”
+
+“No; don't go.” She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob,
+and repeated her request. “Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet,
+anyhow. Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at
+all, but I wish you'd sit down.”
+
+“All right.” And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. “Go ahead
+and cry all you want, Edith,” he said. “No harm in that!”
+
+“Sibyl told mamma--OH!” she began, choking. “Mary Vertrees had mamma and
+Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had some
+women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid
+herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em
+ever since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn
+is so bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice
+people in town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it's
+a falsehood, and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place
+I know the reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I
+won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and all of you would think
+I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably
+quit speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I
+ask. Just you watch that woman. You'll see!”
+
+As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching “that woman.” Glancing from
+the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old
+house next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked
+quickly up the path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention
+of calling. But he did not mention this to his sister, who, after
+delivering herself of a rather vague jeremiad upon the subject of her
+sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her own chamber, leaving him to
+his speculations. The chief of these concerned the social elasticities
+of women. Sibyl had just been a participant in a violent scene; she had
+suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to set her quivering
+with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to the presence
+of people whom she knew no more than “formally.” Bibbs marveled. Surely,
+he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon Sibyl's face or in
+her manner; she could not have ironed it all quite out in the three or
+four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses' door.
+
+And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose
+that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may
+and does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex
+as well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is
+a type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought
+greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women
+and by its own “lack of perspective,” for it is a type that never sees
+itself. Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question--it
+was like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not
+even the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make
+a certain impression she believed that she made it. She believed that
+she was believed.
+
+“My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,”
+ Mary said, when they were seated.
+
+Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had
+been brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark
+addressed to her by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms.
+It was intended partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an
+impression of sweetness.
+
+“Just thought I'd fly in a minute,” she said, continuing the cooing to
+relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. “I thought I'd just behave
+like REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far
+from down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted
+to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that
+afternoon. You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here
+before, I've had to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely, and
+I really've known scarcely anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed
+in business ever since he was a mere boy, why, of course--”
+
+She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+
+“Of course,” said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+
+“Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+afternoon,” Sibyl went on. “They're really delightful people. Indeed
+they are! Yes--”
+
+She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected
+with the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of
+cheerful ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of
+hands.
+
+“Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people
+here in town the other day,” said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and
+protracting it. “They said something that took ME by surprise! We were
+talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--”
+
+Mary interrupted her promptly. “Do you mean 'mutual' to include my
+mother and me?” she asked.
+
+“Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean.”
+
+“No,” said Mary. “We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+ours.”
+
+To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. “That's
+just the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!” she cried, with a vehemence that
+made Mary stare. “Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families
+here speak of him!”
+
+Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.
+“I had the impression he was a friend of yours,” she said; adding,
+hastily, “and your husband's.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said the caller, absently. “He is, certainly. A man's
+reputation for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to
+married people, of course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN
+it may be very, very dangerous. There are a great many things safe and
+proper for married people that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young
+girl. Don't you agree, Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“I don't know,” returned the frank Mary. “Do you mean that you intend
+to remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's
+doing so?”
+
+“That's it exactly!” was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. “What
+I feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable
+for Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell
+you,” she cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, “her father ought to
+put his foot down!”
+
+Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and
+then retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one
+might catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back
+into hiding under a bush.
+
+“Of course,” said Sibyl, much more composedly, “I hardly need say that
+it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as
+fond of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting
+about it. It would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled.”
+
+This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with
+pathos, but she flatted.
+
+And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the
+stress of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not
+uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect
+obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and
+the other flawed. In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect
+consciousness of Mary. The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely
+something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose--a Mary Vertrees who
+was incapable of penetrating that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing
+that she was projecting the image of herself that she desired to
+project, never dreaming that with every word, every look, and every
+gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to
+the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed
+woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but
+possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong--perhaps even violent.
+What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began to suspect.
+
+“And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled,” Sibyl continued. “It would be a
+dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
+Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
+would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't
+tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent
+and hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too
+late. You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just
+what it's my duty to do.”
+
+“I see,” said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, “Does Miss Sheridan
+seem to--to care very much about him?”
+
+“He's deliberately fascinated her,” returned the visitor, beginning to
+breathe quickly and heavily. “Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she
+wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that
+were, and she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start
+that made it easy for him--and he didn't need it. He could have done
+it, anyway!” Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice
+shook. “He went after her deliberately, the way he does everything; he's
+as cold-blooded as a fish. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and
+lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold of a piece of real
+money--and there was Edith! And he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can
+stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any money if she marries
+him, and the only person that could make him understand that is Father
+Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed, because Lamhorn is going to
+hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so last night. He said he was
+going to marry her the first minute he could persuade her to it--and
+little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!” Sibyl's eyes flashed green
+again. “And he swore he'd do it,” she panted. “He swore he'd marry Edith
+Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!”
+
+And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
+unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she
+saw Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps--for
+Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants might have heard.
+She saw Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and
+Lamhorn--tired of her--first evasive, then brutally letting her have the
+truth; and at last, infuriated, “swearing” to marry her rival. If Sibyl
+had not babbled out the word “swore” it might have been less plain.
+
+The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+“You see,” she said, more quietly, “whatever's going to be done ought to
+be done right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard
+about Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before
+Edith. I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because
+nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend
+would do. But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid
+to ever come right out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith
+can get anything she wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary
+indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel
+rock. If it's a question of his will against anybody else's he'd make
+his will rule if it killed 'em both! Now, he'd never in the world let
+Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew his reputation. So, you
+see, somebody's got to tell him. It isn't a very easy position for me,
+is it, Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“No,” said Mary, gravely.
+
+“Well, to be frank,” said Sibyl, smiling, “that's why I've come to you.”
+
+“To ME!” Mary frowned.
+
+Sibyl rippled and cooed again. “There isn't ANYBODY ever made such a hit
+with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL
+hope you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the
+family!” (This sally with another and louder effect of laughter). “And
+if it's MY duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too.”
+
+“No, no!” exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+
+“Listen,” said Sibyl. “Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this
+story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a
+good reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose
+(what's most likely) she loses her temper and says I invented it, then
+what am I going to do? Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and
+her daughter, and they're out of the question, anyway. But suppose I
+could say: 'All right, if you want proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came
+with me, and she's waiting in the next room right now, to--”
+
+“No, no,” said Mary, quickly. “You mustn't--”
+
+“Listen just a minute more,” Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
+ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. “You
+naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but
+if YOU take part in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what
+weight you carry over there, and no one would have the right to say you
+did it except out of the purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and
+his father would admire you all the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen!
+Don't you see we OUGHT to do it, you and I? Do you suppose Robert
+Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her? Do you suppose a man like
+him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for the money?” And again
+Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface. “I tell you he's after nothing on
+earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile, over there,
+next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to do it. Marry Edith?” she cried. “I tell
+you he'd marry their nigger cook for THAT!”
+
+She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too vehement,
+but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she had
+produced the effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was
+staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She
+became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+
+“After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+money-pile, over there, next door!” The voice was vulgar, the words were
+vulgar--and the plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary Vertrees's
+ears! The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly in the flawed
+one at last.
+
+Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her
+bargain. “Now don't you worry,” she said, sunnily, “about this setting
+Edith against you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she
+tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in
+over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a
+house, and Jim likes to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that
+way; she's too crazy to have you take her around with the smart crowd,
+but if she DID, you needn't worry. And another thing--I guess you won't
+mind Jim's own sister-in-law speaking of it. Of course, I don't know
+just how matters stand between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about
+as much alike as two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up
+his mind; sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD. Now, what
+I mean is, sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like
+that. There's lots of little things can be said, and lots--”
+
+She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and
+now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or
+any other kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of
+the room.
+
+Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered
+something neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and
+that she would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of
+absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her guest
+was talking. And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think
+this unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first considered it.
+There might have been more excuse for it, she thought, had she been
+speaking of matters less important--offering to do the girl all the
+kindness in her power, too!
+
+Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of
+her shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory
+of the furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and
+engravings. Then she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window
+and stood looking out upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair
+she had abandoned, and sat again. There was no sound in the house.
+
+A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her
+face, and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears. She
+looked at her watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since she
+had looked at it before.
+
+She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let
+herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her
+own house.
+
+Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. “Saw you from the window,”
+ he explained. “You must find a lot to say to that old lady.”
+
+“What old lady?”
+
+“Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the
+daughter come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk
+on up the street. Don't stand out on the porch,” he said, crossly.
+“Come in here. There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you
+about. Come in!”
+
+But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house
+and started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,
+staring fixedly. “Something's the matter over there,” he muttered, and
+then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, “What's the
+matter over there?”
+
+Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed,
+and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity,
+and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had
+followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she
+was crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+
+“By George!” gasped Roscoe. “I believe somebody's dead!”
+
+And he started for the New House at a run.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon,
+and at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from
+foreign parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with
+Sheridan and his colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name,
+was a gentleman of Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and
+Sheridan took pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's finest
+city. They got into an open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan
+Building, and were driven first, slowly and momentously, through the
+wholesale district and the retail district; then more rapidly they
+inspected the packing-houses and the stock-yards; then skirmished over
+the “park system” and “boulevards”; and after that whizzed through the
+“residence section” on their way to the factories and foundries.
+
+“All cray,” observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+
+“'Cray'?” echoed Sheridan. “I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?”
+
+“No white,” said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the
+long rows of houses on both sides of the street. “No white lace
+window-curtains; all cray lace window-curtains.”
+
+“Oh. I see!” Sheridan laughed indulgently. “You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
+ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones.”
+
+Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. “There are NO white ones,”
+ he said. “There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white
+window-curtains, no white house, no white peeble!” He pointed upward.
+“Smoke!” Then he sniffed the air and clasped his nose between forefinger
+and thumb. “Smoke! Smoke ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites.” He tapped
+his chest. “Smoke in your lunks!”
+
+“Oh! SMOKE!” Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+patently finding it delicious. “You BET we got smoke!”
+
+“Exbensif!” said Herr Favre. “Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in
+summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it.”
+
+Sheridan laughed uproariously. “They know it means new spring hats for
+'em!”
+
+“They must need many, too!” said the visitor. “New hats, new all things,
+but nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing
+peeble.”
+
+“Where's that?”
+
+“In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'”
+
+“Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip,
+and I tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty
+dirty and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin'
+right down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town
+than in Munich? I know you got more enterprise up there than the part of
+the old country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're
+associated with others like you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place,
+wouldn't you heap rather be here than over there?”
+
+“For me,” said Herr Favre, “no. Here I should not think I was living. It
+would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else.”
+
+“We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
+like it.”
+
+“Oh yes.” And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. “The first generation,
+they bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are
+Americans, like you.” He tapped his host's big knee genially. “You are
+patriot; so are they.”
+
+“Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+Farver!” Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. “You certainly stand up for your
+own town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would
+here. Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after you've seen
+our city! It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire
+you for it; every man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees
+the other fellow's got the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in
+your heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live right here than any place else
+in the world, if you had your choice. Man alive! this is God's country,
+Mr. Farver, and a blind man couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand
+where you do in a business way and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are.
+This is the big works, and I'll show you something now that'll make your
+eyes stick out!”
+
+They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+
+“Now I'll take you for a spin in the country,” said Sheridan, when at
+last they came out to the car again. “We'll take a breezer.” But, with
+his foot on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out
+of the office smiling a greeting. “Hello, young fellow!” Sheridan said,
+heartily. “On the job, are you, Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of
+it very often, I guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in
+the country sometimes with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside
+you!” He roared with laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder.
+“That's all right with me--if it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we
+goin' to move into your new warehouses? Monday?”
+
+“Sunday, if you want to,” said Jim.
+
+“No!” cried his father, delighted. “Don't tell me you're goin' to keep
+your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
+contractor yet didn't want more time.”
+
+“They'll be all ready for you on the minute,” said Jim. “I'm going over
+both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I
+guess they'll pass inspection, too!”
+
+“Well, then, when you get through with that,” said his father, “you go
+and take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell
+her you stand high with ME!” He stepped into the car, waving a waggish
+farewell, and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his
+companion a broad face literally shining with pride. “That's my boy
+Jimmie!” he said.
+
+“Fine young man, yes,” said Herr Favre.
+
+“I got two o' the finest boys,” said Sheridan, “I got two o' the finest
+boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and
+I tell you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM
+in bed! My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's
+a wizard. You saw them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?
+Well, JIM built 'em. I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver.” And he
+recited this history, describing the new process at length; in fact, he
+had such pride in Jim's achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it
+more than once.
+
+“Fine young man, yes,” repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an
+hour later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+
+“He is that!” said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: “I got a fine
+family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her
+and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.
+There's culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,
+and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it--her and my
+daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.
+I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and
+you'll see--and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been holdin'
+their own with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for much
+o' that kind o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern;
+and my daughter she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem
+she wrote when I get you up at the house. She wrote it in school and
+took the first prize for poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em
+any smarter'n that girl, Mr. Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're
+a pretty happy family; yes, sir. Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet,
+and I haven't ever spoke to him and his wife about it--it's kind of
+a delicate matter--but it's about time the wife and I saw some
+gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker for about
+four or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys, I
+hope, o' course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard
+me joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods
+here, and I guess it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER! She's one
+these girls that stand right up and look at you! And pretty? She's
+the prettiest thing you ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good
+sense. Jim'll be just right if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME
+to think o' the way that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder. Four
+months and a half! Yes, sir--”
+
+He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain
+the stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they
+reached the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan
+allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were
+shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+
+“Now, good night, Mr. Farver,” said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+shake hands with his guest. “Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and
+take you up to--Go on away, boy!”
+
+A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, “Extry!
+Secon' Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!”
+
+“Get out!” laughed Sheridan. “Who wants to read about accidents? Get
+out!”
+
+The boy moved away philosophically. “Extry! Extry!” he shrilled. “Three
+men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
+Extry!”
+
+“Don't forget, Mr. Farver,” Sheridan completed his interrupted
+farewells. “I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be
+here for you about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed
+the drive much as I have. Good night--good night!” He leaned back,
+speaking to the chauffer. “Now you can take me around to the Central
+City barber-shop, boy. I want to get a shave 'fore I go up home.”
+
+“Extry! Extry!” screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+bats in the dusk. “Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!” It
+struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many “Extras”; they printed
+“Extras” for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake,
+he decided, critically. Crying “Wolf!” too often wouldn't sell the
+goods; it was bad business. The papers would “make more in the long
+run,” he was sure, if they published an “Extra” only when something of
+real importance happened.
+
+“Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!” a boy squawked under his
+nose, as he descended from the car.
+
+“Go on away!” said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see
+the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+
+But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus
+cried his wares.
+
+“Say, Yallern,” said this second, hoarse with awe, “'n't chew know who
+that IS?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“It's SHERIDAN!”
+
+“Jeest!” cried the first, staring insanely.
+
+At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+and Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was
+their habit to give him a “reception,” his entrance being always the
+signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses
+of briskness and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
+
+The shop was crowded. Copies of the “Extra” were being read by men
+waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. “Extras” lay upon
+vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+
+There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
+the door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
+of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
+turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing
+silence in the shop.
+
+The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
+left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section
+of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above
+it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's
+closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber
+remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or just after
+it--under which a man does not need to be shaved.
+
+He stepped forward, profoundly grave. “I be through with this man in the
+chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan,” he said, in a hushed tone. “Yessuh.”
+ And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, “You goin'
+RESIGN?” he demanded in a fierce undertone. “You goin' take Mist'
+Sheridan's coat?” He sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,
+taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of
+subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+
+“You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan,” said the head barber, gently.
+“I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Sheridan. “Go on get through with your man.”
+
+“Yessuh.” And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+
+Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know
+what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand
+for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been
+imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd
+look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+
+Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the
+shop, and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly
+shifted, furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after
+wondering if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the
+night before; but there was no vacancy in either line.
+
+The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of
+the “Extra” there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The
+first of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims--
+
+Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the
+print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,
+pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+
+“I've come for you, father,” said Bibbs. “Here's the boy with your coat
+and hat. Put them on and come home.”
+
+And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
+strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
+
+Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,
+but as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his
+son's sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood
+face to face.
+
+“What--what--” His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it, he
+was so frightened.
+
+“Extry!” screamed a newsboy straight in his face. “Young North Side
+millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!”
+
+“Not--JIM!” said Sheridan.
+
+Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+
+“And YOU come to tell me that?”
+
+Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
+first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered
+cry of accusation:
+
+“Why wasn't it you?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
+days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
+in his mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs
+wondered how many million times that had happened since men first made a
+word to name the sons of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his
+strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead
+son. He had nothing to help him meet the shock, neither definite
+religion nor “philosophy” definite or indefinite. He could only beat his
+forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed with an ax, while his wife
+was helpless except to entreat him not to “take on,” herself adding a
+continuous lamentation. Edith, weeping, made truce with Sibyl and saw to
+it that the mourning garments were beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed,
+and he shirked, justifying himself curiously by saying he “never had
+any experience in such matters.” So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who
+became, during this dreadful little time, the master of the house; for
+as strange a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He
+met the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time
+for the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and
+he selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other
+things. Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the
+rites with a picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs
+wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection--he
+divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely a
+consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So the Knights led the
+procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way to the
+cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines, plumed
+hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the carriages pass
+between.
+
+“Mighty fine-lookin' men,” said Sheridan, brokenly. “They all--all liked
+him. He was--” His breath caught in a sob and choked him. “He was--a
+Grand Supreme Herald.”
+
+Bibbs had divined aright.
+
+“Dust to dust,” said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
+shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to “Dust to dust.” Bibbs stood
+passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a
+familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long
+time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between
+himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if
+he had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close--as
+Dr. Gurney predicted--that no one would be able to tell the difference
+between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would
+be all the more determined to “make a man” of him, now that there was
+a man less in the family. To Bibbs's knowledge, no one and nothing had
+ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans, once he had
+determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing that any
+plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His nature
+unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence,
+and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would
+hold to that way of “making a man” of Bibbs, who understood very well,
+in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
+make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
+
+He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The
+truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so
+thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that
+no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them,
+especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
+feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange
+to his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that
+Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would
+bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was
+to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the
+big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid
+hands upon Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering;
+Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her
+husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+
+It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and
+Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line
+of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the
+grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over
+the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the
+carriages filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs
+gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking
+back as he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not
+want to see. But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels
+or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had
+gone. A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
+
+The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about
+it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood
+looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming
+hillock beneath the darkening November sky. “It's too bad!” he half
+whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was
+too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was
+his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees
+standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.
+
+She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a
+slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the
+barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:
+urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and
+shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in
+unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such
+a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so
+long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
+undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
+box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without
+hope and without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque
+setting--she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a
+graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.
+
+She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and
+confused than Bibbs. In “Edith's” poem he had declared his intention of
+hiding his heart “among the stars”; and in his boyhood one day he had
+successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade
+of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were
+only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All
+his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker in
+the world. Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the
+unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her
+unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the
+little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive
+outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than
+those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started
+and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers
+fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.
+
+“Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, “I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
+you. I--” She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
+
+“Why--why--yes,” Bibbs stammered. “I'll--I'll be de--Won't you get in?”
+
+In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then
+Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing
+the door.
+
+“You're very kind,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I should have had
+to walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It--it is beginning to get dark. I--I noticed that.”
+
+“I ought to tell you--I--” Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat
+silent a moment, then spoke with composure. “It must seem odd, my--”
+
+“No, no!” Bibbs protested, earnestly. “Not in the--in the least.”
+
+“It does, though,” said Mary. “I had not intended to come to the
+cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came
+and whispered to me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your sister
+sent him. So I came. But when we reached here I--oh, I felt that perhaps
+I--”
+
+Bibbs nodded gravely. “Yes, yes,” he murmured.
+
+“I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,” she continued. “I mean
+opposite from--from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in
+the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time it takes.
+From where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at least I didn't
+notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here.
+I didn't know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course
+they didn't think to wait for me. That's why--”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, “I--” And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+
+Mary looked out through the dusty window. “I think we'd better be going
+home, if you please,” she said.
+
+“Yes,” Bibbs agreed, not moving. “It will be dark before we get there.”
+
+She gave him a quick little glance. “I think you must be very tired,
+Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,” she said, gently. “If
+you'll let me, I'll--” And without explaining her purpose she opened the
+door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+
+Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+
+“Driver!” she called, in her clear voice, loudly. “Driver! We'd like to
+start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+please.” The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs
+once more. “I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,” she said. “I
+suppose they have a great deal of night work.”
+
+Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.
+“I've never been able to apologize quickly,” he said, with his
+accustomed slowness, “because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe
+whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil.
+It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I
+did.”
+
+Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle
+voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state
+of their vehicle was an “accident.” She had formed a casual impression
+of him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was
+unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she
+saw a picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy
+hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not
+that picture alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a
+glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new
+to her experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little;
+and then, with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat
+so long, after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had
+not started. What she did not realize, however, was that she had made
+no response to his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates,
+neither having spoken again.
+
+Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was
+silence. The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a
+rich presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the
+two could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither
+had any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling
+presently on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance,
+of the plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible,
+coughing asthmatically, or saying, “You, JOE!” with a spiritless flap of
+the whip upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps
+at street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and,
+thinning rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness.
+And yet neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral
+broke the silence.
+
+It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late. Abruptly she
+realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+companion and not talking to him. “Mr. Sheridan,” she began, not knowing
+what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized
+the queerness of this drive--“Mr. Sheridan, I--”
+
+The coupe stopped. “You, JOE!” said the driver, reproachfully, and
+climbed down and opened the door.
+
+“What's the trouble?” Bibbs inquired.
+
+“Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir.”
+
+Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+
+“What?” Bibbs demanded.
+
+“We're there, sir,” said the driver, sympathetically. “Next house north
+of Mr. Sheridan's.”
+
+Bibbs descended to the curb. “Why, yes,” he said. “Yes, you seem to
+be right.” And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front
+windows of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+
+“Let me help you,” said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she
+was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+
+“Oh no,” she murmured. “I think I can--” She meant that she could get
+out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already
+accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+
+“You, JOE!” cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he
+rumbled away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
+
+“Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, stiffly. She
+did not offer her hand. “Good night.”
+
+“Good night,” Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked
+beside her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran.
+Realization of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her,
+beginning to shock her; she stepped aside from the light that fell
+through the glass panels of the door and withheld her hand as it touched
+the old-fashioned bell-handle.
+
+“I'm quite safe, thank you,” she said, with a little emphasis. “Good
+night.”
+
+“Good night,” said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the
+street he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+
+Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
+
+“Where are your eyes, Bibbs?” demanded Roscoe. “Sleep-walking, as
+usual?”
+
+But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. “Come over to our house for a
+little while, Bibbs,” she urged. “I want to--”
+
+“No, I'd better--”
+
+“Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet
+over there--all worn out. Just come for a minute.”
+
+He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with
+real feeling: “'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And
+I don't wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get
+down sick again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy.”
+
+He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and
+was grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed
+Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted,
+she went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
+
+“Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you.
+How did you happen to be there?”
+
+“I had only been to the door,” he said. “Good night, Sibyl.”
+
+“Wait,” she insisted. “We saw you coming out.”
+
+“I wasn't,” he explained, moving to depart. “I'd just brought Miss
+Vertrees home.”
+
+“What?” she cried.
+
+“Yes,” he said, and stepped out upon the porch, “that was it. Good
+night, Sibyl.”
+
+“Wait!” she said, following him across the threshold. “How did that
+happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled
+the--the--” She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+
+“I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there,” he said, reluctantly. “She
+had walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were
+leaving. When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one
+left.”
+
+Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow
+breathlessness. “And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!”
+
+Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually
+over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the
+door shut behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.
+The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it
+seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and
+that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had
+she wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement?
+He found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he
+wished that he had not encountered her.
+
+At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering
+about the house, several mournfully admiring the “Bay of Naples,” and
+others occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for
+trains. Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but
+Bibbs interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives
+summoned to the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon
+Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of
+him. He ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last
+by accident. Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard
+a murmurous sound, and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a
+quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
+
+“The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that;
+we got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin'
+along, and I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son the Lord
+give me, and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord
+takuth away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the
+Shuhite says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people,
+nor any remaining in his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite--”
+
+Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in
+his underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging
+backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard
+and gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but
+Uncle Gideon paid no attention.
+
+“Bildad the Shuhite spake and he says, 'If thy children have sinned
+against Him and He have cast them away--'”
+
+There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows
+rattled. The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but
+Uncle Gideon leaped from his chair. “My God!” he cried. “What's that?”
+
+There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy
+of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+“flash-lights” of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the
+Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded
+him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing
+the door of his father's room.
+
+He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing
+several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs;
+and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile
+was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.
+They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing
+to his own room.
+
+He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to
+the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where
+Mary Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small
+note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+
+  Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, “Darktown is Out To-night.”  That
+  is natural--but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.
+
+  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady--
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
+
+Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
+period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
+and slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door.
+Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the
+evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was
+untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
+There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
+bed.
+
+In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little
+pause--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is
+a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person
+experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or
+sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation. It is the
+moment, as we say, before we “remember”; and for the first time in
+Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a vague happiness. He woke to a
+sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday.
+But when the next moment brought him his memory, he found nothing that
+could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under the circumstances
+it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief visitation
+and was gone before he had finished dressing. It left a little trail,
+the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained
+unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually
+the result of a drive home from a funeral. No wonder the sequence evaded
+Bibbs Sheridan!
+
+His father had gone when he came down-stairs. “Went on down to 's
+office, jes' same,” Jackson informed him. “Came sat breakfas'-table, all
+by 'mself; eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat
+a thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I
+reckon putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do.”
+
+It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
+passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried
+a little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be
+seen. Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved
+herself able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving
+calls in the earliest stages of “mourning.” Lunch was as usual--for Jim
+and his father had always lunched down-town--and the afternoon was as
+usual. Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother went with him, as she
+sometimes did when the weather was pleasant. Altogether, the usualness
+of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
+
+During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.
+“But you wouldn't remember about that,” she said, after narrating an
+episode. “You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that.
+And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon
+it'll just about kill your father to put somebody in his place as
+president of the Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe
+over; he told me last week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any
+one man could handle and not go crazy. Oh, it's a pity--” She stopped
+to wipe her eyes. “It's a pity you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and
+kind o' pick up his ways. Think what it'd meant to papa now! You never
+did run with either Roscoe or Jim any, even before you got sick. Of
+course, you were younger; but it always DID seem queer--and you three
+bein' brothers like that. I don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit
+down together for a good talk in my life.”
+
+“Mother, I've been away so long,” Bibbs returned, gently. “And since I
+came home I--”
+
+“Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs,” she said. “Jim ain't been home
+much of an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin'
+and goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house for
+dinner. Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some
+miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'
+the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he
+told papa he would. I reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if
+there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you
+scarcely really knew him right well.”
+
+“I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't
+much to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know
+much about them.”
+
+“It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!” she moaned. “And you'll have to learn to
+know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it
+was all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will
+just kill him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this!
+You mustn't LET him, Bibbs--you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved
+over you, and now he can't stand any more--he just can't! Whatever he
+says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise
+me you will.”
+
+“I would if I could,” he said, sorrowfully.
+
+“No, no! Why can't you?” she cried, clutching his arm. “He wants you to
+go back to the machine-shop and--”
+
+“And--'like it'!” said Bibbs.
+
+“Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it wouldn't
+hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said that himself,
+Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for your father?
+You ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a beautiful house
+to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur coats and warm
+clothes; you been taken care of all your life. And you don't KNOW how
+he worked for the money to give all these things to you! You don't DREAM
+what he had to go through and what he risked when we were startin' out
+in life; and you never WILL know! And now this blow has fallen on him
+out of a clear sky, and you make it out to be a hardship to do like he
+wants you to! And all on earth he asks is for you to go back to the work
+in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you! That's all he asks. Look,
+Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we get there I want you
+to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to. Promise me!”
+
+In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see
+him better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her
+before he spoke.
+
+“I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother,” he said.
+
+“There!” she exclaimed, satisfied. “That's a good boy! That's all I
+wanted you to say.”
+
+“Don't give me any credit,” he said, ruefully. “There isn't anything
+else for me to do.”
+
+“Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!”
+
+“No, no,” he soothed her. “We'll have to begin to make the spirit a
+cheerful one. We may--” They were turning into their own driveway as
+he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was
+visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the
+door open behind her. She bowed gravely.
+
+“'We may'--what?” asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+
+“What is it, mother?”
+
+“You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'.”
+
+“Did I?” said Bibbs, blankly. “Well, what WERE we saying?”
+
+“Of all the queer boys!” she cried. “You always were. Always! You
+haven't forgot what you just promised me, have you?”
+
+“No,” he answered, as the car stopped. “No, the spirit will be as
+cheerful as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like--”
+
+His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she
+failed to hear his final words.
+
+“Behave like who, Bibbs?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+But she was fretful in her grief. “You said it wouldn't do to behave
+like SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?”
+
+“It was just nonsense,” he explained, turning to go in. “An obscure
+person I don't think much of lately.”
+
+“Behave like WHO?” she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell
+Dr. Gurney about it.
+
+“Like Bildad the Shuhite!” was what Bibbs said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was
+Sheridan's custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the
+library, while his wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit)
+or allowed herself to be repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms
+of solitaire. To-night she did neither, but sat in her customary chair,
+gazing at the fire, while Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his
+lap, though now and then he lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall
+back upon his knees again. Bibbs came in noiselessly and sat in a
+corner, doing nothing; and from a “reception-room” across the hall an
+indistinct vocal murmur became just audible at intervals. Once, when
+this murmur grew louder, under stress of some irrepressible merriment,
+Edith's voice could be heard--“Bobby, aren't you awful!” and Sheridan
+glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+
+She rose at once and went into the “reception-room”; there was a flurry
+of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith and her
+suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned
+to her chair in the library.
+
+“They won't bother you any more, papa,” she said, in a comforting voice.
+“She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening,
+and I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd
+already told him he could.” She paused, then added, rather guiltily: “I
+got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used
+to. Maybe--maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa.” And as Sheridan nodded
+solemnly, she concluded, in haste: “Don't say I said to. I might be
+wrong about it, anyway.”
+
+He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+brought tears. “That Miss Vertrees was a good girl,” she said. “SHE was
+all right.”
+
+Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of
+thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+
+“Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?” she
+faltered. “Did you--”
+
+He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.
+“I fixed it,” he said, in a husky voice. “I moved Cantwell up, and put
+Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the
+four men with salaries high enough to take it.” He went to her, put
+his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath.
+“It's my bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up.” He dropped the hand from her
+shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped
+and spoke again, without turning to look at her. “The Realty Company'll
+go right on just the same,” he said. “It's like--it's like sand, mamma.
+It puts me in mind of chuldern playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks
+his finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of 'em'll pat the
+place with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill
+it up and settle against one another; and then, right away it's flat on
+top again, and you can't tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty
+Company'll go on all right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I
+reckon, that wouldn't go right on--just the same.”
+
+And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread
+upon the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+“It's so forlone,” she said, chokingly. “That's the first time he spoke
+since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to
+hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come,
+right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She
+just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what
+Sibyl said the other day, and--and you heard what--what--”
+
+“What Edith said to Sibyl?” Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+
+“We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!” she wailed. “Oh, it looks as
+if movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares
+me!” She put both her hands over her face. “Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you
+only wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son!
+I don't know what we're all comin' to!” And, weeping, she followed her
+husband.
+
+Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man
+who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called
+“the smoking-room”--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up in
+no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a
+less conspicuous adjacency.
+
+“Good evening,” said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a
+leather easy-chair near them.
+
+“What is it?” asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+
+“Nothing,” he returned, smiling.
+
+She frowned. “Did you want something?” she asked.
+
+“Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't
+be going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left
+for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn.”
+
+“'CHAT with'!” she echoed, incredulously.
+
+“I can talk about almost anything,” said Bibbs with an air of
+genial politeness. “It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about
+business--if that's what you happened to be talking about. But you
+aren't in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn?”
+
+“Not now,” returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+
+“I'm not, either,” said Bibbs. “It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
+to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised.”
+
+He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of
+which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he
+sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if
+implying that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with
+a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was
+obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in
+presenting the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had
+nothing in his mind at any time except “personalities”--he could talk
+about people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous,
+offered the weather.
+
+Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for
+the rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would
+move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+
+“I was just going,” he said, rising.
+
+“Oh NO!” Edith cried, sharply.
+
+“Yes. Good night! I think I--”
+
+“Too bad,” said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard
+Bibbs offering to “help” Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather
+curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed
+by the closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
+
+“What's the matter with you?” she cried, furiously. “What do you MEAN?
+How did you dare come in there when you knew--”
+
+Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up,
+a few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+
+“Oh, Bibbs,” she said, shaking her head woefully, “you'd oughtn't to
+distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the
+house. You'd ought to been more considerate.”
+
+Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+naive shadow motionless across its threshold. “Yes,” he said. “He
+doesn't appear to be much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of
+one.”
+
+Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: “You call yourself one?”
+
+“No, no,” he answered. “I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't
+claim--” But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+
+“There,” he said, sighing. “That's almost the first time in my life I
+ever tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in
+what I tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!”
+
+“You hurt her feelin's,” she groaned. “You must 'a' gone at it too
+rough, Bibbs.”
+
+He looked upon her wanly. “That's my trouble, mother,” he murmured. “I'm
+a plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man.”
+
+For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. “Hush your
+nonsense!” she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+appearing. “You go to bed.”
+
+He kissed her and obeyed.
+
+
+Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+
+“You mustn't do that under a misapprehension,” he warned her, when they
+were alone in the dining-room.
+
+“Do what under a what?” she asked.
+
+“Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'” he
+told her, gravely. “I have a prejudice against that young man.”
+
+She laughed. “I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+prejudices against!” In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+implores. “Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence
+with papa against him!” And she laughed louder.
+
+“Listen,” he said, with peculiar earnestness. “I'll tell you now,
+because--because I've decided I'm one of the family.” And then, as
+if the earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further, he
+continued, in his usual tone, “I'm drunk with power, Edith.”
+
+“What do you want to tell me?” she demanded, brusquely.
+
+“Lamhorn made love to Sibyl,” he said.
+
+Edith hooted. “SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat
+between us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and said
+something like that to you afterward--”
+
+“No,” he said, gravely. “I KNOW.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+Lamhorn--”
+
+Edith screamed with laughter. “You were with ROSCOE--and you heard
+Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!”
+
+“No. I heard them quarreling.”
+
+“You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!” she cried. “You say he made love to
+her because you heard them quarreling!”
+
+“That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by the
+way they quarrel.”
+
+“You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?”
+
+“Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!--it's
+always certain--”
+
+Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. “You ought
+to know. You've had so much experience, yourself!”
+
+“I haven't any, Edith,” he said. “My life has been about as exciting as
+an incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things.”
+
+“Well, then,” she said, “if you look out through the glass you must know
+what effect such stuff would have upon ME!” She rose, visibly agitated.
+“What if it WAS true?” she demanded, bitterly. “What if it was true a
+hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to
+giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about
+Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think
+it matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'?
+What if I understood WHY she--” She broke off with a violent gesture, a
+sweep of her arm extended at full length, as if she hurled something to
+the ground. “Do you think a girl that really cared for a man would pay
+any attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!”
+
+He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.
+She met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she
+had spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+
+“Ah, yes,” he said. “I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm
+sorry, Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see
+until you see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of
+it--especially me!”
+
+“That's sensible,” she responded, curtly. “You're most surprising of all
+when you're sensible, Bibbs.”
+
+“Yes,” he sighed. “I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith.”
+
+Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and
+George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting
+there, he announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch
+upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+
+Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over
+fifty, in spite of Sheridan's habitual “ole Doc Gurney.” He was gray,
+however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+
+“Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs,” he said, not
+rising. “Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of
+me--between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you.”
+
+“You mean you're too sleepy to move,” returned Bibbs, complying. “I
+think you'll notice that I'm getting worse.”
+
+“Taken on about twelve pounds,” said Gurney. “Thirteen, maybe.”
+
+“Twelve.”
+
+“Well, it won't do.” The doctor rubbed his eyelids. “You're so much
+better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
+where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down--all
+the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know.”
+
+Bibbs nodded. “Machine-shop.”
+
+“Still hate it?”
+
+Bibbs nodded again.
+
+“Don't blame you!” the doctor grunted. “Yes, I expect it'll make a lump
+in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've
+got the old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?”
+
+“What's the use?” Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. “My kind of writing!”
+
+“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I suppose if you broke away and lived on
+roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of
+editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred
+dollars a year by the time you're fifty.”
+
+“That's about it,” Bibbs murmured.
+
+“Of course I know what you want to do,” said Gurney, drowsily. “You
+don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise and
+jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.' You'd
+like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask on a
+balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it and
+have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I
+can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another
+of his boys if you don't go to Sicily?”
+
+“I don't want to go to Sicily,” said Bibbs. “I want to stay right here.”
+
+The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his
+patient a sharp glance. “It's a risk,” he said. “I think we'll find
+you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.
+Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as
+you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as
+it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs.”
+
+He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. “Well, when we go over
+you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?”
+
+“Tell him I'm ready,” said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+
+“Oh no,” Gurney laughed. “Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll
+see. Don't forget I said to walk down.”
+
+And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.
+“Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce,” he said, gloomily, to
+his next patient when Bibbs had gone. “Doctor tells a man he's well, and
+that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!”
+
+Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon
+this point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any
+point, so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy
+afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to
+his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with
+the smell they could no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked
+hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than half aware
+of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under a vague yet
+constant strain. They were all lightly powdered, inside and out, with
+fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of
+that also. They did not even notice that they saw the smoke, though the
+thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new
+“Sheridan Apartments,” now almost completed, he observed that the marble
+of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like his gloves, which
+were new.
+
+That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way
+from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which
+continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by
+a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his
+preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that,
+having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the
+north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's
+daughter emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the
+path to the old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the
+pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the
+gate and he was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she
+saw him she started visibly. And if this thing had happened to
+Robert Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of
+faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts. Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his
+thought. He would have said: “You jumped because you were thinking of
+me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand
+closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction
+Bibbs was walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they
+should walk together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had
+paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either
+spoke or moved--it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each
+to seem to say, by look and attitude, “Why, it's YOU!”
+
+Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's
+name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to
+a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began
+to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
+
+“I--I--hate a frozen fish myself,” he said. “I think three miles was too
+long for you to put up with one.”
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. “Mr. Sheridan, you're
+lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's
+turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know
+each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for
+me to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I
+decided I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the
+car-line. I never thought of it!”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, earnestly. “I didn't, either. I might have said
+something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must
+remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though
+it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I
+ever met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what
+it said. I--”
+
+She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one
+which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, “a cripple
+would crawl five miles to hear.” And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's
+father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. “I'll be any
+kind of idiot,” he said, “if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be
+difficult for me.”
+
+She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the
+first time. “Rather tragic and altogether impossible.” It seemed to her
+now that she must have been blind.
+
+They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
+possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of one of
+them.
+
+“I'll keep on talking,” Bibbs continued, cheerfully, “and you keep on
+laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
+making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
+bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes
+me bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what
+I'll think of myself later if I don't keep talking--talking now, I
+mean--and I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides
+these two things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as
+much as this more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always
+in me to do it, though, the first time I met any one who didn't know me
+well enough not to listen.”
+
+“But you're not really talking to me,” said Mary. “You're just thinking
+aloud.”
+
+“No,” he returned, gravely. “I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
+subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,
+but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't
+know how to manage it.”
+
+“You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan,” she said.
+“Not even if you really talked about yourself.” She turned her
+face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was
+pathetically amazed by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look,
+warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was
+an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like
+that.
+
+“I--you--I--I'm--” he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks grew
+almost vivid.
+
+She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came
+into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how
+“queer” many people might think him; but he did not seem “queer” to Mary
+Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+
+He waited, and became coherent. “YOU say something now,” he said. “I
+don't even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny
+man's solo! You--”
+
+“No,” she interrupted. “I'd rather play your accompaniment.”
+
+“I'll stop and listen to it, then.”
+
+“Perhaps--” she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were
+approaching. “Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?”
+
+“I suppose I could,” he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+“But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better
+say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason
+I don't want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where
+you're going, and where I'll be sent back.”
+
+She shook her head in cheery negation. “Not unless you want to be. Would
+you like to come with me?”
+
+“Why--why--yes,” he said. “Anywhere!” And again it was apparent that he
+spoke in simple truthfulness.
+
+“Then come--if you care for organ music. The organist is an old friend
+of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had
+a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up
+everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like
+Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a
+little. I hope so.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. “I think Beethoven
+would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people.”
+
+“I haven't kept you?” Mary said to the organist.
+
+“No, no,” he answered, heartily. “I would not mind so only you should
+shooer come!”
+
+“This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me.”
+
+The organist looked bluntly surprised. “Iss that SO?” he exclaimed.
+“Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink.
+He iss musician himself, then, of course.”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. “I--I played
+the--I tried to play--” Fortunately he checked himself; he had been
+about to offer the information that he had failed to master the
+jews'-harp in his boyhood. “No, I'm not a musician,” he contented
+himself with saying.
+
+“What?” Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. “Young man, you are fortunate!
+I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You
+are the first one EVER!”
+
+They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees
+in a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though she stopped
+as he did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking away from
+them toward the front of the church, shaking his white Beethovian mane
+roguishly.
+
+“It's false pretenses on my part,” Bibbs said. “You mean to be kind to
+the sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back
+to work in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't
+I?”
+
+“No,” said Mary, beginning to walk forward. “Not unless you don't like
+great music.”
+
+He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they
+covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,
+reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician
+ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain to overwhelm
+him.
+
+“This afternoon some Handel!” he turned to shout.
+
+Mary nodded. “Will you like that?” she asked Bibbs.
+
+“I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
+about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
+pretend, I would.”
+
+“No,” said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, “you wouldn't.”
+
+She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;
+the huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with
+it. The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about them,
+while the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a
+tiny star of light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it
+rhythmically, or lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist
+thrusting, but he was magnificently the master of his giant, and it sang
+to his magic as he bade it.
+
+Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
+unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike
+the tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the
+enchanted cave, and that--for Bibbs--was what made its magic dazing. It
+seemed to him a long, long time since he had been walking home drearily
+from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him that he had set out upon a
+happy journey since then, and that he had reached another planet, where
+Mary Vertrees and he sat alone together listening to a vast choiring of
+invisible soldiers and holy angels. There were armies of voices about
+them singing praise and thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was
+incredible that the walls of the church were not the boundaries of
+the universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky
+street just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in evening papers
+from front steps and where children were taking their last spins on
+roller-skates before being haled indoors for dinner.
+
+He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew
+it could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,
+saying: “You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream
+that these sounds bring to me?” And it seemed to him as though she
+answered continually: “I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new
+one that you are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring
+to you. Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear--together!”
+
+And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except
+the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white
+head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting
+beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in
+the darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting
+of the organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be
+chorusing of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing
+for him the world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she
+was so kind to him. It all meant Mary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+walking slowly.
+
+“I'll tell you what it meant to me,” she said, as he did not immediately
+reply. “Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all
+others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+infinitesimal--it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+infinitesimal.”
+
+“Yes,” he said. “It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering
+every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town
+to-morrow. And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to.
+They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing
+the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss
+and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework
+has to be done, but the people who do it have been so overpaid that
+they're confused and worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet,
+poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of
+course, when the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that will be
+different.”
+
+“Do you mean 'communism'?” she asked, and she made their slow pace a
+little slower--they had only three blocks to go.
+
+“Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for
+all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak
+ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even
+on the stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all
+cross the winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody--if
+he sees the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead
+of other people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel.
+And that,” he added, “is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see,
+if I keep talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you
+what it did mean.”
+
+“Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?” she asked. “Triumph and
+praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me.”
+
+“Yes, they were all there,” Bibbs said. “I don't know the name of what
+he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that
+makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the
+name he puts to it can't make much difference--except to himself and
+people very much like him, I suppose.”
+
+“I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that.”
+
+“I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of
+the people who hear it,” Bibbs went on, musingly, “according to their
+own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might
+compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail,
+and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some
+would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of
+himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding
+a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the
+music, he'd think of a circus.”
+
+They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did
+not open it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her
+kindnesses--not to be prompt in leaving him.
+
+“After all,” she said, “you didn't tell me whether you liked it.”
+
+“No. I didn't need to.”
+
+“No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you
+were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean.”
+
+“I can't keep from telling it any longer,” he said. “The music meant to
+me--it meant the kindness of--of you.”
+
+“Kindness? How?”
+
+“You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--”
+
+“No,” she said, decidedly. “I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr.
+Kraft play. And you did.”
+
+“It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+playing.”
+
+Mary laughed. “I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin--Grieg--Chaminade. You
+wouldn't listen!”
+
+Bibbs drew a deep breath. “I'm frightened again,” he said, in an
+unsteady voice. “I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--” He paused,
+and the words sank to a murmur.
+
+“Oh, if you want ME to play for you!” she said. “Yes, gladly. It will be
+merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
+thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
+listen, and if you--” She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
+and laughed ruefully. “But my piano won't be here after to-night. I--I'm
+sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to
+you you'd have to come this evening.”
+
+“You'll let me?” he cried.
+
+“Certainly, if you care to.”
+
+“If I could play--” he said, wistfully, “if I could play like that old
+man in the church I could thank you.”
+
+“Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
+but--”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.”
+
+It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
+and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
+especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
+was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. “You'll come after
+dinner, then?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, not moving. “Would you mind if I stood here until time
+to come in?”
+
+She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
+dinner.
+
+That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.
+
+  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.
+
+  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it--and ought to be.
+
+  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the “Greek profile.”  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a “Greek profile”; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.
+
+  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+
+  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be “sent away.”  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  “Sent away” is a euphuism for “sent to prison.”  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos “sent away”--and where?
+
+  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing--ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.
+
+  Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
+
+  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+That “mystery about pianos” which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to
+Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs
+scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon
+Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until
+after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found
+not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and
+with every phase of everything that they discussed--no extraordinary
+state of affairs in a family which has always “held up its head,”
+ only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on
+helplessly at the processes of its own financial dissolution. For that
+was the point which this despairing couple had reached--they could do
+nothing except look on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and
+they knew it.
+
+“She needn't to have done that about her piano,” vapored Mr. Vertrees.
+“We could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
+consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with
+the--the dealer.”
+
+“She thought that it might be--annoying for you,” Mrs. Vertrees
+explained. “Really, she planned for you not to know about it until
+they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to
+mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this
+morning. She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--”
+
+“Well?” he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+
+“Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided, of
+course--it was about her furs.”
+
+“No!” he exclaimed, quickly. “I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
+rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her.”
+
+“I'll try not,” his wife promised. “Of course, they're very handsome.”
+
+“All the more reason for her to keep them!” he returned, irritably.
+“We're not THAT far gone, I think!”
+
+“Perhaps not yet,” Mrs. Vertrees said. “She seems to be troubled about
+the--the coal matter and--about Tilly. Of course the piano will take
+care of some things like those for a while and--”
+
+“I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to--”
+
+“You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way,” she said, comfortingly.
+“She arranged with the--with the purchaser that the men will come for it
+about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
+really quite winter.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” he agreed, moodily. “So far as that goes people have a
+right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I
+suppose, even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much
+attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early
+the morning after the funeral.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. “I don't believe
+that was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only
+because he felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed
+wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about
+most. He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a
+great deal about his--his actual money--though there was something about
+blades of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something
+about his energy--but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be
+not so much a personal vainglory as about his family and the greatness
+of this city.”
+
+“'Greatness of this city'!” Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+“It's nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who
+has the luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any
+YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows
+that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else
+gets the habit. But you have a different point of view if it's the
+city that got what it wanted out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's
+'great'.”
+
+Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. “I believe,” she
+began, timidly, “he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he has never
+seemed so interested in the--the other one.”
+
+Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon
+it; he looked more haggard than before. “'The other one',” he repeated,
+averting his eyes. “You mean--you mean the third son--the one that was
+here this evening?”
+
+“Yes, the--the youngest,” she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+almost a whisper.
+
+And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either
+look at the other during that silence.
+
+At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly.
+“What--ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she
+came in this afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but
+she answered in such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch it.”
+
+“She--she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she had
+enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful creature
+I've ever known.'”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he doesn't
+seem quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window when
+she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about him
+I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face.”
+
+“If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?”
+
+“Oh, nothing, of course,” she said, hurriedly. “Nothing definite, that
+is. Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we
+thought at first. It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their attitude
+about him. I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him--perhaps
+a little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself to anything--or
+perhaps does odd things. But, after all, of course, we only have an
+impression about it. We don't know--that is, positively. I--” She
+paused, then went on: “I didn't know just how to ask--that is--I didn't
+mention it to Mary. I didn't--I--” The poor lady floundered pitifully,
+concluding with a mumble. “So soon after--after the--the shock.”
+
+“I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him,” said Mr.
+Vertrees. “I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of
+him is--” He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. “I
+can't imagine her--oh, NO!” he gasped. And he began to pace the floor.
+“A half-witted epileptic!”
+
+“No, no!” she cried. “He may be all right. We--”
+
+“Oh, it's horrible! I can't--” He threw himself back into his chair
+again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply
+at his sides.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. “You mustn't give way so,” she said,
+inspired for once almost to direct discourse. “Whatever Mary might think
+of doing, it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if
+WE should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It
+isn't because we think of ourselves.”
+
+“Oh God, no!” he groaned. “Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but
+Mary can't be a stenographer!”
+
+Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. “Of course,” she
+murmured, “it all seems very premature, speculating about such things,
+but I had a queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in
+this--” She had almost said “in this one,” but checked herself. “In this
+young man. It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and well,
+and he is--he seems to be, that is--rather appealing to the--the
+sympathies.”
+
+“Yes!” he agreed, bitterly. “Precisely. The sympathies!”
+
+“Perhaps,” she faltered, “perhaps you might feel easier if I could have
+a little talk with some one?”
+
+“With whom?”
+
+“I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to
+be talking with somebody that knew the family--and then I might find
+a chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much,
+and--Something of that kind perhaps?”
+
+“You don't know anybody that knows the family.”
+
+“Yes. That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced little
+woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is interested
+about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more intimate with
+Mary, naturally. She's always looking over here from her house; she
+was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I
+noticed--though I don't think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't think
+it out of place to--to be frank about matters. She called the other day,
+and Mary must rather like her--she said that evening that the call had
+done her good. Don't you think it might be wise?”
+
+“Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible.”
+
+“Yes, so do I,” she returned, promptly. “It isn't really a thing we
+should be considering seriously, of course. Still--”
+
+“I should say not! But possibly--”
+
+Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the
+lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between
+them that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain
+definite information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and
+physical status of Bibbs. And if he were subject to attacks of lunacy,
+the unhappy pair decided to prevent the sacrifice they supposed their
+daughter intended to make of herself. Altogether, if there were spiteful
+ghosts in the old house that night, eavesdropping upon the woeful
+comedy, they must have died anew of laughter!
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness
+had fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano
+down the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway
+behind them, preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation;
+and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the
+light of the doorway.
+
+“Good gracious!” she cried. “It did give me a fright!”
+
+“It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?” Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+“Won't you come in?”
+
+“No. Oh no, thank you!” Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side.
+“You don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but
+your piano!” She laughed shrilly. “You know, since our tragedy coming
+so suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been--almost
+hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago,
+and saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,
+carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the
+way it looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in,
+next door, only such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your
+daughter start for a drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three
+o'clock--and-- They aren't back yet, are they?”
+
+“No. Good heavens!”
+
+“And the only thing I could think of was that something must have
+happened to them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!”
+ She broke into laughter again. “I suppose you're just sending it
+somewhere to be repaired, aren't you?”
+
+“It's--it's being taken down-town,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “Won't you come
+in and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I
+was--ah--” She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her invitation.
+“Won't you come in? I'd really--”
+
+“Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home
+about this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there.”
+
+“That's very sweet.” Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward
+the street with Sibyl. “It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't
+it? Almost like a May evening.”
+
+“I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano,” said Sibyl, watching
+the instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. “She plays
+wonderfully, Mrs. Kittersby tells me.”
+
+“Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her
+yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him.”
+
+“You mean Bibbs?” asked Sibyl.
+
+“The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?”
+
+“I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether
+he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your
+daughter expect the piano back soon?”
+
+“I--I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear
+her play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was to be
+removed this afternoon. He seems almost well again.”
+
+“Yes.” Sibyl nodded. “His father's going to try to start him to work.”
+
+“He seems very delicate,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “I shouldn't think he
+would be able to stand a great deal, either physically or--” She paused
+and then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness--“or
+mentally.”
+
+“Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right,” said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+
+“Entirely?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+
+“Yes, entirely.”
+
+“But has he ALWAYS been?” This question came with the same anxious
+eagerness.
+
+“Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it.”
+
+“And you think--”
+
+“Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor--” Sibyl choked, and pressed
+her handkerchief to her mouth. “Good night, Mrs. Vertrees,” she said,
+hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where
+the two ladies were standing.
+
+“Won't you come in?” urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound
+of a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare.
+“Do! There's Mary now, and she--”
+
+But Sibyl was half-way across the street. “No, thanks,” she called.
+“I hope she won't miss her piano!” And she ran into her own house
+and plunged headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her
+handkerchief over her mouth.
+
+The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the
+quiet house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of
+a decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the
+hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,
+holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+
+“What's your excitement?” he demanded. “What do you find to go into
+hysterics over? Another death in the family?”
+
+“Oh, it's funny!” she gasped. “Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
+THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!” Lying prone, she elevated her feet
+in the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+
+“Come through, come through!” said her husband, crossly. “What you been
+up to?”
+
+“Me?” she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+“Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!” She wiped her eyes. “They've had
+to sell their piano!”
+
+“Well, what of it?”
+
+“That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago,” said Sibyl.
+“They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as
+last winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and
+patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook
+had HERS! And the night of the house-warming I kind of got suspicious,
+myself. She didn't have one single piece of any kind of real jewelry,
+and you could see her dress was an old one done over. Men can't tell
+those things, and you all made a big fuss over her, but I thought she
+looked a sight, myself! Of course, EDITH was crazy to have her, and--”
+
+“Well, well?” he urged, impatiently.
+
+“Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING!
+Just absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn! The
+family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very
+distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's
+been wondering what WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to
+marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the
+men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and married other girls.
+Gracious! they were lucky! Marry HER? The man that found himself tied up
+to THAT girl--”
+
+“Terrible funny, terrible funny!” said Roscoe, with sarcasm. “It's so
+funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--”
+
+“Wait!” she begged. “You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little
+while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men
+go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute
+I got the idea they were moving out--the house has been foreclosed on,
+Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was
+out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over--and
+it was their PIANO! They'd sold it and were trying to sneak it out after
+dark, so nobody'd catch on!” Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but
+resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. “Wait a
+minute, can't you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all
+away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell
+all kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they
+can't. She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they'd sold it;
+and I hope they'll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last
+week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees.
+Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN
+she'd seen any money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that
+girl in your LIFE?”
+
+“What girl? Their cook?”
+
+“That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into
+this neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and
+out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll
+the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a
+Sheridan--she's GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she
+tries it on first with YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she
+was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married one,
+and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his feet.
+Oh, Jim was landed--there's no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky;
+he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for him!” Sibyl's
+mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity. “Well, she
+couldn't get you, because you were married, and she couldn't get Jim,
+because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what she
+did? Do you know what she's DOING?”
+
+“No, I don't,” said Roscoe, gruffly.
+
+Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity.
+“BIBBS! She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S
+FUNERAL! Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!”
+
+She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. “Bibbs!” she shrieked.
+“Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!”
+
+He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that.
+“And yesterday,” she continued, between paroxysms--“yesterday she came
+out of the house--just as he was passing. She must have been looking
+out--waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window!
+And she got him there last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave
+that away! And to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the
+cream of it is that they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or
+not--they thought maybe he was, but she went after him just the same!
+The old lady set herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord!
+BIBBS!”
+
+But Roscoe looked grim. “So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
+pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.”
+
+“Oh, it might,” she returned, sobering. “It might, if those people
+weren't such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to
+come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny,
+but to see 'em sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating
+dirt--well, I think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen
+Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until
+they get near enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old
+patched shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all right!--and then she powders up
+and goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!”
+
+“Look here,” said Roscoe, heavily; “I don't care about that one way or
+another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about.
+I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.”
+
+At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. “What
+is it?”
+
+“Well,” he began, frowning, “what I was going to say then--” He broke
+off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
+his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. “I never expected I'd have
+to say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask
+you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.”
+
+Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. “Well?”
+
+“I felt the time had come for me to know about it,” he went on. “You
+never told me anything--”
+
+“You never asked,” she interposed, curtly.
+
+“Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much,” said Roscoe. “It looks to
+me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
+many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down
+to work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed
+soon as I'd got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show
+in town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or
+so, I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it.”
+
+“Wrong?” she said. “What like?”
+
+“You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and
+excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then,
+Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long
+ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got
+to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see
+you'd been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.”
+
+“Do you object to that?” asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+
+“Yes--when it injures my wife's health!” he returned, with a quick lift
+of his eyes to hers. “You began to run down just about the time you
+began falling out with him.” He stepped close to her. “See here, Sibyl,
+I'm going to know what it means.”
+
+“Oh, you ARE?” she snapped.
+
+“You're trembling,” he said, gravely.
+
+“Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!”
+
+“That was all I was going to say the other day,” he said. “I was going
+to ask you--”
+
+“Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
+have you to say to-night?”
+
+“To-night,” he replied, with grim swiftness, “I want to know why you
+keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here.”
+
+She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, “And what
+else did Edith want you to ask me?”
+
+“I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn,” he said,
+fiercely.
+
+“Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in
+there on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you
+then what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?”
+
+“No, she didn't!” he vociferated, his voice growing louder. “She said,
+'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see
+her, because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want
+to know what it means. I intend--”
+
+A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. “Dinner is ready,” she
+said, and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the
+dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+
+“I intend to know exactly what has been going on,” he declared. “I mean
+to know just what--”
+
+Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+
+“Oh, you DO!” she cried, shrilly. “You mean to know just what's what, do
+you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your
+wife, and then you come home making a scene before the servants and
+humiliating me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't
+hear every word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go
+on! Go and eat your dinner alone--because I won't eat with you!”
+
+And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon
+her, and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room
+slam overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A
+window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his
+note-book on the sill--and the sheets were loose. The door was open, and
+when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two sheets
+had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting and
+put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George
+or Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them
+down-town with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and,
+having a little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them
+out, and glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were
+not epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a “private letter” that
+came into his possession in that way, though in a “matter of business”
+ he might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity
+afforded in any manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's
+scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred
+to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be
+justified in reading them.
+
+  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then--days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator--she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  “WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?”  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  --you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.
+
+  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.
+
+  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The “business man” feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.
+
+  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.
+
+  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.
+
+  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion--
+
+The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more.
+He crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a
+waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of
+Names, which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a
+volume now first put to use for the location of “Midas.” Having read the
+legend, Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office, exhaling
+the breath of contempt. “Dam' fool!” he mumbled. But this was no new
+thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's notes a surpise to him; and
+presently he dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long
+time he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a
+club luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went to a small
+restaurant near the Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes
+in the consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came
+for his father every day, at five minutes after twelve, and Sheridan
+was again in his office at five minutes before one. But now that Jim no
+longer came, Sheridan remained alone in his office; he had not gone out
+to lunch since Jim's death, nor did he have anything sent to him--he
+fasted until evening.
+
+It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes
+and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things
+were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far
+deeper. Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was
+a great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily
+perceived his own likeness. Jim was the one who would have been surest
+to keep the great property growing greater, year by year. Sheridan had
+fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what the growth would be
+under Jim. He had believed that Jim was absolutely certain to be one of
+the biggest men in the country. Well, it was all up to Roscoe now!
+
+That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
+question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe about
+it. However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for several
+days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no
+opportunity.
+
+He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower
+floor. He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer
+room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would
+find his son busy with others, and that his question would have to
+be postponed, but when he entered the door marked “R. C. Sheridan.
+Private,” Roscoe was there alone.
+
+He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and
+he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+
+“Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy,” said
+Sheridan. “What's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+
+“Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself!
+I just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll keep, if you're
+workin' something out in your mind!”
+
+Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused
+with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in
+the chair. Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the
+office. “You're all right, ain't you?” said Sheridan. “Not sick, are
+you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. “I
+wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn,” he said. “I guess your
+mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him
+longer'n any of us, so--”
+
+“I won't,” said Roscoe, thickly--“I won't say a dam' thing about him!”
+
+Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position
+near the window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were
+bloodshot and vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted,
+and he was deathly pale. The father stood aghast.
+
+“By George!” he muttered. “ROSCOE!”
+
+“My name,” said Roscoe. “Can' help that.”
+
+“ROSCOE!” Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
+nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe--the
+steady old wheel-horse--in this condition. “How'd you GET this way?” he
+demanded. “You caught cold and took too much for it?”
+
+For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. “Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
+lately. Firs' you notice it?”
+
+“By George!” cried Sheridan. “I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.
+Boh! To see you like a common hog!”
+
+Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+“Hog!” he repeated, chuckling.
+
+“Yes, a hog!” said Sheridan, angrily. “In business hours! I don't object
+to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor,
+if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one
+to baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe.
+It ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way
+on a grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them
+men out there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think
+you can come to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder
+how often this has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look
+over your books to-morrow, and I'll--”
+
+Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the
+heavy chair in which he had been sitting.
+
+“Hoo--hoorah!” he cried. “'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you
+want to--outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere
+business hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink! Die!
+L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!”
+
+Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling
+his own office, overhead. “Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's
+suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in
+room two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows
+on the Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over
+with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two.
+You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be
+disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a
+closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at
+Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!”
+
+Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. “Drunk in
+business hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk,
+mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours! All right any
+other time. Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business
+hours! Fine! Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your
+trouble 't home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business!
+Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere business! Don' let your wife
+innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness,
+an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die,
+go on die 't home--don' die round th' office! Might innerfere business!”
+
+Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his
+back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his
+father's significant posture.
+
+“You know wh' I think?” he went on. “I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly
+any 'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked,
+an' he got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at
+me, I ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to
+me! Fine!” He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable
+gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair
+and caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several
+minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to
+the newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+
+Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up
+by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having
+progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less
+volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+
+“What--what you ask me while ago?” he said.
+
+“Nothin'.”
+
+“Yes, you did. What--what was it?”
+
+“Nothin'. You better sit down.”
+
+“You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
+won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!”
+
+The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and
+said, “Right down.” Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and
+brought them to his son. “Get into this coat,” he said. “You're goin'
+home.”
+
+“All ri',” Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+
+They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the
+outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and
+told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached
+the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the
+automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his
+own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a
+word in the interval.
+
+Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room
+without meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he
+heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant
+fragments of song:
+
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound.
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-yay!
+
+It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected
+any musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him
+whistle--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool
+should be merry to-day.
+
+To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he
+did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked
+the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
+came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
+manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
+lunch had “disagreed” with him a little.
+
+Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had
+become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+white-jacket's salver. “Here's another difference between Midas and
+chicken,” Sheridan remarked, grimly. “Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
+can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
+had the advantage there.”
+
+Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
+his plate without dropping it and to respond, “Yes--he crows over it.”
+
+Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for
+he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
+pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
+jargon to her. “Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
+has!” she exclaimed. “I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right
+handsome!”
+
+“He's got to be such a gadabout,” Edith giggled.
+
+“I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+anybody was up,” said Sheridan. “I reckon if people lose things in this
+house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do.”
+
+“What was it he lost?” asked Edith.
+
+“He knows!” her father returned. “Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
+home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
+important, belongin' to a busy man like him.” He affected to search
+his pockets. “What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
+remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket.”
+
+“Good place for it,” Bibbs murmured, still red.
+
+Sheridan gave him a grin. “Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
+early enough to find things before I do!”
+
+It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
+
+“My time's here at last,” he said, as they sat together in the
+melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
+That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
+day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
+upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence
+of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
+
+“Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
+any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my
+face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
+Hard labor for life, I think.”
+
+Mary shook her head. “I don't think so. He's too kind.”
+
+“You think my father's KIND?” And Bibbs stared at her.
+
+“Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
+only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand
+any other way.”
+
+“Ah yes,” said Bibbs. “If that's what you mean by 'kind'!”
+
+She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. “It's
+going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?”
+
+“Oh--self-pity!” he returned, smiling. “This has been just the last
+flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
+There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he
+could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I
+have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer.”
+
+“What is it like--exactly?”
+
+“I get up at six,” he said. “I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
+which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
+buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
+and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and
+work again from one till five.”
+
+“But the work itself?”
+
+“It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a
+heavier job because I wasn't good enough.”
+
+“But what will you do? I want to know.”
+
+“When I left,” said Bibbs, “I was 'on' what they call over there a
+'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
+what I'll be sent back to.”
+
+“But what is it?” she insisted.
+
+Bibbs explained. “It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
+zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
+circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at
+a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it.”
+
+He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
+known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+
+“You do that all day long?” she asked, and as he nodded, “It seems
+incredible!” she exclaimed. “YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
+nine hours a day! No wonder--” She broke off, and then, after a keen
+glance at his face, she said: “I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
+hand at it'!”
+
+He laughed ruefully. “I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
+say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.”
+
+“How often is that?”
+
+“The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
+than one a second.”
+
+“And you're close to it?”
+
+“Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,” he said, turning to her more
+gaily. “The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
+have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and
+duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I
+was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
+back. They used to laugh at me all day long.”
+
+Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
+on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She
+was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+
+“It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you,” she said, in a
+low voice. “No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
+leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
+published for you--”
+
+“Can't you SEE him?” Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
+his voice. “If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
+imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
+posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a
+Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the use? I've
+never written anything worth printing, and I never shall.”
+
+“You could!” she said.
+
+“That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
+do.”
+
+“You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!”
+
+“It isn't,” said BIBBS, honestly. “I never could--but you're the kindest
+lady in this world, Miss Vertrees.”
+
+She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+“That sounds wrong,” she said, impulsively. “I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
+I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't
+you rather call me 'Mary'?”
+
+Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+
+“Wouldn't you?” she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+
+“If I CAN!” he said, in a low voice.
+
+“Ah, that's very pretty!” she laughed. “You're such an honest person,
+it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.” She
+became grave again immediately. “I hear myself laughing as if it were
+some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.”
+ She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall,
+facing him. “You've GOT to go back to that place?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“And the other time you did it--”
+
+“Just over it,” said Bibbs. “Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of
+a repetition so much as--”
+
+“So much as what?” she prompted, as he stopped.
+
+Bibbs looked up at her shyly. “I want to say it, but--but I come to a
+dead balk when I try. I--”
+
+“Go on. Say it, whatever it is,” she bade him. “You wouldn't know how to
+say anything I shouldn't like.”
+
+“I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say,” he
+returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he
+seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. “You see, all my life--until I met
+you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying
+things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to
+feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been
+of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself,
+except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--I'm still
+of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful,
+but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy
+experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've lived
+it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have,
+this strange, beautiful, happy little while!”
+
+He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had
+to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not
+speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had
+gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room
+was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and
+loud.
+
+And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. “If you
+think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make
+it last.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bibbs, as faintly.
+
+“You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?”
+
+“Yes,” he gulped.
+
+“But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.”
+
+He tried to evade her. “Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--”
+
+“No,” she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. “You said what you did
+because you think the shop's going to kill you.”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Yes, you do think that!” She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+before him. “Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm
+a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said--and you
+did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.
+The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!”
+
+And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall,
+splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+
+“If I mean THAT much to you,” she cried, “they can't harm you! Go
+back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
+machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
+that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!”
+
+He stumbled to his feet. “You say--” he gasped.
+
+“Every evening, dear Bibbs!”
+
+He could only stare, bewildered.
+
+“EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!” And she held
+out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. “If
+I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,”
+ she said. “But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
+remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is
+done--won't the night make up for the day?”
+
+Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance
+of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, “To think you're
+there--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--”
+
+And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what
+it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
+father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before
+him. “I'm cured, father,” he said. “When do I go back to the shop? I'm
+ready.”
+
+The desolate and grim old man did not relax. “I was sittin' up to give
+you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time!
+I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take
+you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you
+just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to
+the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the
+month. Think you can get up in time?”
+
+“Six o'clock,” Bibbs responded, briskly. “And I want to tell you--I'm
+going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!”
+
+“That's YOUR lookout!” his father grunted. “They'll put you back on the
+clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.”
+
+“More than I'm worth, too,” said Bibbs, cheerily. “That reminds me, I
+didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--”
+
+“Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!”
+
+“I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.”
+
+“G'night!”
+
+The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat
+staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could
+be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique
+expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who,
+after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for
+burglars.
+
+“Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily. “Why'n't you go to bed? It must be
+goin' on 'leven o'clock!”
+
+She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
+the fire. “What's the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+sluggishly with each other in her voice. “I knew you were worried all
+dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
+taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?”
+
+“Nothin'.”
+
+She jeered feebly. “N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
+you?”
+
+“He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.
+
+“Just the same as he did before?”
+
+“Just pre-CISELY!”
+
+“How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.
+
+“Until he KNOWS something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together,
+then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
+talked. “He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
+in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
+it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to
+learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went
+there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine we got--and he stuck
+there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole
+business if he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there
+to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's
+whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against
+everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be
+worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what
+it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles,
+the man that can manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.
+Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE
+set himself to balk on the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's
+lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with
+him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything,
+anyhow!”
+
+“I knew there was something else,” said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
+a yawn. “You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less
+you'll tell me?”
+
+“Suppose something happened to Roscoe,” he said. “THEN what'd I have to
+look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
+lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
+groove!”
+
+“Roscoe?” she yawned. “You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
+strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
+he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better
+go up to bed, papa.”
+
+“Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
+means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let
+alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
+away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves
+come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off
+for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night
+and day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen
+a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--there wasn't even
+a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again.
+My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like
+I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
+have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
+to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's
+got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd
+make you think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll
+hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
+'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
+goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose,
+but it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been
+fillin' up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and
+the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it
+used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the
+bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's
+an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin'
+to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
+bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
+loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and
+the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And
+the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto:
+'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's
+built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and made good things
+grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide
+in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what's
+the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin'
+to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
+business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in
+the ground?”
+
+He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
+the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
+thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. “You think this is
+a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never
+was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard
+is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
+eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till
+he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
+soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
+Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--and you got to go out and
+live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a dead
+man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son Bibbs
+has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out and
+do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe--”
+
+“Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. “There isn't anything
+goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
+nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?”
+
+Sheridan halted. “All right, mamma,” he said, with a vast sigh. “Let's
+go up.” And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy
+glow of the fire.
+
+“Did you speak to Roscoe?” she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+drowsiness. “Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?”
+
+“No. I will to-morrow.”
+
+
+But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the
+fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine
+in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+
+“They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me.”
+
+“Sit down,” said Sheridan, rising.
+
+Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and
+then walked away, smiling bitterly. “Boh!” he exclaimed. “Still at it!”
+
+“Yes,” said Roscoe. “I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What
+about it?”
+
+“I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,” his father returned.
+“I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I
+would!”
+
+“Better do it,” Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+
+“When'd you begin this thing?”
+
+“I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.”
+
+“Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.”
+
+“Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the
+other day.”
+
+Sheridan began cutting. “It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
+office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him,
+and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You
+been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three
+weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't
+done any work, to count, in a month.”
+
+“All right,” said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. “It's all true.”
+
+“What you goin' to do about it?”
+
+Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. “I can't stand very much
+talk about it, father,” he said, pleadingly.
+
+“No!” Sheridan cried. “Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?”
+ He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. “I can't stand to
+talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
+what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!”
+
+Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+
+“You can't straighten me out.”
+
+“See here!” said Sheridan. “Can you go back to your office and stay
+sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple
+o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand
+if they see you tryin' to take it?”
+
+“You needn't worry about that,” said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+resentment. “I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst.”
+
+“Well, what have you got?”
+
+“Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.”
+
+“We'll see about that!” said Sheridan, harshly. “Now I can't fool with
+you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
+office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last
+Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the
+women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober
+till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie
+down to your office every little while, and he'll let me know.”
+
+Roscoe paused at the door. “You told Abercrombie about it?” he asked.
+
+“TOLD him!” And Sheridan laughed hideously. “Do you suppose there's an
+elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?”
+
+Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  “WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!”
+
+So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that
+the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the
+afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the
+swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling
+improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash
+with vocal imitations:
+
+  Fearless and bold,
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound,
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
+      NIGHT'S on the way
+      EACH time I say,
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+
+The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the
+air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually;
+everything was implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the
+dizzied eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become
+dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea
+to faintness. But he felt neither now. “ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY
+THOUGHTS TO YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS
+BESIDE YOU.” He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place
+became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop;
+he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
+
+      Away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!
+    Wild are his eyes,
+    Fiercely he dies!
+      Hi-YAH!
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!
+    Ready to fling
+    Our gloves in the ring--
+
+He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded
+to those nearest him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of
+them--but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily,
+never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical
+programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+
+“Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if
+you don't try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's
+right--YOU'LL never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a
+nice, shiny one.”
+
+The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: “Talkin' to himself! By George!”
+
+Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+
+Bibbs returned to song:
+
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+    Fearless and bo--
+
+His father grasped him by the arm. “Here!” he shouted. “Let ME show you
+how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n
+you used to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way and let me
+show you once.”
+
+“Better be careful,” Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+
+“Careful? Boh!” Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. “What
+you talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so
+abused you're goin' wrong in the head?”
+
+“'Abused'? No!” shouted Bibbs. “I was SINGING--because I 'like it'! I
+told you I'd come back and 'like it.'”
+
+Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply,
+but began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it
+awkwardly--and with bad results.
+
+“Here!” he shouted. “This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin'
+to it, if you put your mind on it.” By his own showing then his mind was
+not upon it. He continued to talk. “All you got to look out for is to
+keep it pressed over to--”
+
+“Don't run your hand up with it,” Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+
+“Run nothin'! You GOT to--”
+
+“Look out!” shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and
+the zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers.
+He swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops
+over himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+
+“Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch
+my bag. It's in my machine, outside.”
+
+And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor
+still grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin.
+Sheridan had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at
+his son as the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+
+“You go on back to your work,” he said. “I've had worse snips than that
+from a pencil-sharpener.”
+
+“Oh no, you haven't!” said Gurney.
+
+“I have, too!” Sheridan retorted, angrily. “Bibbs, you go on back to
+your work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc
+Gurney tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs
+a little court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back
+on your job.”
+
+“All right,” said Bibbs.
+
+“HERE!” Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door.
+“You watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I
+slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get your
+whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!”
+
+“Yes, sir.” And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+
+Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+outside, where conversation was possible. “I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
+have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you
+for a drive and leave you at home.”
+
+“Can't,” said Bibbs. “Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows.”
+
+“No, you don't,” the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. “He wants me to
+take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much
+harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks
+have got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your
+house! But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half
+shut--”
+
+“Yes,” Bibbs interrupted, “that's what they are.”
+
+“I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's
+made the difference?”
+
+“I like the machine,” said Bibbs. “I've made a friend of it. I serenade
+it and talk to it, and then it talks back to me.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed? What does it say?”
+
+“What I want to hear.”
+
+“Well, well!” The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+repeatedly. “Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take
+the time off that he allowed for the examination, and--”
+
+“Not at all,” said Bibbs. “I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till
+five o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!”
+
+“Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” Bibbs said, thoughtfully; “but the zinc-eater
+doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being
+in business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be
+content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days.”
+
+“You do beat the devil!” exclaimed Gurney. “Your father's right when he
+tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing
+when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm
+off. Go on back to your murdering old machine.” He climbed into his car,
+which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately
+in motion. “Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him
+not to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he
+didn't pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show
+you how to do something you were already doing a great deal better
+than he could. You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the
+dressing to-morrow morning. Good-by.”
+
+But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than
+change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of
+its kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was
+rebellious and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability
+only by means of horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he
+appeared at the dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which
+he seemed to regard as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon
+the subject evidently struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan,
+having been unable to contain her solicitude several times during the
+day, and having been checked each time in a manner that blanched her
+cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to
+omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the sling
+if they possibly could.
+
+The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
+arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour;
+and the members of the family were all seated at the table within two
+minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+
+It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
+awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression,
+as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was
+that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent.
+Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and
+explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and there was a
+strange brightness, like a light, upon his face. It was curious to see
+anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.
+
+Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never
+once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance,
+heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like
+Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself
+with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting
+it to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father
+gazed heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and
+between Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed
+continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing
+during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+
+“Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?” his mother asked, in the
+effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+
+“What did you say, mother?”
+
+“Didn't you go to church this morning?”
+
+“I think so,” he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+
+“You THINK so! Don't you know?”
+
+“Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!”
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“Just down the street. It's brick.”
+
+“What was the sermon about?”
+
+“What, mother?”
+
+“Can't you hear me?” she cried. “I asked you what the sermon was about?”
+
+He roused himself. “I think it was about--” He frowned, seeming to
+concentrate his will to recollect. “I think it was about something in
+the Bible.”
+
+White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and
+lean upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. “He don't know they
+WAS any suhmon!” he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue.
+“All he know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!” George was right.
+
+“Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?” Sibyl asked.
+
+“No,” he answered. “No, I didn't go alone.”
+
+“Oh?” Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry,
+and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. “OH!”
+
+Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that
+completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+
+Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to
+other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the
+library, but was not well received.
+
+“YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks,” Sheridan
+commanded.
+
+Bibbs retreated. “Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!” he
+said.
+
+However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her
+feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room,
+examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs.
+Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively
+of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that
+she thought it “right pretty,” and followed it with one of the former
+and the same remark.
+
+As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead,
+he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left
+the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then
+disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy.
+He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions
+and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the
+letter.
+
+Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+
+“What's that?” she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+
+“Here's another right pretty record,” said Mrs. Sheridan,
+affecting--with patent nervousness--not to hear. And she unloosed the
+music.
+
+Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a
+little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold
+chair, with his eyes closed.
+
+“Where did Edith go?” she asked, curiously.
+
+“Edith?” he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. “Is she gone?”
+
+Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing,
+still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was
+suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp
+excitement. She listened intently.
+
+When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+husky: “I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well
+let me alone!”
+
+But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started
+another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of
+Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+
+Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
+instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+
+But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so
+white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences
+became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and
+contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+
+“Sit just as you were--both of you!” she said. And then to Edith: “Did
+you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?”
+
+“You march out of here!” said Edith, fiercely. “March straight out of
+here!”
+
+Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+
+“Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?”
+
+“Oh, good God!” Lamhorn said. “Hush!”
+
+“You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?” she cried. “You knew
+that!”
+
+“HUSH!” he begged, panic-stricken.
+
+“That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
+come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say!
+You were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand times
+before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!” she stormed. “You wouldn't
+even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And SHE
+told my husband! You're a MAN!”
+
+Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way
+to her feelings. “Get out of this house!” she shrieked. “This is my
+father's house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!”
+
+“No! No! I mustn't SPEAK--”
+
+“Don't you DARE!”
+
+Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled
+and rose and cracked--they screeched. They could be heard over the noise
+of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could
+be heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could
+have been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
+
+“You told my husband!” screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+Edith's. “You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike
+me with! HE did!”
+
+“I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's
+TIME your husband--”
+
+They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. “Do you want the neighbors
+in?” Sheridan thundered.
+
+There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his
+mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved
+slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the
+hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily,
+his eyes on the ground.
+
+“NOW THEN!” said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+
+The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the
+vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the
+direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of
+George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs.
+Sheridan. They fled lightly.
+
+“Papa, papa!” wailed Mrs. Sheridan. “Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't
+to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!”
+
+There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips
+of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. “Now then!”
+ he repeated. “You goin' to leave my house?”
+
+“He will NOT!” sobbed Edith. “Don't you DARE order him out!”
+
+“Don't you bother, dear,” said Lamhorn, quietly. “He doesn't understand.
+YOU mustn't be troubled.” Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very
+handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught
+eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his
+heels--the rabble being enacted by her father.
+
+“Don't come back, either!” said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+impersonation. “Keep off the premises!” he called savagely into the
+hall. “This family's through with you!”
+
+“It is NOT!” Edith cried, breaking from her mother. “You'll SEE about
+that! You'll find out! You'll find out what'll happen! What's HE done?
+I guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's
+HE done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you
+s'pose he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there,
+and he flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it
+was before he met ME! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything,
+anyway--he never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be
+serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long
+ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and--”
+
+“Yes,” said Sheridan, sternly; “that's HIS side of it! That'll do! He
+doesn't come in this house again!”
+
+“You look out!” Edith cried.
+
+“Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on
+the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie
+look up this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count
+on earth! He's no good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was
+George Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!”
+
+“But, papa,” Mrs. Sheridan began, “if Edie says it was all Sibyl's
+fault, makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--”
+
+“'S enough!” he roared. “He keeps off these premises! And if any of you
+so much as ever speak his name to me again--”
+
+But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her
+mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined
+her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw
+her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+
+“She locked her door,” said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully.
+“She wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room.”
+
+“Well,” said her husband, “she can settle her mind to it. She
+never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her
+to-morrow--Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say
+it's my orders. No, you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself.”
+
+“Better not,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+His father glared at him.
+
+“It's no good,” said Bibbs. “Mother, when you were in love with
+father--”
+
+“My goodness!” she cried. “You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+that--”
+
+“Edith feels about him just what you did about father,” said Bibbs. “And
+if YOUR father had told you--”
+
+“I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!” she declared, angrily.
+
+“So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?” said Sheridan.
+“What is it?”
+
+“Let her see him all she wants.”
+
+“You're a--” Sheridan gave it up. “I don't know what to call you!”
+
+“Let her see him all she wants,” Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. “You're
+up against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling
+you'd have a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your
+determination, father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll
+beat you. You can't keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about
+him the way she does now. You can't make her think less of him, either.
+Nobody can. Your only chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if
+you give her time and go easy she probably will. Marriage would do it
+for her quickest, but that's just what you don't want, and as you DON'T
+want it, you'd better--”
+
+“I can't stand any more!” Sheridan burst out. “If it's come to BIBBS
+advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that
+nigger George? Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family.
+Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'!
+Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's--”
+
+“Bibbs,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “if you haven't got anything to do, you
+might step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall. I
+don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now.”
+
+“All right.” And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and
+delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only,
+“Forgot these,” and, “Good night, Roscoe,” cordially and cheerfully, and
+returned to the New House. His mother and father were still talking in
+the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his
+own room, and there he proceeded to write in his note-book.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love--nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?
+
+   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!
+
+   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.
+
+   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.
+
+   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.
+
+   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.
+
+   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning “Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted.”  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting--always there--for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?
+
+   Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+
+Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own
+(and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to
+sleep soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+
+His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of
+affairs of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote,
+“Who would wake from such a dream as this?” Bibbs was a sympathetic
+person, easily touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all
+things outside of it were veiled and remote--for that is the way of
+youth in a dream. And Bibbs, who had never before been of any age,
+either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
+
+He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of
+soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile
+at the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr.
+Gurney's, but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist. And when
+he was once more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater he whistled
+and sang to it, as other workmen did to their own machines sometimes,
+when things went well. His comrades in the shop glanced at him amusedly
+now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at noon with a group
+of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked of electing him to
+their association.
+
+The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles
+blew. When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested
+himself of his overalls--his single divergence from the routine of his
+fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water copiously. This
+was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail
+young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the
+pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the
+point of elegance.
+
+The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and
+boys and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many
+hurried and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one
+another, and Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+
+Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught
+sight of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost
+passed her, for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not
+recognize her, though his shoulder actually touched hers. He would have
+gone by, but she laughed delightedly; and he stopped short, startled.
+Two boys, one chasing the other, swept between them, and Bibbs stood
+still, peering about him in deep perplexity. She leaned toward him.
+
+“I knew YOU!” she said.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Bibbs. “I thought it was your voice coming out of
+a star!”
+
+“There's only smoke overhead,” said Mary, and laughed again. “There
+aren't any stars.”
+
+“Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!”
+
+She took his arm, and they went on. “I've come to walk home with you,
+Bibbs. I wanted to.”
+
+“But were you here in the--”
+
+“In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!”
+
+Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold
+her.
+
+“But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have--you ought
+to know better. What did--”
+
+“I only waited about twelve seconds,” she laughed. “I'd just got here.”
+
+“But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--”
+
+“I was in this part of town already,” she said. “At least, I was only
+seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd
+have had to go home alone--and I preferred going home with you.”
+
+“It's pretty beautiful for me,” said Bibbs, with a deep breath. “You'll
+never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then
+to--to see you standing there! Oh, it was like--it was like--how can I
+TELL you what it was like?” They had passed beyond the crowd now, and
+a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again she
+was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
+vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
+had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
+was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his
+solicitude for her took another turn. “I think you ought to have a car,”
+ he said, “especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in
+winter, anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?”
+
+“No,” said Mary. “I don't think I'd care for one particularly.”
+
+“I wish you would.” Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. “I think in
+winter you--”
+
+“No, no,” she interrupted, lightly. “I don't need--”
+
+“But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
+for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--”
+
+“A girl likes to walk, too,” said Mary. “Let me tell you where I've been
+this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
+home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
+He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
+mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
+I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see
+more of them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever
+painted; I don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in
+his life. He gives drawing-lessons to keep alive.”
+
+“How do you mean he paints the smoke?” Bibbs asked.
+
+“Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the
+street--anywhere. He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful.”
+
+“The smoke?”
+
+“Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs
+of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and
+smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow
+columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing
+with the hazy light in the distance; and he has others with the broken
+sky-line of down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of
+vapor that have colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take
+you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs.”
+
+“You're showing me the town,” he said. “I didn't know what was in it at
+all.”
+
+“There are workers in beauty here,” she told him, gently. “There are
+other painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of
+things.”
+
+“I didn't know.”
+
+“No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of
+it that shows.”
+
+“The beauty-workers seem buried very deep,” said Bibbs. “And I imagine
+that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest
+of all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one
+of your friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't
+get one of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he
+could use it for an advertisement.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, thoughtfully. “And really he's the town. They ARE
+buried pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs.”
+
+“And yet it's all wonderful,” he said. “It's wonderful to me.”
+
+“You mean the town is wonderful to you?”
+
+“Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city
+is only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than
+the horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater
+all day long, helping me. Mary--” He stopped with a gasp. “That's the
+first time I've called you 'Mary'!”
+
+“Yes.” She laughed, a little tremuously. “Though I wanted you to!”
+
+“I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk
+home with me. That must be it.”
+
+“Women like to have things said,” Mary informed him, her tremulous
+laughter continuing. “Were you glad I came for you?”
+
+“No--not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+and up--over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way
+most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person
+I was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at
+all. It seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly--somebody
+else--somebody I don't understand now, a coward afraid of
+shadows--afraid of things that didn't exist--afraid of my old
+zinc-eater! And now I'm only afraid of what might change anything.”
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, “You're happy, Bibbs?” she asked.
+
+“Ah, don't you see?” he cried. “I want it to last for a thousand,
+thousand years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I
+wouldn't have one thing different--nothing, nothing!”
+
+“Dear Bibbs!” she said, and laughed happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
+after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
+decided that he was “a member of the family”; but he appeared to have
+relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he
+was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days
+in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he
+seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly
+aware that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
+imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
+Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the
+sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer
+wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again
+unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith
+and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+
+Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
+not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
+days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
+frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or
+no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
+information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
+Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and
+why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as
+of yore.
+
+Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
+shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of
+that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling
+mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
+hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
+end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+
+“You ought to let me die!” she wailed. “It's cruel not to let me die!
+What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
+Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and
+look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this
+town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't
+even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!
+I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted to have a good
+time--and how could I? Where's any good time among these Sheridans? They
+never even had wine on the table! I thought I was marrying into a rich
+family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and
+go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did
+the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every
+woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were
+just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen
+crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
+have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was
+getting him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with
+money can do that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what
+could I do? What can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but
+try to stand it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that
+Vertrees girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't
+have hurt her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT
+little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take
+the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!”
+
+Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
+whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half
+upright, and the nurse restrained her. “I'd get up out of this bed to
+show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and
+she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after
+Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground, and she thinks she's
+landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able
+to walk across the street again I'll show her how to treat a woman in
+trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't have hurt her any--it
+wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what she told
+Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I
+bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done
+it! He needn't--needn't--” Her voice grew fainter, for that while,
+with exhaustion, though she would go over it all again as soon as her
+strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing
+disheveled in the doorway, “Don't come in, Roscoe,” she murmured. “I
+don't want to see you.” And as he turned away she added, “I'm kind of
+sorry for you, Roscoe.”
+
+Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
+and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the
+disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
+husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to
+telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into
+a momentary distraction over a counter.
+
+Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
+whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
+the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan,
+like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly
+fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool,
+and thus set her on fire.
+
+Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
+father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence
+had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing
+fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she
+went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not
+think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.
+She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in
+apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring
+peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and
+she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and
+having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have
+kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure
+had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that
+evening, to find her gone. “I suppose they'll be maried there,” he said,
+casually.
+
+Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+fuming. “Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!” he snorted. “I
+don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
+are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept
+away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.
+For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!”
+
+Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
+sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
+excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
+wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
+had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had
+the habit of gesture; he could not “take time to remember,” he said,
+that he must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his
+hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
+
+The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
+the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before
+the appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an
+anteroom--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's
+office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
+latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
+
+“No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!” he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+breaking into thunder, “I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick!
+You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his
+hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what
+if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to
+keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide
+your nickels in a crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a
+little skeery! You listen to every street-corner croaker and then
+come and set here and try to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on
+this--understand? I tell you there never WAS better times. These are
+good times and big times, and I won't stand for any other kind o' talk.
+This country's on its feet as it never was before, and this city's on
+its feet and goin' to stay there!” And Gurney heard a series of whacks
+and thumps upon the desk. “'Bad times'!” Sheridan vociferated, with
+accompanying thumps. “Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!
+We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all,
+gentlemen. The loan goes!”
+
+The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
+in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his
+right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage
+as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of
+Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile
+reception. But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic
+command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the
+New House.
+
+“Gurney says your wife's able to travel,” Sheridan said brusquely, as he
+came in.
+
+“Yes.” Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
+which had become his habit. “Yes, she is.”
+
+“Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!”
+
+“Oh, I wouldn't put it that way,” Roscoe protested, drearily.
+
+“No, I hear YOU wouldn't!” There was a bitter gibe in the father's
+voice, and he added: “It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
+stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
+least of all!”
+
+“It's no use your talking that way,” said Roscoe. “You won't do any
+good.”
+
+“Well, when are you comin' back to your office?” Sheridan used a
+brisker, kinder tone. “Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
+When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
+foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a
+lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself
+out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone.”
+
+“It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
+you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!”
+
+“Wait a minute before you talk that way!” Sheridan began his sentry-go
+up and down the room. “I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good
+men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin'
+right again, down in your office?”
+
+“They must be good men.” Roscoe nodded indifferently. “I thought I was
+doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
+it.”
+
+“Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty
+men drive harder'n I do, and--”
+
+“Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with
+'em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
+the rest of their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
+domestic difficulties'!”
+
+“You set there and tell me you give up?” Sheridan's voice shook, and
+so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
+despondent figure. “Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
+down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
+more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
+you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
+fastened on you yet. Don't say--”
+
+“It's no use on earth,” Roscoe mumbled. “No use on earth.”
+
+“Look here! If you want another month's vacation--”
+
+“I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?”
+
+“Gurney!” Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. “It's Gurney, Gurney,
+Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
+doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get
+its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
+blattin'--'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
+NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
+emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
+chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's
+the matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and
+Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her.”
+
+“Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?”
+
+“Shut up!” Sheridan bellowed. “I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel
+like shootin' anybody that says it to me!” He fumed and chafed, swearing
+indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. “Look here; do you
+think you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?”
+
+“I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.”
+
+“It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at
+your age?”
+
+“No. But it's mine, and it's enough.”
+
+“My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
+there! I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket,
+and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right
+here, you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and
+what would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from
+now? Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd
+either get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be
+split up and--” He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room,
+and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly: “Listen. If you go
+out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth
+to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is. I've depended on
+you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor,
+and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that
+certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
+a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
+you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and
+a little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into
+MOVING businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
+won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if
+you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were.” He cleared
+his throat and finished quietly: “Roscoe, will you take a month's
+vacation and come back and go to it?”
+
+“No,” said Roscoe, listlessly. “I'm through.”
+
+“All right,” said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
+table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
+“Good-by.”
+
+Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
+“Best I can do,” he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. “I
+figure it out a good deal like this,” he said. “I didn't KNOW my job
+was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what
+I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and
+the--the trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I
+am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on
+whiskey--and that put the finish to me! I--I'm not hitting it as hard as
+I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a
+little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I don't know. I'm all
+in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a
+few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know
+it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
+I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your
+daughter-in-law and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything
+wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had
+done--encouraging that fellow to hang around her after he began trying
+to flirt with her, and losing her head over him the way she did. I don't
+deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll
+never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's
+nature.” Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.
+“A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive people, and
+traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can give her
+the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or
+New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman has to have
+something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I was. I
+never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I
+believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's
+all. I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was
+so busy with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her,
+I was so busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us
+to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do
+when anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me
+dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had
+to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the
+floor, deathly sick. You talk about a 'month's vacation'--and I get just
+as sick. I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't make
+any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
+I can--and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we--”
+
+His father rustled the paper. “I said good-by, Roscoe.”
+
+“Good-by,” said Roscoe, listlessly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then
+he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
+
+“Has Bibbs got home from work?”
+
+“Mist' Bibbs? No, suh.”
+
+“Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes.”
+
+“Yessuh.”
+
+Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon
+the newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond
+their explanatory rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to
+concentrate his attention:
+
+  “Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides.”
+   “Burglars Make Big Haul.”
+   “Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension.”
+   “Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured.”
+   “Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court.”
+   “Plan New Eighteen-story Structure.”
+   “School-girl Meets Death under Automobile.”
+   “Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead.”
+   “Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes
+    Action by Coroner.”
+   “Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to
+    Governor in Church Rioting Case.”
+   “Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug.”
+   “Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work.”
+   “Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No
+    European City Holds Candle.” (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
+
+Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+“Well, father, did you want me?”
+
+“Yes. Sit down.” Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire,
+holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+
+“I came within seven of the shop record to-day,” he said. “I handled
+more strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest
+to me is sixteen behind.”
+
+“There!” exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. “What'd I tell you?
+I'd like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you
+there--I would just like to hear him! And you--ain't you ashamed of
+makin' such a fuss about it? Ain't you?”
+
+“I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time,” Bibbs said,
+smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. “I didn't
+know the difference it meant to like a thing.”
+
+“Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
+HAVE! I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
+hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+Ain't that so?”
+
+“Looks like it!” Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+
+“Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead
+o' hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically. You're a good
+inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am
+if you'd get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little.
+Physically, it's started you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole
+family. Now, then, mentally--that's different. I don't say it unkindly,
+Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like
+what's begun physically. And I'm goin' to help you.”
+
+Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his
+son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. “I got
+plans for you, Bibbs,” he said.
+
+Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. “I--I'm all
+right now, father.”
+
+“Listen.” Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone
+of a reasonable man reasoning. “Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow
+to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been
+expectin' it some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll
+be frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever
+called you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of
+your life. Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to
+use it. You got will-power, I'll say that for you. I never knew boy or
+man that could be stubborner--never one in my life! Now, then, you've
+showed you could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop,
+in no time at all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other
+things. I don't deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't deny
+that, at all. Well, that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as
+it looks. You're all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't
+as poor material as I thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within
+seven strips of the shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin'
+information brought in at just about the right time. Now, then, I'm
+goin' to give you a raise. I wanted to send you straight on up through
+the shops--a year or two, maybe--but I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now
+I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's laid down on me. If he ever comes back
+at all, he'll be a long time pickin' up the strings, and, anyway, he
+ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count on him. I got to have
+SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to this: you're my last
+chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got and see if
+we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin' to put my time
+in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I won't be
+hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin' to do the
+big thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the big
+thing for me, in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the
+shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over
+ahead of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal
+to your ambition that'll make you dizzy!” He tapped his son on the knee
+again. “Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm goin' to
+make you a director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to make you
+vice-president of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust
+Company!”
+
+Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. “Oh no!” he cried.
+
+Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. “Yes,
+sir! And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop--oh, I know
+you did!--but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so right
+now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you to,
+I deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger and
+bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand I deal
+you. I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!”
+
+“But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!” Bibbs stammered.
+
+“What'd you say?” Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+
+“I don't want it, father. I thank you--I do thank you--”
+
+Sheridan looked perplexed. “What's the matter with you? Didn't you
+understand what I was tellin' you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered--”
+
+“I know, I know! But I can't take it.”
+
+“What's the matter with you?” Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+“Your head feel funny?”
+
+“I've never been quite so sane in my life,” said Bibbs, “as I have
+lately. And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right
+life. I'm earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages
+are enough. I don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any--”
+
+“Damnation!” Sheridan sprang up. “You've turned Socialist! You been
+listening to those fellows down there, and you--”
+
+“No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't
+it.”
+
+Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+“Then what is it? What's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” his son returned, nervously. “Nothing--except that I'm
+content. I don't want to change anything.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. “I'll tell you,
+father, if I can. I know it may be hard to understand--”
+
+“Yes, I think it may be,” said Sheridan, grimly. “What you say usually
+is a LITTLE that way. Go on!”
+
+Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at
+every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a
+rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and
+made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his
+eyes lowered. “You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is,
+in one way you weren't, father.” He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan
+stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.
+“That's difficult to explain,” Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again,
+to follow the tracings of his finger. “I--I believe the shop might have
+done for me this time if I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh,
+not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it.
+I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I don't
+want, I don't want to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn
+into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM living. I have the
+healthful toil--and I can think. In business as important as yours I
+couldn't think anything but business. I don't--I don't think making
+money is worth while.”
+
+“Go on,” said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+
+“It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,” said Bibbs. “You
+think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being
+rich and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools
+because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they
+used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought
+the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been reading
+the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught anything
+except what would help them to make money. You said it was wasting the
+taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live. When I
+was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's the
+use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has
+meant really going ahead--it's just been getting bigger and dirtier and
+noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it
+was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an
+utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics
+just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman
+that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily
+and dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over
+it? And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all
+the time, and was always having additions built to her house when she
+couldn't keep clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she
+made the house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--”
+
+“Just one minute!” Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy,
+“If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?”
+
+“I don't quite--”
+
+“I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
+whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon
+any subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you
+mention one single time when you were proved to be right?”
+
+He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only,
+“If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm
+right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due
+to bring up my average.”
+
+“Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
+probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been
+balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do,
+you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't
+seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I
+said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of
+this country. Go on!”
+
+“I don't want to be a part of it,” said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.
+“I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went
+down there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money
+enough to--”
+
+“No,” his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. “You've never had
+to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me
+remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty
+fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these
+noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own
+housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?”
+
+“I'm earning nine dollars a week,” said Bibbs, sturdily. “It's enough. I
+shouldn't mind at all.”
+
+“Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?”
+
+“My work!” Bibbs answered. “And I've done so well on that
+clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty
+a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months,
+I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should,
+infinitely!”
+
+“You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!” But Sheridan
+struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+controlling it. “You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go to
+plumbing!”
+
+“All right,” said Bibbs, gently. “I can get along.”
+
+Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. “O God,” he said,
+“this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a
+week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for
+him?” Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture
+of dismissal. “Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a
+whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated
+the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick
+for over two years--and now, when I offer to take you out of it and give
+you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy! You're
+cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit, and
+one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had
+a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First
+morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass
+window out into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!'
+That's what you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look
+at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you
+bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you
+are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn
+you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out
+of you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while
+I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
+at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't
+let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked
+up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!”
+
+Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it,
+for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his
+father's last word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this
+storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place
+in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the
+presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading
+Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of
+the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose
+through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for
+Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights
+as these, all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve
+to break the spell.
+
+Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking;
+and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers,
+appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at
+him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that
+while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the
+time.
+
+When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+said: “There's something I want to read over. This:”
+
+   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....
+
+He stopped and looked at her.
+
+“You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.
+
+“Oh yes,” he returned. “But it's true--especially my knees!”
+
+“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read
+another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were
+looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it--I can give
+it to you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'”
+
+“I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one,
+unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”
+
+“No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what's beautiful and
+delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and
+have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful
+person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful for.”
+
+Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or
+two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I
+wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.”
+
+“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we're
+like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough
+Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and
+told everybody that the devil was dead.”
+
+“He isn't, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room
+began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets
+into the clock whenever I'm with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to
+go.
+
+“You're always very prompt about leaving me.”
+
+“I--I try to be,” he said. “It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you
+look tired--”
+
+“Have you ever?”
+
+“Not yet. You always look--you always look--”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about
+something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into
+people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that
+look--and I'd never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety
+might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite
+understand why it should be, either.” He smiled quizzically, looking
+down upon her. “Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have you?”
+
+For answer she only laughed.
+
+“No,” he said; “I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
+that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in
+your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
+happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours
+when I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel
+dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house, there's
+a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily
+dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really
+beginning another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But
+now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and so--good night.” And
+he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, “I hate
+it!”
+
+“Do you?” she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
+motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+
+“Mary! Your eyes are so--” He stopped.
+
+“Yes?” But she looked quickly away.
+
+“I don't know,” he said. “I thought just then--”
+
+“What did you think?”
+
+“I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+understand--and didn't.”
+
+She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. “My eyes are
+pleased,” she said. “I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go.”
+
+“But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it,” he
+said.
+
+She inclined her head. “Yes. I'll--'let it'!”
+
+“Going to church,” said Bibbs. “It IS going to church when I go with
+you!”
+
+She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
+formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
+speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
+doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
+looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
+the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway,
+but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to
+tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that
+friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were open for him to come
+back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came
+between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the
+beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol of
+herself and of her ineffable kindness.
+
+And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was
+strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that
+she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the
+storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she
+went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had
+spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he
+was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she
+caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two
+houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before,
+she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street.
+They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the
+front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper
+windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the
+shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night
+she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after
+Bibbs had gone.
+
+But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for
+his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
+already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
+lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.
+
+A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
+library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
+rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
+detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then
+Gurney, sharply imperious, “Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand
+in that sling, I say!”
+
+“LOOK!” George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
+tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which
+he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the
+eyes of Bibbs. “Look at 'at lamidal statue!”
+
+Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly
+Byzantine--painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso,
+appallingly human; and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn
+among ruinous palms like the spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had
+been a massacre in the oasis--the Moor had been hurled headlong from his
+pedestal.
+
+“He hit 'at ole lamidal statue,” said George. “POW!”
+
+“My father?”
+
+“YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's
+I kin telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't
+takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago.
+You done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what
+he was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!” He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a
+crumpled telegraph form. “Here what come,” he said. “I pick 'er up when
+he done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn
+'er ovuh to you soon's you come in.”
+
+Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to
+Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
+                                                     Edith Lamhorn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors
+of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just
+then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For
+that reason he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade
+room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan
+vociferously demanding his presence.
+
+“Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him
+in. Now you'll SEE!” And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into
+the hall, beckoned to her son.
+
+Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
+striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that
+he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot;
+his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken
+loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+
+“THERE'S our little sunshine!” he cried, as Bibbs appeared. “THERE'S the
+hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--”
+
+“Keep you hand in that sling,” said Gurney, sharply.
+
+Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. “For God's sake,
+sing another tune!” he cried. “You said you 'came as a doctor but stay
+as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize
+ME--”
+
+“Oh, talk sense,” said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. “What do
+you want Bibbs to say?”
+
+“You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,'
+oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'!
+You sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many
+another man you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!” He
+swung toward the quiet figure waiting in the doorway. “Bibbs, will you
+come down-town with me Monday morning and let me start you with two
+vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you.”
+
+“No, father,” said Bibbs, gently.
+
+Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+
+“Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+instead of takin' up my offer?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're
+too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my
+shop?”
+
+“Find other work,” said Bibbs.
+
+“There! You hear him for yourself!” Sheridan cried. “You hear what--”
+
+“Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him.”
+
+Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+broke, piping into falsetto: “He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to
+be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he
+wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!”
+
+He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+“There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance
+to live,” he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
+throat. “That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway
+yonder!”
+
+Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
+and tossed it into the open bag. “What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
+chance to live?” he said, coolly. “I would if I were you. You've had TWO
+that went into business.”
+
+Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. “Joe Gurney,”
+ he said, when he could command himself so far, “are you accusin' me of
+the responsibility for the death of my son James?”
+
+“I accuse you of nothing,” said the doctor. “But just once I'd like
+to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
+too.” He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
+his back and smiling. “Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable,” he
+said. “You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
+and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at
+the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And
+he did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't
+you let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he
+couldn't do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some
+message--something to say that might make the world just a little
+bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be
+denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you,
+and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is
+likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the
+shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But
+I tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill
+something that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his
+physical body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so
+why not let it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old
+fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
+chance?”
+
+Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. “What 'fighting?'”
+
+“Yours--with nature.” Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
+antagonist equably. “You don't seem to understand that you've been
+struggling against actual law.”
+
+“What law?”
+
+“Natural law,” said Gurney. “What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
+Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
+powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
+against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
+grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken
+Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
+wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
+could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
+Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want
+him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
+twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together.”
+
+“WHAT!” Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+
+“Your son Bibbs,” said the doctor, composedly, “Bibbs Sheridan has
+the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
+anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain
+asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life
+you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT
+to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's
+obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
+knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell
+you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
+thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than
+your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
+very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim
+from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very
+self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
+The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
+the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to
+wield it and twist it--”
+
+The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. “Yes! And by
+God, I will!”
+
+“So Ajax defied the lightning,” said Gurney.
+
+“I've heard that dam'-fool story, too,” Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+“That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
+tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half
+a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the
+lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A
+man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!”
+
+“Well, what about Bibbs?” said Gurney. “Will you be a really big man now
+and--”
+
+“Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!” Sheridan began to walk to and
+fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
+his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but
+the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
+
+“I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder,” Sheridan
+went on, “and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
+don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
+mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!”
+
+“Oh, put your hand back!” said Gurney, wearily.
+
+There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand
+in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table
+and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
+Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+
+“Let it lay!” he shouted, fiercely. “Let it lay!” And, weeping, she
+obeyed. “Yes, sir,” he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the
+sudden hush he put upon it. “I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's
+wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you
+remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
+messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
+built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there
+from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he
+died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used
+to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't
+stingy--he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or
+automobiles--he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty
+near bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole
+man used to pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants
+cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak
+to him? God! he wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him
+clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin'
+in FRONT the bank he'd 'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy
+was doin' every day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!
+Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and
+his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.
+It was every bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in
+harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for
+that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T
+EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
+him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his
+old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy bank
+any more! And now”--his voice rose again--“and now I got a cigarette
+son-in-law!”
+
+Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+
+“My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,” Sheridan went on. “That's
+good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be
+there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear
+it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got
+me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't
+give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's
+got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before
+this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette
+behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there
+ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there
+ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein',
+nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll
+be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that
+cigarette, but--”
+
+“By the way,” interposed Gurney, “didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
+Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?”
+
+Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed
+and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his
+wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively,
+sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away,
+tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
+
+“Fool!” he panted, choking. “If he's shown gumption enough to guess
+right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
+him on!” And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
+thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. “My name
+ain't Tracy, I tell you!” he screamed, hoarsely. “You give in, you
+stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my way
+with you now!”
+
+Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+“splendid look” of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage
+in a struggle, so that he would “never give up.”
+
+“No. You can't have your way,” he said. And then, obeying a significant
+motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
+husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
+darkened chamber. At the “old” house they had shared a room, but the
+architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had not known
+how to formulate an objection, although to both of them something seemed
+vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.
+
+Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
+aperture when he spoke.
+
+“Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door.”
+
+She came and sat by the bed. “I woke up thinkin' about it,” she
+explained. “And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
+be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
+so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
+goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like.”
+
+“You BET I ain't!” he grunted.
+
+“Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works,” she continued.
+“He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
+say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
+right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
+time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
+company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
+look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold
+o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all--and the rest
+of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do in
+that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold, and everything went off
+all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's
+got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right considerable
+of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such a large
+practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what
+he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
+amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You
+heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what
+Jim and Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't
+that exactly what he says?”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
+“Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
+true--what of it?”
+
+“Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.
+You know where he goes all the time--”
+
+“Oh, Lord, yes!” Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. “You
+better go back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute she'll let
+him, I suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it.”
+
+“WHY ain't there?” she urged. “I know better--there is, too! You wait
+and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest
+young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he
+is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it
+into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and
+chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll
+see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you--moony, no-'count young
+men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or something;
+and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings 'em right
+down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is
+Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister
+exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I know
+this is goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say
+that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be
+talkin' that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for
+him to live on. But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you
+want to hand him out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll
+want all the salary and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to
+keep gettin' more. That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes
+crazy to give things to! She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look
+nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the
+next. And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll
+be pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at
+the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their
+cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one. He
+says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now
+they're doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that
+unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o'
+stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice anything
+like that for himself. They've never asked him to a meal in the house,
+but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of innocent. Now I was
+thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly mentioned the girl's
+name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe if--”
+
+Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+“You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!”
+
+“Why am I?” she demanded, crossly. “Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?”
+
+“Because you are. There's nothin' in it.”
+
+“I'll bet you,” she said, rising--“I'll bet you he goes to church with
+her this morning. What you want to bet?”
+
+“Go back to bed,” he commanded. “I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+nothin' in it, I tell you.”
+
+She shook her head perplexedly. “You think because--because Jim was
+runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?”
+
+“No. Nothin' to do with it.”
+
+“Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?”
+
+“Yes, I do,” he grunted. “Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
+ain't had any yet!”
+
+“Well--” She went to the door, her expression downcast. “I thought
+maybe--but--” She coughed prefatorily. “Oh, papa, something else I
+wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night
+when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants
+to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants to
+say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to
+sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened.
+They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to
+feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's
+what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't
+disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all
+along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that
+foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought
+was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a
+good deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.
+You'll--you'll be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?”
+
+He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had
+pulled over his head.
+
+“What?” she said, timidly. “I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl
+all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?”
+
+He threw the coverlet off furiously. “I presume so!” he roared.
+
+She departed guiltily.
+
+But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to
+church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.
+Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's
+house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and
+they had no other. They meant to go to church.
+
+But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation
+as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and
+Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with
+Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other
+at this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled
+among groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this
+somewhat prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it,
+and they had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before
+they discovered their error. However, feeling that they might be
+embarrassingly late if they returned, they decided that a walk would
+make them as good. It was a windless winter morning, with an inch of
+crisp snow over the ground. So they walked, and for the most part they
+were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned back at noon,
+they began to be talkative again.
+
+“Mary,” said Bibbs, after a time, “am I a sleep-walker?”
+
+She laughed a little, then looked grave. “Does your father say you are?”
+
+“Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He
+has quite a list.”
+
+“You mustn't mind,” she said, gently. “He's been getting some pretty
+severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.
+I've always been sure he's very big.”
+
+“Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any
+consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow
+stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing.”
+
+“Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and
+his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see
+it--so great none of us could see it.”
+
+“No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--”
+
+“Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight,” she finished
+for him, cheerily.
+
+“Into the smoke,” said Bibbs. “Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the
+little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of
+soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well
+have thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have
+taken his chance of my whipping him for it if I could.”
+
+“IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+rhetorically? IS there?”
+
+“Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each. One
+landed since I mentioned the first.”
+
+She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
+entirely matter-of-course about it.
+
+An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary
+for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the
+soot. “There!” said the elderly wife. “You're always wrong when
+you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't
+honeymooners at all--they've been married for years. A blind man could
+see that.”
+
+
+“I wish I did know who threw that soot on you,” said Bibbs, looking up
+at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. “They arrest children for
+throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but--”
+
+“But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in
+the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make.
+I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year.
+Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have
+money to pay or none.”
+
+“Who is it gets the pay?” said Bibbs.
+
+“Not I!” she laughed.
+
+“Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some
+of the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to
+get.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, smiling to him, and nodding. “And you don't want it,
+and you don't need it.”
+
+“But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?” He had told her of his
+father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+picturesqueness of their setting forth. “You think I'm right?”
+
+“A thousand times!” she cried. “There aren't so many happy people in
+this world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy. If
+it's a dream--keep it!”
+
+“The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as
+I never hated the shop!” he said. “I hate it! And the city itself, the
+city that the money shuffle has made--just look at it! Look at it in
+winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the
+ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting
+dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the
+unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise
+aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and
+noise MEAN--that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but
+they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind embryo of a spirit, not
+yet a soul--oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense! Oughtn't it
+all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I could--I'd
+want to help the other fellow to keep up with me.”
+
+“I read something the other day and remembered it for you,” said Mary.
+“It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint:
+'In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of
+a great city, full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers
+walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths of
+a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide open,
+letting in a space of green field and cornfield in harvest; and all
+round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from a
+little walled graveyard.”
+
+“And if I painted,” Bibbs returned, “I'd paint a lady walking in the
+street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile
+life--children being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying
+to get richer, and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows
+clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and
+slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a
+great rain of swirling soot--” He paused, adding, thoughtfully: “And yet
+I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were
+your brother--the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for
+you. Still, Edith never--”
+
+“Didn't she?” said Mary, as he paused again.
+
+“No. And I--” He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were
+passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. “Mary, our walk's
+almost over.”
+
+She looked as blank. “So it is, Bibbs.”
+
+They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly
+to a stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with
+Sibyl, who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her
+illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not
+taking his arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary
+and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary
+gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+
+“Mary,” he said, “you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?”
+
+“No, Bibbs.” And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him
+instantly unreasonably happy.
+
+“I know you want to go in--” he began.
+
+“No. I don't want to.”
+
+“I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I
+just wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning,
+grumbling about soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think
+it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.
+And--I don't know just why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd
+always remember. And you,” he added, falteringly, “you look so--so
+beautiful to-day!”
+
+“It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs.”
+
+“Mary, will you tell me something?” he asked.
+
+“I think I will.”
+
+“It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them
+ever just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much
+colder, you don't--you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?”
+
+Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
+“Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+questions?”
+
+“Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?”
+
+“Because I found I'd be warmer without them!” She caught his hand
+quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into
+the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative
+warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual
+“living-room” of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed.
+Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers,
+business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon
+bric-a-brac or crocheting--when he was at home, and not abed or eating,
+he was in the library.
+
+He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the
+far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he
+exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest,
+as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his
+Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp,
+was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations
+was his keeping his hand in his sling.
+
+Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking
+at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were
+nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.
+There was a deadly silence.
+
+But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she
+was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil
+them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something
+committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for
+that.
+
+“Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to
+me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the
+way I acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that
+night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it
+will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson;
+and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a
+daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask
+you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings
+toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life.
+I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return
+for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a
+good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not
+to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur
+again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to
+excuse it this time.”
+
+He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
+agitation of her hands within the muff.
+
+“All right,” he said at last.
+
+She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
+heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+
+“Thank you,” she said. “There's something else--about something
+different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it,
+too.”
+
+“She's up-stairs in her room,” said Sheridan. “Roscoe--”
+
+Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and
+begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived
+the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+
+“No, let me go,” she said. “I want to speak to her a minute first,
+anyway.”
+
+And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
+Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
+room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for
+bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed
+her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with
+the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her own
+experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by words
+they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl
+intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not
+hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
+in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
+say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
+girl who had affronted her.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's
+mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of
+emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) “have
+a fit right there.” She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting
+a touch to her hair before a mirror.
+
+“I was just coming down,” she said, as the door opened.
+
+“Yes, he wants you to,” said Sibyl. “It's all right, mother Sheridan.
+He's forgiven me.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
+daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+
+“And I hope Edith will be happy,” Sibyl added, inciting more
+applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+
+“Yes, yes,” murmured the good woman. “We mustn't make the worst of
+things.”
+
+“Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear
+it, too,” said Sibyl. “We better go down, mother Sheridan.”
+
+She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came
+to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. “I want to tell you
+about it first,” she said, abruptly. “It isn't a secret, of course, in
+any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the
+whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT
+for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.
+But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help
+me to see I got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it
+except the good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the
+other, of course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I
+did that night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help
+the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way.
+Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from
+being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of
+and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than
+so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as
+Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
+you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way.”
+
+Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
+wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
+write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun
+the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to
+fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
+to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the
+beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
+dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor. For he had
+his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he
+could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to
+the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of
+home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
+His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced
+the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He
+could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when
+he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and
+on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least
+he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate
+vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself,
+but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could
+think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on,
+he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+
+“I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but
+this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
+all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
+little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
+been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he
+could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about
+it, mother Sheridan?”
+
+“Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while
+back,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “And now they're doin' the cookin', too.”
+
+Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. “I hope they find
+something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”
+
+Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy--of
+all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
+would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
+happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
+heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to
+him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically--and that
+something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent,
+but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
+
+“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said
+Sibyl, sharply. “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!
+They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and
+Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took
+the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs.
+Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the
+room.
+
+“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+“It's the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly. “Oh, of course we were all
+crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up
+here, and we thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read
+her! Her family were down and out when it came to money--and they had to
+go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
+she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around
+to Jim--and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
+if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as
+I stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well--when Jim was
+left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
+Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
+but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
+him.”
+
+The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
+in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
+with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+
+“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn't to be allowed to go
+on. It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made
+such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of!
+I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd
+have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall
+in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he
+WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like
+men with some GO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever
+looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd
+tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got
+desperate that she--”
+
+Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door.
+He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
+screamed.
+
+“Oh, good heavens!” cried Sibyl. “Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--”
+ She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. “Come
+on, mother Sheridan!” she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
+obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: “Good gracious! Oh,
+I wouldn't--too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
+feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But,
+good heavens--”
+
+She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of
+the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+following; he had gone back into his room.
+
+“He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan. “I--I
+wish--”
+
+“Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl. “I
+shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
+Come on!”
+
+And completing their descent to the library, the two made their
+appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and
+truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks,
+and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had
+overheard them.
+
+“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn
+out for the very best that he did hear--just that way. Don't you think
+so, father Sheridan?”
+
+He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top
+of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no
+sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
+character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom
+she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
+
+“I'm sure it was all for the best,” she said. “It's over now, and
+he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just
+hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I
+haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the
+family.”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
+the stairway. “I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin',” she said. “He
+did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him
+that was--I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did.
+He looked--so queer. It was like you'd--” She called down the hall,
+“George!”
+
+“Yes'm?”
+
+“Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?”
+
+“Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil'
+him nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.” He departed.
+
+“What do you expect he wants a fire for?” she asked, turning toward her
+husband. “The house is warm as can be, I do wish I--”
+
+“Oh, quit frettin'!” said Sheridan.
+
+“Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
+meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
+harm if--”
+
+“Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
+family? Why, she--”
+
+“I don't know, I don't know,” the troubled woman quavered. “If he liked
+her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't
+ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there
+was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If
+she wants to marry him--”
+
+Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don't!” he said.
+“You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a
+girl.”
+
+“But, father Sheridan, didn't she--”
+
+He cut her short. “That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
+wrong. So do you, mamma.”
+
+Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--”
+
+“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
+down cold.”
+
+“But that's impossi--”
+
+“It's not. I KNOW she did.”
+
+Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+
+“And YOU needn't worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won't have
+any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
+D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take
+JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
+but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
+think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at
+me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
+on. There's nothin' in it--and I've got the same old fight with him on
+my hands I've had all his life--and the Lord knows what he won't do
+to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
+stubborn, but--”
+
+“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That's his
+step--he's comin' down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if
+she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I--I wonder--” she said, almost in a
+whisper--“I wonder what he's goin'--to do.”
+
+Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose,
+frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved
+toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as
+the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+
+Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
+slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
+father. Then he came and stood before him.
+
+“I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,” he said, gently. “You
+won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.”
+
+Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs
+had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he
+went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went
+nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had
+gone from the house.
+
+Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her
+mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been
+done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
+room.
+
+The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
+large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
+note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given
+up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and that he had
+given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have
+done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a
+little before she went down-stairs.
+
+So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of
+passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face;
+a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual
+anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a
+perambulator containing the third--and all three were newly cleaned,
+Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
+
+“How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?” the husband
+whispered. “He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now.”
+
+The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. “Well, I don't know,” she returned.
+“He looks to me like he had his own troubles.”
+
+“I expect he has, like anybody else,” said the young husband, “but I
+guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money.”
+
+“Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed
+as the Sheridans. You can't tell.” She glanced back at Bibbs, who had
+turned north. “He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.”
+
+“So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,” said the young
+husband, with bitter admiration.
+
+Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at
+the door.
+
+“Bibbs!” she cried. “What is the matter? I saw something was terribly
+wrong when I--You look--” She paused, and he came in, not lifting his
+eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with
+his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. “Ah, poor boy!” she said,
+with a gesture of understanding and pity. “I know what it is!”
+
+He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a
+chair.
+
+“You needn't tell me,” she said. “They've made you give up. Your
+father's won--you're going to do what he wants. You've given up.”
+
+Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+
+She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. “Bibbs,”
+ she said. “I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be
+glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come
+because you were happy.” She did not speak again for a little while;
+then she said: “Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about it? Do you want
+to?”
+
+Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her
+a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood
+his words.
+
+“Mary,” he said, “could you marry me?”
+
+“What did you say, Bibbs?” she asked, quietly.
+
+His tone and attitude did not change. “Will you marry me?”
+
+Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
+She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
+in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
+strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each other.
+At last she said:
+
+“What made you say that?”
+
+He did not answer.
+
+“Bibbs, look at me!” Her voice was loud and clear. “What made you say
+that? Look at me!”
+
+He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+
+“What was it that made you?” she said. “I want you to tell me.”
+
+She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+intensity of wonder. “You've given up--to your father,” she said,
+slowly, “and then you came to ask me--” She broke off. “Bibbs, do you
+want me to marry you?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, just audibly.
+
+“No!” she cried. “You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it
+that's happened?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Wait,” she said. “Let me think. It's something that happened since our
+walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
+that--” She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and
+dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
+House.
+
+Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, “I do--I do want you
+to--marry me, if--if--you could.”
+
+She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. “Bibbs, do you--” Her
+voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. “Do you think
+I'm--in love with you?”
+
+“No,” he said.
+
+Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it
+did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it.
+“Why?”
+
+“I've had nothing but dreams,” Bibbs said, desolately, “but they weren't
+like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me.” He smiled faintly,
+though still he did not look at Mary. “And when I first came home Edith
+told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
+meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed
+either of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as
+particularly captivating!”
+
+Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. “Those two!” she
+exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: “Lamhorn!
+That's like them!” She turned away, went to the bare little black
+mantel, and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: “WHEN did Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?”
+
+“To-day.”
+
+Mary drew a deep breath. “I think I'm beginning to understand--a
+little.” She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and
+in her voice. “Answer me once more,” she said. “Bibbs, do you know now
+why I stopped wearing my furs?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?”
+
+“I--I heard her say--”
+
+“I think I know what happened, now.” Mary's breath came fast and her
+voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. “You 'heard her say' more than that.
+You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I
+tried first to marry your brother--and then--” But now she faltered, and
+it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. “And
+then--that I tried to marry--you! You 'heard her say' that--and you
+believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for
+you--but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you--
+And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you--except
+for my 'extremity'--you took your father's offer and then came to ask
+me--to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you--”
+
+Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon
+the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+
+“Mary, Mary!” he cried, helplessly. “Oh NO--you--you don't understand.”
+
+“I do, though!” she sobbed. “I do!”
+
+He came and stood beside her. “You kill me!” he said. “I can't make it
+plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
+always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent--I did nothing
+but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my
+idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful
+being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You
+seemed to lean down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never
+dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need
+anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that
+you--”
+
+“You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money,” she
+sobbed. “And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I
+had--”
+
+“No!” he said, quickly. “I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing
+for me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except
+generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!” he cried,
+despairingly.
+
+“Wait!” She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously,
+like a child. “Help me up, Bibbs.” Then, when she was once more upon her
+feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but
+reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had
+not meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so
+faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered
+them no more.
+
+“Let me tell you what you want to tell me,” she said. “You can't,
+because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me
+and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You
+didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--”
+
+“Never! Never for an instant!”
+
+“You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--”
+
+“No, no, no!”
+
+“I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I
+cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
+But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you
+because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--”
+
+“Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--”
+
+“Were desperately poor,” she said. “You can't even say that! Bibbs, it
+was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!” And she sank
+down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
+
+“Mary,” he groaned, “I didn't know you COULD cry!”
+
+“Listen,” she said. “Listen till I get through--I want you to
+understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had
+been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was
+plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the
+town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well, just about the time
+your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything.
+People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in
+comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't
+anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything.
+You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder
+myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the
+daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a
+wave of the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be
+either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not
+to marry. The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all
+there--and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how
+to be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and
+I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been
+raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I
+did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your
+brother I had meant to fascinate him and that I was not in love with
+him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I
+did mean to marry him. I had never cared for anybody, and I thought
+it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited
+fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to
+marry him I never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage
+is--it's sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop
+me; it was your sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was
+horrible, and she put what I was doing into such horrible words--and
+they were the truth--oh! I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable
+compact with me--and I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with
+her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I
+WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a
+quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I
+said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it.
+That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know
+what I did--and you know--ME!” She pressed her clenched hands tightly
+against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
+
+Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. “Couldn't
+you--Isn't there--Won't you--” he stammered. “Mary, I'm going with
+father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without--”
+
+She gave a choked little laugh.
+
+“You gave me something to live for,” he said. “You kept me alive, I
+think--and I've hurt you like this!”
+
+“Not you--oh no!”
+
+“You could forgive me, Mary?”
+
+“Oh, a thousand times!” Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture,
+and just touched his own for an instant. “But there's nothing to
+forgive.”
+
+“And you can't--you can't--”
+
+“Can't what, Bibbs?”
+
+“You couldn't--”
+
+“Marry you?” she said for him.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“No, no, no!” She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she
+did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a
+little. “I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?”
+
+“Mary--”
+
+“No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--”
+
+“MARY--”
+
+“Never, never, never!” she cried, in a passion of tears. “You mustn't
+come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!”
+
+Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
+got himself to the door and out of the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to
+the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but
+so that the others might hear.
+
+“When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would
+be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,” he said. “I
+thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me.
+It proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
+refused.”
+
+And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
+had entered it.
+
+“He's SO queer!” Mrs. Sheridan gasped. “Who on earth would thought of
+his doin' THAT?”
+
+“I told you,” said her husband, grimly.
+
+“You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--”
+
+“I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+didn't I?”
+
+Sibyl was altogether taken aback. “Do you supose it's true? Do you
+suppose she WOULDN'T?”
+
+“He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed
+up fine with his girl,” said Sheridan. “Not to me, he didn't!”
+
+“But why would--”
+
+“I told you,” he interrupted, angrily, “she ain't that kind of a girl!
+If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with,
+though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about
+my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him,
+and it was a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he
+never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt.”
+
+“I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,” said
+Roscoe. “Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I was waiting
+for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was
+just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
+and called me.”
+
+Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down,
+for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they
+were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after
+some further fragmentary discourse--visibly elated. After all, the
+guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the
+less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a
+contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe
+crossed the street.
+
+When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
+she said, uneasily, “Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
+about that letter?”
+
+“I don't know,” he answered, walking moodily to the window. “I been
+thinkin' about it.” He came to a decision. “I reckon I will.” And he
+went up to Bibbs's room.
+
+“Well, you goin' back on what you said?” he inquired, brusquely, as he
+opened the door. “You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs.
+
+“Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't
+know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the
+Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!” Sheridan
+was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
+unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
+abuse went on in spite of him. “I can't say I expect much of you--not
+from the way you always been, up to now--unless you turn over a new
+leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do
+THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the
+whole office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any,
+you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.”
+
+“Yes--I'll try.”
+
+“You better, if it's in you!” Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
+always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
+bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
+angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
+like a drudge-driver. “You better come down there with your mind made
+up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you,
+or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get
+ahead--and you better set it down in your books--the way to get ahead is
+to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But
+you don't know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand
+around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home
+and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty
+different proposition now, and if you're worth your salt--and you never
+showed any signs of it yet--not any signs that stuck out enough to bang
+somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice--well, I want
+to say, right here and now--and you better listen, because I want to say
+just what I DO say. I say--”
+
+He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a
+hopeless blank.
+
+Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look. “Yes, father; I'm
+listening.”
+
+“That's all,” said Sheridan, frowning heavily. “That's all I came to
+say, and you better see't you remember it!”
+
+He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him
+with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure.
+He stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more.
+Then abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead
+liberally covered with perspiration.
+
+“Look here,” he said, crossly. “That girl over yonder wrote Jim a
+letter--”
+
+“I know,” said Bibbs. “She told me.”
+
+“Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--” The door
+closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence
+was nevertheless audible--“if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either.”
+
+And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin'
+and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to
+inquire what Bibbs “said,” but after a second thought she decided not
+to speak at all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal
+communication was given over between them for the rest of that
+afternoon.
+
+Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next
+morning, and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she
+worried about what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She
+felt that everything depended on how Bibbs “took hold,” and upon her
+husband's return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity
+to ask him how things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody
+tell by the first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right
+at the start and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair
+the first day or so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as
+it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe
+had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position
+in the Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
+
+But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed
+remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small
+restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and
+she took this to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon
+as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative after
+reading his paper.
+
+She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of
+business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and
+only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.
+Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on the
+first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an opinion
+which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
+
+“I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+father,” he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. “Abercrombie
+agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him.”
+
+“You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen,” Sheridan returned, “but
+you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof
+fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather
+conditions. I want that building put just the way Jim planned it.”
+
+“You can't have it,” said Bibbs. “You can't, because Jim planned for the
+building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one--the one that
+didn't fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage.
+It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both buildings
+down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and cheapest
+in the long run for that type.”
+
+Sheridan looked sarcastic. “Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?”
+
+“Rent,” Bibbs returned, promptly. “We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter
+your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount of
+stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until
+we could patch up those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on
+it for us this morning.”
+
+Sheridan's expression was queer. “Look here!” he said, sharply. “Did you
+go and do that without consulting me?”
+
+“It didn't cost anything,” said Bibbs. “It's only until to-morrow
+afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then.”
+
+“Oh, you did?” Sheridan's tone was sardonic. “Well, just suppose you
+couldn't convince me.”
+
+“I can, though--and I intend to,” said Bibbs, quietly. “I don't think
+you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up.”
+
+“Now, see here,” said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; “suppose I had my
+mind set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was--well,
+kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right.”
+
+Bibbs looked at him compassionately. “I'm sorry if you have a sentiment
+about it, father,” he said. “But whether you have or not can't make a
+difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and
+that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want
+one that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend
+sentiment in this particular kind of affair.”
+
+“Oh, you don't?”
+
+“No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it.”
+
+Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. “Why are you 'sorry'?” he asked,
+curiously.
+
+“Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon,” said Bibbs,
+“and I had him condemn both those buildings.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid you'd
+see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them--they've got to come
+down now.”
+
+Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+Finally he said, “How long did they give you on that option to convince
+me?”
+
+“Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+“All right,” said Sheridan, not relaxing. “I'm convinced.”
+
+Bibbs jumped up. “I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch
+agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle
+it this evening.”
+
+Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that
+startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything
+resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound--although it was grim and
+dry--bore that resemblance.
+
+She brightened eagerly. “Looks like he was startin' right well don't it,
+papa?”
+
+“Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I
+wanted--that's why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat
+before we even started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't
+reasonably defend SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option
+for Us'! 'Stuff piled up on Us'!”
+
+There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. “I don't just like the way
+he looks, though, papa.”
+
+“Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you
+start to frettin' about IT!”
+
+“No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--”
+
+“I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then,” said
+Sheridan. “You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I
+expect.”
+
+“Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And
+he'd begun to fill out some, but--”
+
+Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
+her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
+still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. “That's the
+way it is with you, mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you
+don't another!”
+
+“No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he
+begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some
+way.”
+
+“Yes, he may 'a' lost something,” said Sheridan. “I expect he's lost a
+whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
+poetry and--”
+
+“No,” his wife persisted. “I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
+when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
+readin'.”
+
+“Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?”
+
+“He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+believe.”
+
+“Look, here!” said Sheridan. “Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there
+the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did
+one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had
+to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over
+there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty
+fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get
+over worries like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin'
+to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me,
+mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a
+year from now I'll bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as
+poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could
+'think'! What he meant was, think about something useless. Well, I guess
+he's keepin' his mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes,
+sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but
+it certainly did the business.” He patted his wife's shoulder again, and
+then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+
+“Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But
+no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness,
+and the changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The
+priests wore that “settish” look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning
+to develop about his mouth and eyes--a wary look which she could not
+define, but it comes with service at the temple; and it was the more
+marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to the necessities of that
+service.
+
+He did as little “useless” thinking as possible, giving himself no time
+for it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work
+when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his
+work. But he did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people
+were not allowed to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of
+hideous uproar--they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the
+thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they
+could walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or
+screeching, as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with
+business; though street musicians were not tolerated, being considered
+a nuisance and an interference. A man or woman who went singing for
+pleasure through the streets--like a crazy Neopolitan--would have been
+stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen
+is allowed to do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The
+streets were dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing!
+and the Motor Federation issued public warnings declaring that the
+pedestrian's life was in his own hands, and giving directions how to
+proceed with the least peril. However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to
+sing in the streets, or anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy
+that, for the start, at least, was bitter, and there was no song left in
+him.
+
+He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among
+them he found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period
+of neighborliness, “pioneer stock,” usually; and there were
+men--particularly among the merchants and manufacturers--“so honest they
+leaned backward”; reputations sometimes attested by stories of heroic
+sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some instances of generosity
+even nobler. Here and there, too, were book-men, in their little
+leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men. And these, with the others,
+worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake and
+for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the
+beneficence and glory of their god.
+
+To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in
+life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the
+dangerous illness of a wife or child. In the way of “relaxation” some of
+the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took “shows”--a mixture
+of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some took
+an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards; and some took
+nothing. The high priests were vigilant to watch that no “relaxation”
+ should affect the service. When a man attended to anything outside his
+business, eyes were upon him; his credit was in danger--that is, his
+life was in danger. And the old priests were as ardent as the young
+ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as the thousand; seventy was
+as busy as seventeen. They strove mightily against one another, and
+the old priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the most
+dangerous. Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these--he must wear
+a thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+
+And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves
+and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but
+these were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had
+a good guide to point them out to him. They were useful sometimes,
+he learned, and many of them served as go-betweens in matters where
+business must touch politics. He learned also how breweries and
+“traction” companies and banks and other institutions fought one another
+for the political control of the city. The newspapers, he discovered,
+had lost their ancient political influence, especially with the knowing,
+who looked upon them with a skeptical humor, believing the journals
+either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else striving to
+forward the personal ambitions of their owners. The control of the city
+lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of
+negroes gin-money, and by other largesses. The revenues of the people
+were then distributed as fairly as possible among a great number of men
+who had assisted the winning side. Names and titles of offices went with
+many of the prizes, and most of these title-holders were expected to
+present a busy appearance at times; and, indeed, some among them did
+work honestly and faithfully.
+
+Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known
+and customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment
+of forgetting that he was done with writing--he thought that if he had
+known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation
+of them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and
+sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it--it was a permeation; the
+newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning to
+stammer a few words of the local language. Everywhere the people shouted
+of the power, the size, the riches, and the growth of their city. Not
+only that, they said that the people of their city were the greatest,
+the “finest,” the strongest, the Biggest people on earth. They cited no
+authorities, and felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus
+celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that
+there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and
+supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the
+critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him,
+for they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with
+them, harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them.
+For the voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+
+
+Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs,
+and the door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had
+established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was
+alone, Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his
+hand.
+
+“Bibbs,” he said, “I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when
+I do I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have you been
+buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?”
+
+Bibbs leaned back from his desk. “For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+dollars. That's all it cost.”
+
+“Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to
+know that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader'n Adam's cat!”
+
+“It might be worth something--some day.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“It mightn't be so dead--not if we went into it,” said Bibbs, coolly.
+
+“Oh!” Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, “Who'd you buy it
+from?”
+
+“A broker--Fansmith.”
+
+“Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?”
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?”
+
+“It belonged to Mr. Vertrees,” said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to
+his desk.
+
+“So!” Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. “Excuse me,” he said.
+“Your business.” And he went back to his own room. But presently he
+looked in again.
+
+“I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day”--he was shuffling
+himself into his overcoat--“because I just thought I'd go up to the
+house and get THIS over with mamma.” He glanced apologetically toward
+his right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The
+bandages had been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three
+fingers--the forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated.
+“She's bound to make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than
+her dinner. I'll be back about two.”
+
+But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately
+that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from
+the lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his
+overcoat in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+
+“What's the matter, papa?” she asked, quickly. “Has anything gone wrong?
+You ain't sick?”
+
+“Me!” He laughed loudly. “Me SICK?”
+
+“You had lunch?”
+
+“Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffee, though.”
+
+She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn
+she said querulously, “I just know there's something wrong.”
+
+“Nothin' in the world,” he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the
+head of the table. “I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you,
+that's all. It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's,
+anyhow.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--”
+
+“To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?”
+
+“Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. “I guess it's time you had him,
+too. I KNEW Bibbs--”
+
+“Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances
+with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole
+Gurney had a talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on
+me what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then
+I thought he must want to get something out o' me, he got so
+flattering--for a minute! 'Bibbs couldn't help havin' business brains,'
+he says, 'bein' YOUR son. Don't be surprised,' he says--'don't be
+surprised at his makin' a success,' he says. 'He couldn't get over his
+heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business success--once you got him
+into it. It's in his blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH
+brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but
+it does need a special KIND o' brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire.
+I mean,' he says, 'when a man's given a start. If nobody gives him a
+start, why, course he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains.
+The only miracle about Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind
+o' brains--the brains you made him quit usin' and throw away.'”
+
+“But what'd he say about his health?” Mrs. Sheridan demanded,
+impatiently, as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband.
+Sheridan helped himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+
+“I'm comin' to that,” he returned, placidly. “See how easy I manage this
+cup with my left hand, mamma?”
+
+“You been doin' that all winter. What did--”
+
+“It's wonderful,” he interrupted, admiringly, “what a fellow can do with
+his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could
+with my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I
+believe I RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write,
+anyway--just the signature. Rest's all dictatin'.” He blew across the
+top of the cup unctuously. “Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole
+Gurney says he believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o'
+mind he was in about the machine-shop--that is, if he could some way get
+to feelin' about business the way he felt about the shop--not the poetry
+and writin' part, but--” He paused, supplementing his remarks with a
+motion of his head toward the old house next door. “He says Bibbs
+is older and harder'n what he was when he broke down that time, and
+besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was then--and I should
+say he AIN'T! I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age that's any wider
+awake! But he says Bibbs's health never need bother us again if--”
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. “I don't see any help THAT way. You know
+yourself she wouldn't have Jim.”
+
+“Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him
+LOOK at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that
+she won't let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy,
+and some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the
+Bible, but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o' thinkin' that if
+she'd let him come back and set around with her an evening or two
+sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I just thought I'd see
+what YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk about it to Bibbs
+himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but I thought maybe you
+could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a
+little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land
+lays, and ask her--”
+
+“ME!” Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. “No.” She shook
+her head decidedly. “It wouldn't do any good.”
+
+“You won't try it?”
+
+“I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
+believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T--and,
+what's more, it'd only make things worse. If people find out you're
+runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as
+much for you as if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and
+I couldn't do it if it was.”
+
+He sighed with resignation. “All right, mamma. That's all.” Then, in a
+livelier tone, he said: “Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more.”
+
+“Why, that's splendid, papa!” she cried, beaming. “I was afraid--Let's
+see.”
+
+She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket.
+“Wait a minute,” he said, smiling. “Now it may give you just a teeny bit
+of a shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl
+came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'--it was the day
+after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's telegram came--”
+
+“Let me see your hand!” she cried.
+
+“Now wait!” he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+“The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning,
+when you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd told
+me to, you see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything.” And he held
+out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. “You see, these days when
+it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple o'--”
+
+He had to jump for her--she went over backward. For the second time in
+her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own
+room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat
+that the “fuss” she was making irked him far more than his physical
+loss. He permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his
+office, but when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in
+attendance to await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he
+himself proceeded on foot.
+
+Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as
+manna in the wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did
+not particularly question. The broker informed him that “parties were
+interested in getting hold of the stock,” and that later there might
+be a possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his
+client. It might go “quite a ways up” within a year or so, he said, and
+he advised “sitting tight” with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.
+
+He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and
+his wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her
+piano, and as for furs--spring was on the way, she said. But they paid
+the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook
+once more. It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and
+presently assured him that Miss Vertrees would “be down.”
+
+He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed
+and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the
+cook. She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second,
+but it vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes
+by a soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+
+“Don't be surprised,” he said. “Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+business I looked in here. It'll only take a minute, I expect.”
+
+“I'm sorry,” said Mary. “I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors.”
+
+He chuckled. “Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so--lately.”
+
+“You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?”
+
+“I guess I could manage that much.” And they sat down, facing each other
+and not far apart.
+
+“Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly,” he said, more
+gravely. “Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed
+to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it
+myself and explain how I happened to have it. It's this--this letter you
+wrote my boy.” He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left hand,
+and she took it gently from him. “It was in his mail, after he was hurt.
+You knew he never got it, I expect.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.
+
+He sighed. “I'm glad he didn't. Not,” he added, quickly--“not but what
+you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other way
+when it came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you--you
+were above-board all through.”
+
+Mary said, “Thank you,” almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed
+low.
+
+“You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all
+his mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it
+all--once I got started.”
+
+“I'm glad you did.”
+
+“Well”--he leaned forward as if to rise--“I guess that's about all. I
+just thought you ought to have it.”
+
+“Thank you for bringing it.”
+
+He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might
+have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this
+glance, and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+
+“Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office,” he said, rising
+desperately. “I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock,
+and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind
+time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days--with
+THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!”
+
+Mary rose with him. “I've always heard YOU were the hard driver.”
+
+He guffawed derisively. “Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
+couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end
+o' the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some
+day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is--once he
+goes AT a thing!”
+
+“No,” she smiled. “I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard--”
+
+He laughed, looking away from her. “It's just my way o' speakin' o' that
+boy o' mine, Bibbs.”
+
+He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, “How
+IS Bibbs?” but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the
+silence became embarrassing.
+
+“Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there,” he said, at last. “He
+might worry.”
+
+“Good-by--and thank you,” said Mary.
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For the letter.”
+
+“Oh,” he said, blankly. “You're welcome. Good-by.”
+
+Mary put out her hand. “Good-by.”
+
+“You'll have to excuse my left hand,” he said. “I had a little accident
+to the other one.”
+
+She gave a pitying cry as she saw. “Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!”
+
+“Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.” He laughed
+jovially. “Did anybody tell you how it happened?”
+
+“I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how.”
+
+“It was this way,” he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down
+again. “You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the
+youngest o' my boys--the one that used to come to see you sometimes,
+after Jim--that is, I mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my partner;
+and the truth is that's what it's just about goin' to amount to, one o'
+these days--if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I expect, I
+had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd kind o'
+sneak in there and see how he was gettin' along. Take a doctor with me
+sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole Doc
+Gurney--I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy--”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook
+to show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I
+wouldn't listen, and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand
+hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and
+I didn't. Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS
+hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical
+measures with me. He's a right good doctor, too. Don't you think so,
+Miss Vertrees?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Yes, he is so!” Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and
+gossip with all day on his hands. “Take him on Bibbs's case. I was
+talkin' about Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to
+hear the way ole Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a
+friend as he is doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if
+he was in the family. He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and
+he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if--well, this is
+what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees--honest it
+would!” He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing
+straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and--visibly--she
+was breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing
+furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went
+on, determined now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his
+voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still
+maintained a tone which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only
+a joke he shared with her. “Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed!
+Why, that ole man thinks YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to
+blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel like startin' out
+to whip somebody! He's actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to
+gettin' better while he worked over there at the shop because you kept
+him cheered up and feelin' good. And he says if you could manage to
+just stand him hangin' around a little--maybe not much, but just
+SOMEtimes--again, he believed it'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good.
+'Course, that's only what the doctor said. Me, I don't know anything
+about that; but I can say this much--I never saw any such a MENTAL
+improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect
+you'd find him a good deal more entertaining than what he used to
+be--and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing to suggest after the
+way he piled in over here that day to ask you to stand up before the
+preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc GURNEY, he's got you on his
+brain so bad--”
+
+Mary jumped. “Mr. Sheridan!” she exclaimed.
+
+He sighed profoundly. “There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I
+didn't--”
+
+“No, no, no!” she cried. “But I don't understand--and I think you don't.
+What is it you want me to do?”
+
+He sighed again, but this time with relief. “Well, well!” he said.
+“You're right. It'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could
+with you, all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you
+sometimes, once more. Could you?”
+
+“You don't understand.” She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+gesture. “Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make
+your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and
+asked me to marry him--because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him
+any more,” she cried in distress. “I CAN'T!”
+
+Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You mean because he thought
+that about you?”
+
+“No, no! What he thought was TRUE!”
+
+“Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of you--”
+ The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue; he seemed
+to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he
+bravely repeated them. “You mean he thought so much of you that you just
+couldn't stand him around?”
+
+“NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+respected me--too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and
+he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he
+knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,” she said. “But the cheap,
+bad things one has done seem always to come back--they wait, and pull
+you down when you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he
+wasn't 'in love' with me at all.”
+
+“He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to
+do--it was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just
+threw it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never
+would--just for you. And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that
+must think quite a heap o' the girl he does it for! You say it was only
+because he was sorry, but let me tell you there's only ONE girl he could
+feel THAT sorry for! Yes, sir!”
+
+“No, no,” she said. “Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything
+for anybody.”
+
+Sheridan grinned. “Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays,” he
+said. “For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in
+'sentiment in business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he
+wanted was, just plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was
+afraid his thinkin' so much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him--the
+way it does sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that
+ain't the trouble.” He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. “Now
+here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell you--because you see things
+easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to
+make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for the sake o'
+my business and on his own account, too--and I expect you got some idea
+how it hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in
+half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way! But there isn't anything
+in it to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead
+with dust in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's
+got nothin' to work FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your
+friendship, and I believe--honest--that's what hurt him the worst. Now
+you said we'd talk plain. Why can't you let him come back?”
+
+She covered her face desperately with her hands. “I can't!”
+
+He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+
+“Well, I mustn't press you,” he said, gently.
+
+At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face.
+“Ah! He was only sorry for me!”
+
+He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty,
+and it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear
+that even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a
+change came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
+
+“Don't! Don't” she cried. “You mustn't--”
+
+“I won't tell him,” said Sheridan, from the doorway. “I won't tell
+anybody anything!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
+sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
+liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon
+their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was
+visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke
+than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more
+noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker in spite of that. The
+traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent--they
+retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross
+the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more
+frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
+motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
+nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves
+were killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main
+trouble was that they could not make the citizens realize that it was
+actually and mortally perilous to go about their city. It was strange,
+for there were probably no citizens of any length of residence who had
+not personally known either some one who had been killed or injured in
+an accident, or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others.
+And yet, perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of
+the faces--the people had something on their minds; they could not stop
+to bother about dirt and danger.
+
+Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
+with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
+department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
+Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
+some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
+into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy
+and repellent; it had nothing but strength and size--but in that
+consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty.
+Sheridan had made some of the things he said emphatic enough to remain
+with her. She went over and over them--and they began to seem true:
+“Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!” “Gurney says he's got you
+on his brain so bad--” The man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.
+The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+
+She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the
+passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from
+the crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore
+black; one was tall and broad and thick, and the other was taller, but
+noticeably slender. And Mary caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and
+his father. They did not see her, and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's
+mellow voice, which had taken a crisper ring: “Sixty-eight thousand
+dollars? Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!” It startled her queerly,
+and as there was a glimpse of his profile she saw for the first time a
+resemblance to his father.
+
+She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead
+of his father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of
+a truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country
+women who were in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs,
+and shoved backward upon him violently. To extricate himself from them
+he stepped back, directly in front of a moving trolley-car--no place for
+absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still absorbed in thoughts concerned
+with what he had been saying to his father. There were shrieks and
+yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and then Mary saw the heavy figure
+of Sheridan plunge straight forward in front of the car. With
+absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a
+football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed
+that they both went down together. But that was all she could
+see--automobiles, trucks, and wagons closed in between. She made out
+that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and she saw a policeman breaking
+his way through the instantly condensing crowd, while the traffic came
+to a standstill, and people stood up in automobiles or climbed upon
+the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a chance of seeing anything
+horrible.
+
+Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to
+help the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again.
+The crowd became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon the
+ground, and no ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by
+the clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+
+“What IS the matter, lady?”
+
+“Where are they?” Mary cried.
+
+“Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!”
+
+“His SON--”
+
+“Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him--oh, he's not bad
+off, I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The
+fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook
+up. They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse
+me, lady.”
+
+Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+ascending. “Whisk-broom up in the office,” Sheridan was saying. “You got
+to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got
+any call to blow, though--because I tried to cross after you did. That's
+how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out
+after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand
+flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather
+take it that way, and I don't know but--”
+
+“No,” said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; “he won't get
+it. Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you
+in five minutes.” He followed his father into the office anteroom--and
+convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color,
+Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.
+
+He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his
+side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he
+wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again.
+He knew that his father had not “happened” to run into him; he knew that
+Sheridan had instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own
+life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir. Bibbs
+had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan,
+just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside--as of no importance,
+since all was well--reverting immediately to business.
+
+Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he
+had never perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and
+indomitable--and lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's
+very self; laughing at the lightning and at wounds and mutilation;
+conquering, irresistible--and blindly noble. For the first time in his
+life Bibbs began to understand the meaning of being truly this man's
+son.
+
+He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said,
+Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He
+had given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary
+Vertrees in her need. And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking
+how he had gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him--with his
+head on his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had
+not known her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his
+real awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein
+he dreamily celebrated the superiority of “friendship”! The sleep-walker
+had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a
+failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the
+sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for
+him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in
+that, though it was indeed no more than “dust in his mouth.” If there
+had been anything “to work for--”
+
+He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast,
+foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly
+against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam,
+while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings
+would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
+
+But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here,
+where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and
+how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had
+begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them
+that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity
+might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well,
+their posterity was here--and there was only turmoil. Where was the
+promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it
+had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the
+very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and
+sacrificing in turn--for what?
+
+The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in
+it--a broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like
+a titanic voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of
+the god, Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its
+servants.
+
+“Come and work!” it seemed to yell. “Come and work for Me, all men! By
+your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
+summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
+your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
+your hope of children I summon you!
+
+“You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
+Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
+You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
+worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
+children shall perish knowing no other god!”
+
+And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
+voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but
+the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
+hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of
+Bigness to some visitor from out-of-town.
+
+And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But
+with the old, old thought again, “What for?” Bibbs caught a glimmer of
+far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled
+and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
+conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served
+blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not
+he who had been in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired
+before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble
+in a day.
+
+Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
+some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. “Ugly I am,” it
+seemed to say to him, “but never forget that I AM a god!” And the voice
+grew in sonorousness and in dignity. “The highest should serve, but so
+long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man
+who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him,
+I should be beautiful!”
+
+Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
+the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
+figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
+disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
+with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still a
+little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that up
+over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his hands
+in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--
+
+It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
+
+He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
+inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
+violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
+been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
+kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.
+
+“Who?” he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
+
+“Mary.”
+
+He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: “IS IT?”
+
+There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+“Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--”
+
+“Yes--Mary?”
+
+“I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs.
+They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for
+myself.”
+
+“No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer it.
+He saved me.”
+
+“Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
+you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW.”
+
+“Mary--would you--have minded?” he said.
+
+There was a long interval before she answered.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then why--”
+
+“Yes, Bibbs?”
+
+“I don't know what to say,” he cried. “It's so wonderful to hear your
+voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything
+except that I AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?”
+
+“Yes, Bibbs!”
+
+“Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
+I--since then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like a man
+chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary. Mary, won't
+you--let me see you again--near? I think I could make you really forgive
+me--you'd have to--”
+
+“I DID--then.”
+
+“No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
+more.”
+
+“That wasn't the reason.” The voice was very low.
+
+“Mary,” he said, even more tremulously than before, “I can't--you
+COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--care?”
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“Mary?” he called, huskily. “If you mean THAT--you'd let me see
+you--wouldn't you?”
+
+And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but
+if it did, the words were, “Yes, Bibbs--dear.”
+
+But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so light,
+so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came from the
+air.
+
+Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining
+eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.
+
+Mary stood upon the threshold.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1098-0.txt or 1098-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/1098/
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/1098-0.zip b/old/1098-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d67ca22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098-0.zip
diff --git a/old/1098-h.zip b/old/1098-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e10b0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098-h.zip
diff --git a/old/1098-h/1098-h.htm b/old/1098-h/1098-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..296dbf8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098-h/1098-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,12735 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+div.blok {margin:2% 15% 2% 15%;}
+.c {text-align:center;}
+div.poetry {text-align:center;}
+div.poem {font-size:90%;margin:1em auto 1em auto;text-indent:0%;
+display: inline-block; text-align: left;}
+.rt {text-align:right;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Turmoil
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #1098]
+[Last updated: November 25, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE TURMOIL
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A NOVEL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Booth Tarkington
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      1915.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      To Laurel.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+      wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
+      must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
+      him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
+      it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better loved
+      than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently tended
+      streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked and grimy
+      citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of dust, and if he
+      should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has the meager
+      alternative of suicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+      riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+      prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained to
+      one tune: &ldquo;Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
+      Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
+      dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean&mdash;but I
+      will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall be
+      dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!&rdquo; And yet it is
+      not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is hasty
+      riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for wealth
+      is in the smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+      heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+      people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much of
+      the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place&mdash;&ldquo;homelike,&rdquo; it
+      was called&mdash;and when the visitor had been taken through the State
+      Asylum for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from
+      a little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
+      were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for a
+      family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the air
+      was clean, and there was time to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+      elsewhere&mdash;a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+      and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+      mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+      American hearts&mdash;Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound longing
+      for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became an
+      accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
+      Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became a
+      mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax them
+      here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get them!
+      Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of people; all
+      kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the
+      fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is patriotism
+      and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is Money! We
+      want Bigness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+      slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
+      years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people and
+      yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
+      thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than they
+      could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came, the broken
+      and the unbroken, the tame and the wild&mdash;Germans, Irish, Italians,
+      Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes, Norwegians,
+      Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians, Rumanians, Servians,
+      Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and every hybrid that these
+      could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos nor Patagonians, what other
+      human strain that earth might furnish failed to swim and bubble in this
+      crucible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
+      roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the
+      tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the
+      faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to
+      emerge discernibly&mdash;a cynical young mongrel barbaric of feature,
+      muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned apparently in
+      imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians. The female of his
+      kind came with him&mdash;a pale girl, shoddy and a little rouged; and they
+      communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and elisions. Nay, the
+      common speech of the people showed change: in place of the old midland
+      vernacular, irregular but clean, and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky
+      dialect of coined metaphors began to be heard, held together by GUNNAS and
+      GOTTAS and much fostered by the public journals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,
+      and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its vitals,
+      like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body of a man,
+      missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to the saloons and
+      all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation and ruin were
+      ready commodities on the market for purchase by the venturesome;
+      highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimes killed; snatching
+      thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; while house-breakers were a
+      common apprehension and frequent reality. Life itself was somewhat safer
+      from intentional destruction than it was in medieval Rome during a faction
+      war&mdash;though the Roman murderer was more like to pay for his deed&mdash;but
+      death or mutilation beneath the wheels lay in ambush at every crossing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did not
+      matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+      Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+      Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+      dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!
+      They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke. They
+      made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; though sometimes
+      they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new laws that the old
+      laws should be enforced&mdash;and then forget both new and old. Wherever
+      enforcement threatened Money or Votes&mdash;or wherever it was too much to
+      bother&mdash;it became a joke. Influence was the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the place grew. And it grew strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:<br />
+  Power to get more power!<br />
+  Riches to get more riches!<br />
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!<br />
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,<br />
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And<br />
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+      Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+      biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He had
+      come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and he
+      had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; but each
+      time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally, after a
+      year of overwork and anxiety&mdash;the latter not decreased by a chance,
+      remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in the penitentiary&mdash;he
+      found himself on top, with solid substance under his feet; and thereafter
+      &ldquo;played it safe.&rdquo; But his hunger to get was unabated, for it was in the
+      very bones of him and grew fiercer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+      called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And
+      when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. &ldquo;It's
+      good! It's good!&rdquo; he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. &ldquo;Good, clean
+      soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!&rdquo; The smoke was one of his great
+      enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who called
+      to beg his aid against it. &ldquo;Smoke's what brings your husbands' money home
+      on Saturday night,&rdquo; he told them, jovially. &ldquo;Smoke may hurt your little
+      shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhal climate and the
+      adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makes the climate
+      better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people wash more. They have
+      to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You go home and ask your
+      husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' the pay-roll&mdash;and
+      you'll come around next time to get me to turn out more smoke instead o'
+      chokin' it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection
+      in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and
+      unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out he
+      believed it was the finest city in the world. &ldquo;Finest&rdquo; was his word. He
+      thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family; and
+      just as profoundly believed his city to be the finest city in the world,
+      so did he believe his family to be&mdash;in spite of his son Bibbs&mdash;the
+      finest family in the world. As a matter of fact, he knew nothing worth
+      knowing about either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered
+      the failure&mdash;the &ldquo;odd one&rdquo;&mdash;of the family. Born during that most
+      dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and the
+      father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and grew meagerly,
+      only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At his christening he was
+      committed for life to &ldquo;Bibbs&rdquo; mainly through lack of imagination on his
+      mother's part, for though it was her maiden name, she had no strong
+      affection for it; but it was &ldquo;her turn&rdquo; to name the baby, and, as she
+      explained later, she &ldquo;couldn't think of anything else she liked AT ALL!&rdquo;
+       She offered this explanation one day when the sickly boy was nine and
+      after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for his name's being
+      Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to be allowed to exchange
+      names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with the
+      oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being refused went down into the
+      cellar and remained there the rest of that day. And the cook, descending
+      toward dusk, reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he
+      was in the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing. Removed by
+      force and carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to
+      utter a syllable of explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing
+      was wholly a mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to
+      trace and connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and
+      mysterious fool, an impression not effaced as the years went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding of
+      a man, waiting for the building to begin inside&mdash;a long-shanked,
+      long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired and
+      dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at first
+      sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for he seemed
+      upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not grief, but
+      mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching scrutiny was
+      proportionately more puzzling&mdash;he seemed about to burst out crying or
+      to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but it was impossible
+      to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion of his life, either
+      laughed aloud or wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a &ldquo;disappointment&rdquo; to his father. At least that was the parent's
+      word&mdash;a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to
+      make a &ldquo;business man&rdquo; of the boy. He sent Bibbs to &ldquo;begin at the bottom
+      and learn from the ground up&rdquo; in the machine-shop of the Sheridan
+      Automatic Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician
+      sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a
+      sanitarium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't worry, mamma,&rdquo; Sheridan told his wife. &ldquo;There's nothin' the
+      matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put
+      him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well
+      as the next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.
+      Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He
+      makes me tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease
+      was incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack of
+      physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some
+      subtle weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or
+      slyness. He understood typhoid fever, pneumonia, and appendicitis&mdash;one
+      had them, and either died or got over them and went back to work&mdash;but
+      when the word &ldquo;nervous&rdquo; appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly
+      suspicious: he had the feeling that there was something contemptible about
+      it, that there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
+      twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin' wood&mdash;yes!
+      and out in the dark and the snow&mdash;to build a fire in a country
+      grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't&mdash;Pho!
+      it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paced the bedroom&mdash;the usual setting for such parental discussions&mdash;in
+      his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his
+      bedded spouse. &ldquo;My Lord!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If a little, teeny bit o' work like
+      this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything! It's nine-tenths
+      imagination, and the rest of it&mdash;well, I won't say it's deliberate,
+      but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs didn't want the doctor,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;It was when he was
+      here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
+      Honey, you better come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
+      imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for
+      that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice about
+      good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs. Sheridan:
+      busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick. You just
+      think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the sick
+      people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honey,&rdquo; she said again, drowsily, &ldquo;you better come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the other boys,&rdquo; her husband bade her. &ldquo;Look at Jim and Roscoe.
+      Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies. Work
+      never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my shoulders
+      already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter business man in
+      this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me something to push
+      AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look at Roscoe; just LOOK
+      at what that boy's done for himself, and barely twenty-seven years old&mdash;married,
+      got a fine wife, and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I
+      put up the New House for you and Edie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;You better
+      come to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl,&rdquo; he continued, emphatically,
+      &ldquo;as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good
+      wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in the
+      United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school and took
+      the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and she'd never
+      even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I ever read, and R.
+      T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough literary judge for
+      me&mdash;turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city. I
+      tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise
+      the New House&mdash;and I guess you had your finger in that, too, mamma!
+      This old shack's good enough for me, but you and little Edie 'll have to
+      have your way. I'll get behind her and push her the same as I will Jim and
+      Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them three chuldern! But Bibbs&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He paused, shaking his head. &ldquo;Honest, mamma, when I talk to men that got
+      ALL their boys doin' well and worth their salt, why, I have to keep my
+      mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. &ldquo;You did the best
+      you could, papa,&rdquo; she said, impatiently, &ldquo;so come to bed and quit
+      reproachin' yourself for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared at her indignantly. &ldquo;Reproachin' myself!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I ain't
+      doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want to
+      reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was the
+      best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was in him and
+      make a man of himself&mdash;and here he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia'
+      on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and
+      muttered his way morosely into bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More like hook-worm, I said,&rdquo; he explained, speaking louder. &ldquo;I don't
+      know what to do with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+      course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and &ldquo;zwieback&rdquo; as the basis
+      of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was
+      considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and
+      a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and
+      the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode of Bigness that
+      Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was found sufficient
+      to his support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith met him at the station. &ldquo;Well, well, Bibbs!&rdquo; she said, as he came
+      slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.
+      She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick
+      glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. &ldquo;Do
+      you think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I certainly do look better,&rdquo; he returned, in a voice as slow as his
+      gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly
+      he stammered. &ldquo;Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me. They
+      had to get me in a line between 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
+      quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
+      troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some obligation
+      of business to visit a &ldquo;bad&rdquo; ward in a hospital. She was nineteen, fair
+      and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness of color and a
+      brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close upon beauty. Her
+      movements were eager and restless: there was something about her, as kind
+      old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was something that was
+      hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change
+      since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her a steady, whimsical
+      scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an automobile across the
+      street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the new car,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everything's new. We've got four now,
+      besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith, you look&mdash;&rdquo; he began, and paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, WE're all well,&rdquo; she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his
+      tone had caught her as significant, &ldquo;Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look&mdash;&rdquo; He paused again, taking in the full length of her&mdash;her
+      trim brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
+      and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
+      mode&mdash;all suited to the October day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I look?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look,&rdquo; he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch
+      of platinum and enamel at her wrist, &ldquo;you look&mdash;expensive!&rdquo; That was
+      a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
+      preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance
+      away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+      intimacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect I am!&rdquo; she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
+      glance. &ldquo;Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime&mdash;it's an
+      evening thing, for the theater&mdash;but my day wrist-watch is out of
+      gear. Bobby Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do
+      you want Claus to help you in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I'm alive.&rdquo; And after a fit of panting subsequent to
+      his climbing into the car unaided, he added, &ldquo;Of course, I have to TELL
+      people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We only got your telegram this morning,&rdquo; she said, as they began to move
+      rapidly through the &ldquo;wholesale district&rdquo; neighboring the station. &ldquo;Mother
+      said she'd hardly expected you this month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They seemed to be through with me up there in the country,&rdquo; he explained,
+      gently. &ldquo;At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep me any
+      longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They told me
+      to go home&mdash;and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
+      right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; She laughed nervously. &ldquo;Of course we're all of us glad to have
+      you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?&rdquo; She did not turn
+      to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;father hasn't written.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed a little. &ldquo;I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one of
+      the boys&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; that was all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often planned
+      to write&mdash;and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up.
+      And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of course we
+      knew mamma was writing often and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; he said, readily. &ldquo;There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
+      glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
+      forgotten how sooty it is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been having very bright weather this month&mdash;for us.&rdquo; She blew
+      the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a
+      cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a decoration.
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It's very gay.&rdquo; A few moments later, as they passed a
+      corner, &ldquo;Aren't we going home?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. This is right. We're going straight home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we've passed the corner. We always turned&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know
+      we were in the New House?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no!&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: &ldquo;Of course, mamma's
+      never been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but
+      keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's
+      got some of his business friends and people from around the OLD-house
+      neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and 'house-warming'&mdash;dreadful
+      kind of people&mdash;but mamma's got it all on her hands. She's never sat
+      down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa would have her up again before&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Do you like the new place, Edith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
+      finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa bought
+      one thing I like&mdash;a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's perfectly
+      beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and
+      it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old fruit picture we had in
+      the Murphy Street house hung up in the new dining-room. You remember it&mdash;a
+      table and a watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and
+      some shiny lemons, with two dead prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it
+      at a furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer
+      picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to
+      Europe. But it's horribly out of date to have those things in
+      dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made
+      fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about
+      its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on
+      having it where he wanted it. She makes me tired! Sibyl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+      awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full gaze
+      always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation of her
+      sister-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SIBYL!&rdquo; she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed to
+      strike fire on her lips. &ldquo;I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
+      married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good! He could
+      have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and Bobby'd
+      have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of that he
+      had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully nice people from
+      her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last spring, and not one
+      had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even HEARD of 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were great friends with Sibyl,&rdquo; Bibbs said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the time I found her out!&rdquo; the sister returned, with continuing
+      vehemence. &ldquo;I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan lately&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's only lately?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. &ldquo;Of course, I
+      always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
+      ROSCOE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems,&rdquo; said Bibbs, in laconic protest, &ldquo;that she married him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+      laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: &ldquo;Why, she'd have
+      married YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;she couldn't be that bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean&mdash;&rdquo; she began, distressed. &ldquo;I only meant&mdash;I didn't
+      mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, Edith,&rdquo; he consoled her. &ldquo;You see, she couldn't have married
+      me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as mercenary as all
+      that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even had to lend me the
+      money for my ticket home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU,&rdquo; Edith babbled. &ldquo;I only
+      meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to marry
+      somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;it's all straight.&rdquo; And, perceiving that his
+      sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters
+      perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her,&rdquo; she continued, a moment later. &ldquo;Too
+      lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
+      MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Behave'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere,&rdquo; said Edith, characteristically
+      evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and
+      in this not unique of her sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. &ldquo;Business is
+      crawling up the old streets,&rdquo; he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating
+      a vasty structure in course of erection. &ldquo;The boarding-houses come first
+      and then the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That isn't for shops,&rdquo; she informed him. &ldquo;That's a new investment of
+      papa's&mdash;the 'Sheridan Apartments.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+      known here already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!&rdquo; she said, impatiently. &ldquo;I guess there
+      isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't know who we
+      are. But we aren't in with the right people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Who's all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's all what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The 'right people.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean: the best people, the old families&mdash;the people
+      that have the real social position in this town and that know they've got
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. &ldquo;I
+      thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it
+      didn't know it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've always understood that it was very
+      unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and if
+      you had it you didn't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just bosh,&rdquo; she retorted. &ldquo;They know it in this town, all right! I
+      found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out
+      in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
+      society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't
+      all belong to any one club&mdash;they're taken in all sorts into all their
+      clubs&mdash;but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan
+      feeling and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read
+      about anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came,
+      and the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, gravely. &ldquo;Their ancestors fled together from
+      many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I always
+      understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of
+      Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to
+      these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. &ldquo;You mustn't repeat that story,
+      Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and of
+      course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before Mary
+      Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement.
+      He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there YET&mdash;some
+      of the best people in Lynn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there are other old families like the Vertreeses,&rdquo; she went on, not
+      heeding him; &ldquo;the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange names to me,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;Poor things! None of them have my
+      acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, that's just it!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;And papa had never even heard the name
+      of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him,
+      and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages
+      from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I thought I
+      just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr. Vertrees has
+      always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of course. They're
+      the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And to crown it all,
+      papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion&mdash;it's
+      in the very heart of the best new residence district now, and that's where
+      the New House is, right next door to them&mdash;and I must say it makes
+      their place look rather shabby! I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the
+      Mission Service Helpers, but she never did any more than just barely bow
+      to me, and since papa's break I doubt if she'll do that! They haven't
+      called.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing
+      Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him understand
+      that,&rdquo; said Edith, demurely, &ldquo;and he's promised to try and meet Mr.
+      Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM,
+      it's practically no use in our having built the New House; and if we DO
+      know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people.
+      They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going
+      to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and
+      I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not to know us,
+      I'm darn sure Mrs Lamhorn'll never come. That's ONE thing Sibyl didn't
+      manage! She SAID Bobby offered to bring his mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?&rdquo; Bibbs asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's a friend of the whole family,&rdquo; she returned, with a petulance
+      which she made an effort to disguise. &ldquo;Roscoe and he got acquainted
+      somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night. Sibyl
+      has him to lunch, too, and keeps&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off with an angry
+      little jerk of the head. &ldquo;We can see the New House from the second corner
+      ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you know.
+      Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes&mdash;the way she
+      pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets anything
+      in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him behind his
+      back&mdash;yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She got him to give
+      her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it was&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and
+      the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. &ldquo;Is that the
+      New House?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. What do you think of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he drawled, &ldquo;I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+      bigger; I can't be certain till I measure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+      &ldquo;But it's beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect who
+      loved the milder &ldquo;Gothic motives&rdquo; had built what he liked: it was to be
+      seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
+      picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
+      time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
+      accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look of
+      newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at least
+      one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was thinner
+      in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart of the town,
+      it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather could be
+      malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and corn had
+      been growing not ten years gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
+      successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing of
+      the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses that
+      cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every inch of
+      mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house&mdash;no matter
+      what be done to it&mdash;is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the old
+      name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind to
+      change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places of its
+      type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides; rich families,
+      one after another, take title and occupy such houses as fortunes rise and
+      fall&mdash;they mark the high tide. It was impossible to imagine a child's
+      toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New House, and yet it was&mdash;as
+      Bibbs rightly called it&mdash;&ldquo;beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What the architect thought of the &ldquo;Golfo di Napoli,&rdquo; which hung in its
+      vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
+      be conjectured&mdash;perhaps he had not seen it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith, did you say only eleven feet?&rdquo; Bibbs panted, staring at it, as the
+      white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
+      overcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eleven without the frame,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;It's splendid, don't you
+      think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No gloom now!&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This statue in the corner is pretty, too,&rdquo; she remarked. &ldquo;Mamma and I
+      bought that.&rdquo; And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a grove of
+      tubbed palms, a &ldquo;life-size,&rdquo; black-bearded Moor, of a plastic composition
+      painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his chocolate head he
+      wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped spear; and for the
+      rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallelujah!&rdquo; was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
+      saying she would &ldquo;find mamma,&rdquo; left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
+      after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood waiting,
+      Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. &ldquo;What do YOU think of it?&rdquo; Bibbs asked,
+      solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran'!&rdquo; replied the servitor. &ldquo;She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
+      'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect she must be,&rdquo; said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively to
+      the black bull beard for a moment. &ldquo;Is there a place anywhere I could lie
+      down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
+      staihs, suh. Nice room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to rest,
+      and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the exodus from
+      the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the patently
+      nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly enjoying
+      his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,&rdquo; Bibbs's
+      guide explained, chuckling. &ldquo;Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
+      doin's!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in every
+      particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it pleasant&mdash;though,
+      indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed pleasant to him after
+      his journey. He stretched himself flat immediately, and having replied
+      &ldquo;Not now&rdquo; to the attendant's offer to unpack the bag, closed his eyes
+      wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made an
+      exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket&mdash;the harassed
+      overseer&mdash;in the hall without. Said the emerging one: &ldquo;He mighty
+      shaky, Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all
+      black. Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I
+      change 'ith 'at ole boy&mdash;No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my
+      black skin an' keep out the ground!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. &ldquo;Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+      somebody awready laid out,&rdquo; he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
+      near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
+      pessimistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hech!&rdquo; said one, lamenting in a whisper. &ldquo;It give me a turn to see him go
+      by&mdash;white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
+      make ye kind o' sick to look at um?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like
+      drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her husband and
+      her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence she had was
+      given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in
+      the presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded. Edith
+      lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his
+      wife to her unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her
+      existence as a thing separate from his. She invariably perceived his
+      moods, and nursed him through them when she did not share them; and she
+      gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost spirit and purpose of his
+      being, even though she did not comprehend it and partook of it only as a
+      spectator. They had known but one actual altercation in their lives, and
+      that was thirty years past, in the early days of Sheridan's struggle,
+      when, in order to enhance the favorable impression he believed himself to
+      be making upon some capitalists, he had thought it necessary to accompany
+      them to a performance of &ldquo;The Black Crook.&rdquo; But she had not once referred
+      to this during the last ten years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
+      more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time and
+      to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down over some
+      unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+      withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+      rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go, mother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm not asleep.&rdquo; He swung his long legs over
+      the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
+      restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, &ldquo;I just come for a minute,
+      but I want to see how you seem. Edith said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Edith!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;She couldn't look at me. She&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came back
+      to the bedside. &ldquo;You look a great deal better than what you did before you
+      went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body can see that
+      right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't got much color&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I haven't much color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will have when you get your strength back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; he responded, cheerfully. &ldquo;THEN I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look a great deal better than what I expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith must have a great vocabulary!&rdquo; he chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's too sensitive,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, &ldquo;and it makes her exaggerate a
+      little. What about your diet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. They told me to eat anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;anything I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's good,&rdquo; she said, nodding. &ldquo;They mean for you just to build up your
+      strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you at the
+      sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's only a
+      little time ago. How long was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight months, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was longer'n
+      I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely even time to
+      write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin' along, but I told
+      Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked Jim to, too, and they
+      both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up pretty well on the home
+      news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I think you need,&rdquo; said the mother, gravely, &ldquo;is to liven up a
+      little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
+      morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
+      appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plans?&rdquo; Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light with
+      his hand, so that he might see her better. &ldquo;What&mdash;&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;What
+      plans is he making for me, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade. &ldquo;Well,
+      you better talk it over with HIM,&rdquo; she said, with perceptible nervousness.
+      &ldquo;He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any call, exactly,
+      to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway.&rdquo; She came and
+      stood by the bedside once more. &ldquo;But you must remember, Bibbs, whatever
+      papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and wants to do what's
+      right by ALL of 'em&mdash;and you'll always find he's right in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and she
+      rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it. &ldquo;You
+      get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you mean&mdash;he&mdash;&rdquo; Bibbs stammered, having begun to
+      speak too quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked,
+      quietly, &ldquo;Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think he does,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You see, it's the 'house-warming,'
+      as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around
+      us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's just what he thinks
+      you need&mdash;to take an interest and liven up. You don't feel too bad to
+      come down, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a good look at me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, see here!&rdquo; she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. &ldquo;You're not so bad
+      off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
+      any harm to please your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't that,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;Honestly, I'm only afraid it might spoil
+      somebody's appetite. Edith&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you the child was too sensitive,&rdquo; she interrupted, in turn.
+      &ldquo;You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look like
+      you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all there
+      is to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
+      can!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It 'll do you good,&rdquo; she returned, rustling into the hall. &ldquo;Now take a
+      nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
+      dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something she
+      had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+      interminably. &ldquo;His plans for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;his plans
+      for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;&rdquo; And then, taking the place of &ldquo;his
+      plans for you,&rdquo; after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice
+      came back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: &ldquo;He loves his
+      chuldern&mdash;he loves his chuldern&mdash;he loves his chuldern&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;you'll
+      find he's always right&mdash;you'll find he's always right&mdash;&rdquo; Until
+      at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted
+      realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that
+      came out of the wall and stretched over his bed&mdash;it was a black wing
+      within the room, and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the
+      sky, bridging the whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black
+      smoke, and out of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over
+      and over, &ldquo;His plans for you&mdash;his plans for you&mdash;his plans for
+      you&mdash;&rdquo; And then there was nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly&mdash;as one might have a
+      care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic&mdash;and,
+      getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so
+      that it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the next
+      house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, &ldquo;the old Vertrees country
+      mansion.&rdquo; It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the Sheridans'
+      by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box of a house with
+      a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been spared for a long
+      time, and no one could have put a name to the color of it, but in spite of
+      that the place had no look of being out at heel, and the sward was as
+      neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window&mdash;for this wing
+      of the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot&mdash;and,
+      directly opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as
+      to make a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic &ldquo;summer-house.&rdquo; It
+      was almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and it
+      was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses in grievous
+      outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the juxtaposition of the
+      parvenu intruder. Probably the &ldquo;summer-house&rdquo; was pleasant and pretty in
+      summer. It had the look of a place wherein little girls had played for a
+      generation or so with dolls and &ldquo;housekeeping,&rdquo; or where a lovely old lady
+      might come to read something dull on warm afternoons; but now in the thin
+      light it was desolate, the color of dust, and hung with haggard vines
+      which had lost their leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship with
+      anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window
+      and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked
+      the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long
+      and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his
+      manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent
+      upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become
+      pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his
+      head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly are one horrible sight!&rdquo; he said, aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly, he was
+      vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of
+      the &ldquo;summer-house&rdquo; and staring full into his window&mdash;straight into
+      his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the
+      flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own. Composedly, she pulled
+      several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her action conveying a
+      message or proclamation to the effect that she was in the summer-house for
+      the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending, and that no gentleman
+      could suppose her presence there to be due to any other purpose
+      whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she had allowed her
+      attention to wander for one instant in the direction of things of which
+      she was in reality unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness&mdash;and at
+      the same time her disapproval&mdash;of everything in the nature of a
+      Sheridan or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with
+      maintained composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country
+      mansion of the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened
+      the door and came to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows,&rdquo; said Mary
+      Vertrees. &ldquo;I got caught at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; cried her mother. &ldquo;Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll go, just the same,&rdquo; the daughter returned. &ldquo;I suppose those women
+      would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But WHO saw you?&rdquo; insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
+      At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
+      about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
+      Then he looked out and caught me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a ghost in a blue suit,&rdquo; said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
+      street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who was
+      observing them from the window of his library. &ldquo;Rather tragic and
+      altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
+      their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who had
+      something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and began
+      to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was about
+      sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little sketch of an
+      elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache&mdash;relic of a forgotten
+      Anglomania&mdash;had been profoundly black, but now, like his smooth hair,
+      it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were
+      old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for greater spruceness
+      there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across
+      the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket, a fleck of color from a
+      button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling him the descendant of
+      patriot warriors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+      Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
+      marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
+      &ldquo;Eastlake&rdquo; bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
+      incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless &ldquo;woodwork&rdquo; everywhere, and
+      upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
+      sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
+      &ldquo;very fine things.&rdquo; They had been the first people in town to possess
+      Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
+      had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when Mr.
+      Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's houses he
+      thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he found an edition
+      of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final corroboration of
+      culture, he would say, inevitably, &ldquo;Those people know good pictures and
+      they know good books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
+      had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin to
+      grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody. Mr.
+      Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At about the
+      time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance, an
+      office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
+      winter; and he had a country place&mdash;a farm of four hundred acres&mdash;where
+      he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
+      home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit still
+      and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but, strangely
+      enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall down and
+      worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the role of
+      Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of the
+      prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and buying
+      bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and read
+      his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained milkers milked
+      her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and the house in
+      town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then he sold the farm,
+      except the house and the ground about it, to pay the taxes on the suburban
+      lots and to &ldquo;keep them up.&rdquo; The lots refused to stay up; but he had to do
+      something to keep himself and his family up, so in despair he sold the
+      lots (which went up beautifully the next year) for &ldquo;traction stock&rdquo; that
+      was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased to buy and sell. Thus he
+      disappeared altogether from the commercial surface at about the time James
+      Sheridan came out securely on top; and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees
+      called upon him with her &ldquo;anti-smoke&rdquo; committee, had never heard the name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+      &ldquo;managed somehow&rdquo; on the dividends, though &ldquo;managing&rdquo; became more and more
+      difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But there
+      came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took greedy
+      counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long after that
+      there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there was nothing
+      for Mr. Vertrees, because the &ldquo;traction stock&rdquo; henceforth was no stock at
+      all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help &ldquo;manage somehow&rdquo;
+       according to his conception of his &ldquo;position in life&rdquo;&mdash;one of his own
+      old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the completion of the New House
+      next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses and the worn Victoria and
+      &ldquo;station-wagon,&rdquo; to pay the arrears of his two servants and re-establish
+      credit at the grocer's and butcher's&mdash;and a pair of elderly
+      carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very ample barter, in
+      these days, for six months' food and fuel and service. Mr. Vertrees had
+      discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the buzzing city&mdash;he
+      could do nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come in
+      all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if his
+      feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight closed
+      round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round about
+      the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone of
+      firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
+      rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
+      ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
+      return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
+      the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
+      Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary, she
+      looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite certain
+      to agree with her, and regretted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa! Oh, oh!&rdquo; And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
+      her eyes. &ldquo;I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. &ldquo;I suppose I'm very dull,&rdquo; she said, gently.
+      &ldquo;I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the house is
+      altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; Mary cried, breaking in. &ldquo;They asked us to DINNER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'm GOING!&rdquo; she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms. &ldquo;Think
+      of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the daughter&mdash;and
+      just BARELY met her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about you?&rdquo; interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
+      not agree with her. &ldquo;I couldn't!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's just&mdash;just the way she&mdash;she looked when they asked
+      her!&rdquo; cried Mary, choking. &ldquo;And then she&mdash;she realized it, and tried
+      to turn it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like&mdash;like
+      a squeal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, &ldquo;that Mary will have an
+      uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel and,
+      leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her shoe,
+      twinkling in the firelight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THEY didn't notice anything,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;So far as they were concerned,
+      mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who were 'they'?&rdquo; asked her father. &ldquo;Whom did you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the mother and daughter,&rdquo; Mary answered. &ldquo;Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy and
+      rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing&mdash;dresses by the
+      fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have their pictures
+      in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very successfully&mdash;partly
+      because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly because she began too
+      late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted plaster or something in the
+      hall, and the girl evidently thought it was to her credit that she
+      selected it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have oil-paintings, too,&rdquo; added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+      gentle pride at the Landseers. &ldquo;I've always thought oil-paintings in a
+      private house the worst of taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!&rdquo; said Mr. Vertrees, finishing the
+      implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. &ldquo;Go on, Mary. None
+      of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan or&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with the poker.
+      &ldquo;Or one of the sons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
+      He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
+      sons thoroughly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, most adroitly, too!&rdquo; laughed the girl. &ldquo;Only she couldn't help
+      unconsciously turning to look at me&mdash;when she did it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary Vertrees!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM could
+      help unconsciously turning to look at me&mdash;speculatively&mdash;at the
+      same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the oldest
+      son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is very
+      anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me that
+      'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one, caught
+      me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem to consider
+      him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan mentioned that
+      a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,' and had been to some
+      cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the subject back to 'Jim' and
+      his virtues&mdash;and to look at me! The other brother is the middle one,
+      Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house across the street, where that
+      young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert, goes so often. I saw a short,
+      dark young man standing on the porch with Robert Lamhorn there the other
+      day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim' still lurks in the mists, but I
+      shall meet him to-night. Papa&mdash;&rdquo; She stepped nearer to him so that he
+      had to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he did. There may have been
+      a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their surface merry with
+      laughter. &ldquo;Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and Bibbs&mdash;to the
+      best of our information&mdash;is a lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does
+      it have to be Jim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. &ldquo;You're outrageous! That's a
+      perfectly horrible way of talking!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm close to twenty-four,&rdquo; said Mary, turning to her. &ldquo;I haven't
+      been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
+      never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
+      my life&mdash;you and papa gave it all to me&mdash;and it's about time I
+      began to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything&mdash;but
+      something's got to be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you needn't talk of it like THAT!&rdquo; insisted the mother, plaintively.
+      &ldquo;It's not&mdash;it's not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's not,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I know that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did they happen to ask you to dinner?&rdquo; Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+      uneasily. &ldquo;'Stextrawdn'ry thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Climbers' hospitality,&rdquo; Mary defined it. &ldquo;We were so very cordial and
+      easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
+      old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who did
+      it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to&mdash;she's
+      in a dreadful hurry to get into things&mdash;and I fancied she had an idea
+      it might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort
+      of house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it&mdash;and
+      then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And mamma&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment. &ldquo;Mamma tried
+      to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed&mdash;I mean you
+      coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had promised to
+      go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her daughter would
+      be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am, and there's Mr. Jim
+      Sheridan&mdash;and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture of
+      flying grace as she sped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in the
+      hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through the
+      dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze was fond
+      and proud&mdash;and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded gaily,
+      and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least no one could suspect me to-night,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I LOOK rich, don't
+      I, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+      &ldquo;regal.&rdquo; A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
+      poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were like
+      her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and livelier
+      ancestor than either of her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I look too rich to be suspected?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look everything beautiful, Mary,&rdquo; he said, huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my dress?&rdquo; She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
+      of white and silver. &ldquo;Anything better at Nice next winter, do you think?&rdquo;
+       She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again. &ldquo;Two
+      years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do anything, Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more&mdash;a
+      significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if he
+      suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted her
+      hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he should
+      feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't worry,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice and gravely. &ldquo;I know exactly what
+      you want me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
+      was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room, and
+      after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to converse&mdash;necessarily
+      at the tops of their voices. The whole company of fifty sat at a great
+      oblong table, improvised for the occasion by carpenters; but, not
+      betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed a permanent continent of
+      damask and lace, with shores of crystal and silver running up to spreading
+      groves of orchids and lilies and white roses&mdash;an inhabited continent,
+      evidently, for there were three marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the
+      center and one at each end, white miracles wrought by some inspired
+      craftsman in sculptural icing. They were models in miniature, and they
+      represented the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump
+      Works. Nearly all the guests recognized them without having to be told
+      what they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
+      great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
+      then on each side came the neighbors of the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house, grading down to
+      vassals and retainers&mdash;superintendents, cashiers, heads of
+      departments, and the like&mdash;at the foot, where the Thane's lady took
+      her place as a consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the
+      thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how
+      anybody could look at him and eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+      wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended for
+      introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face, devised
+      by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked at Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+      enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting effort,
+      and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too fragmentary for
+      his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when each of his
+      neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health, turned to seek
+      livelier responses in other directions. For the talk went on with the
+      eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the orchestra and the
+      clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass, and there was a mighty
+      babble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Yellow flounces on the overskirt&mdash;&ldquo;...
+      &ldquo;I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger this year,' I
+      says.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one weeks.&rdquo;... &ldquo;One of the
+      biggest men in the biggest&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;The wife says she'll have to let
+      out my pants if my appetite&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Say, did you see that statue of a
+      Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Not a
+      dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I says, and
+      so he ups and&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost now.&rdquo;...
+      &ldquo;Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Yes, sir! Not a
+      dollar to his name, and look at what&mdash;&ldquo;... &ldquo;You wait! The population
+      of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she stops.&rdquo;... &ldquo;Well,
+      if you can show me a bigger deal than&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+      continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+      sentence, &ldquo;Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+      just what'll do it for my boys&mdash;they got to make two blades o' grass
+      grow where one grew before!&rdquo; It was his familiar flourish, an old story to
+      Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary Vertrees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a great night for Sheridan&mdash;the very crest of his wave. He sat
+      there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
+      smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
+      simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health, of
+      good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none bought,
+      and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was thick, and
+      as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big beneath its vast
+      facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling
+      three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong, and he used them
+      freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat
+      at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the look of readiness and
+      activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at every
+      one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they were
+      noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure, and, of
+      course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
+      discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a band
+      and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out for a
+      band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra they
+      hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept time to the music continually&mdash;with his feet, or pounding on
+      the table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
+      or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
+      real business of eating and shouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!&rdquo; he would bellow down the length of the
+      table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the &ldquo;Toreador&rdquo;
+       song, perhaps. &ldquo;Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy Lee'!&rdquo; And when
+      the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer to an obedient
+      shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the &ldquo;Toreador&rdquo; continuing vehemently, Sheridan
+      would roar half-remembered fragments of &ldquo;Nancy Lee,&rdquo; naturally mingling
+      some Bizet with the air of that uxorious tribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's wife
+      a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee!
+      Oh, Na-hancy Lee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HAY, there, old lady!&rdquo; he would bellow. &ldquo;Tell 'em to play 'In the
+      Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee&mdash;Well, if
+      they don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'?
+      THAT'S good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs.
+      Callin, get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter
+      you folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What joy he feels, as&mdash;ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
+      watch, ahoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+      table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
+      conviction, it bore none now; though &ldquo;mineral waters&rdquo; were copiously
+      poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
+      wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
+      could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
+      Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
+      said, he had &ldquo;plans for Bibbs&rdquo;&mdash;plans which were going to straighten
+      out some things that had gone wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+      forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps, turning
+      to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the table at his
+      right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less naive than he had
+      paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired the
+      autobiographical impulse in every man who met her&mdash;it needed but the
+      sight of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund
+      host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund
+      king and the starry princess of this spectacle&mdash;they paid court to
+      each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the sugar Pump
+      Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and admiration.
+      &ldquo;Wonder who that lady is&mdash;makin' such a hit with the old man.&rdquo; &ldquo;Must
+      be some heiress.&rdquo; &ldquo;Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it to marry rich,
+      then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees with
+      an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect Sheridan's
+      pastoral gaieties&mdash;and other things&mdash;would have upon her, but
+      she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all. She
+      treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that she
+      understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he bragged&mdash;probably
+      his first experience of that kind in his life. It enchanted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he proclaimed to the table, she had &ldquo;a way with her.&rdquo; She had, indeed,
+      as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the feast began.
+      Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed upon him so
+      protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the look, his lovely
+      neighbor said&mdash;and it was her first speech to him&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; was all he managed to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a mystification
+      equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one, reflected Edith,
+      could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would &ldquo;really flirt&rdquo; with
+      married men&mdash;she was obviously the &ldquo;opposite of all that.&rdquo; Edith
+      defined her as a &ldquo;thoroughbred,&rdquo; a &ldquo;nice girl&rdquo;; and the look given to
+      Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and she was another whom
+      it puzzled&mdash;though not because its recipient was married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because!&rdquo; said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. &ldquo;And
+      also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead
+      for both of us if we don't get along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+      brought up to believe that when a man married he &ldquo;married and settled
+      down.&rdquo; It was &ldquo;all right,&rdquo; he felt, for a man as old as his father to pay
+      florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but for
+      himself&mdash;&ldquo;a young married man&rdquo;&mdash;it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+      even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
+      friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+      &ldquo;flirted&rdquo;&mdash;they were always very matter-of-fact with each other.
+      Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped
+      he was susceptible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;we're neighbors,&rdquo; he said, awkwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next-door neighbors in houses, too,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not exactly. I live across the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed, and seemed startled. &ldquo;Your mother told me this
+      afternoon that you lived at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&mdash;&rdquo; she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came
+      into her cheek. &ldquo;But I understood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year, but
+      that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I see,&rdquo; she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned
+      from him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
+      name, &ldquo;Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.&rdquo; And from that moment Roscoe had little
+      enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
+      coquetries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor to
+      &ldquo;get through with old Roscoe,&rdquo; as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a
+      chance. &ldquo;Old Roscoe&rdquo; was the younger, but he had always been the steady
+      wheel-horse of the family. Jim was &ldquo;steady&rdquo; enough, but was considered
+      livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for Jim's
+      liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
+      &ldquo;capable, hard-working young business men,&rdquo; and the principal difference
+      between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
+      bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of hair,
+      fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches taller
+      than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the father. Both
+      wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have sat for the
+      tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing &ldquo;rich suitings in
+      dark mixtures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+      color, which increased his approbation. &ldquo;What's that old Roscoe saying to
+      you, Miss Vertrees?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;These young married men are mighty forward
+      nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I blushing?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; And with that she gave him
+      ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
+      upon Roscoe. &ldquo;I think you must be mistaken,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;I think it's
+      your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
+      confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. &ldquo;By trying
+      to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
+      nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized that
+      he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly
+      snared by that realization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+      anything&mdash;yes, and get away with it, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed again&mdash;in her way, so that he could not tell whether she
+      was laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
+      she said: &ldquo;But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not. I
+      wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away with
+      YOU?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!&rdquo; Jim was inspired
+      to reply. &ldquo;Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making fun
+      of me like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,&rdquo; she said, regarding him with
+      sudden gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jim, in simple honesty, &ldquo;you're a funny girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her gravity continued an instant longer. &ldquo;I may not turn out to be funny
+      for YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+      manage to be satisfied.&rdquo; And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
+      turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, &ldquo;I can see
+      you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
+      means anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Laugh'!&rdquo; she cried, gaily. &ldquo;Why, it might be a matter of life and death!
+      But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once, considering
+      the mistake I made with your brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
+      nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it; he was
+      but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a consciousness
+      that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring lady, no matter how
+      long it pleased her to play with him. But he mightily wanted her to keep
+      on playing with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put what question?&rdquo; he said, breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,&rdquo; she returned,
+      speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, &ldquo;I think it would be
+      well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with any
+      young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO!&rdquo; she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+      proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
+      lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
+      Vertrees was &ldquo;starting rather picturesquely with Jim.&rdquo; And he added,
+      languidly, &ldquo;Do you suppose she WOULD?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+      interested in the clasp of a long &ldquo;rope&rdquo; of pearls, a loop of which she
+      was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
+      and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
+      clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty, but
+      hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
+      accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous&mdash;they may
+      emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,&rdquo;
+       repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you.&rdquo; There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her eyes,
+      no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just now she
+      did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. &ldquo;Starting any stronger than
+      you did with Edith?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, keep the peace!&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;That's off, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't been making her see it this evening&mdash;precisely,&rdquo; said
+      Sibyl, looking at him steadily. &ldquo;You've talked to her for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake,&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;keep the peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you just been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SH!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Listen to your father-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
+      begun to play &ldquo;The Rosary,&rdquo; to his vast content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,&rdquo; he roared, beating the measures
+      with his fork. &ldquo;EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM&mdash;What's
+      the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
+      thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, &ldquo;you
+      don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways, and
+      my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
+      something important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!&rdquo; the father
+      threatened, more delighted with her than ever. &ldquo;By gosh! if I was his age&mdash;or
+      a widower right NOW&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wait!&rdquo; cried Mary. &ldquo;If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
+      Sheridan to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd say the same,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+      couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must listen to your father,&rdquo; Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
+      had grown red again. &ldquo;He's going to tell us how, when he was your age, he
+      made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup&mdash;and you could
+      see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. &ldquo;Look here, young
+      lady!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you&mdash;or
+      I'm goin' to kiss you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed &ldquo;too awful,&rdquo; but Mary
+      Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Both! The one to make me forget the other!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But which&mdash;&rdquo; he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+      trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+      &ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; he roared, &ldquo;if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
+      you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Bibbs&mdash;down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+      watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
+      little girl in a garden&mdash;Bibbs heard. He heard&mdash;and he knew what
+      his father's plans were now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees &ldquo;sat up&rdquo; for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired after
+      a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his Landseers. Mary
+      had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for her and seeming
+      confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did the sequel prove her
+      confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a long vigil of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not the woman to make herself easy&mdash;no servant had ever seen
+      her in a wrapper&mdash;and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what
+      they had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
+      the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her own
+      room, which was directly over the &ldquo;front hall.&rdquo; There, book in hand, she
+      employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief that
+      she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+      deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought her&mdash;and
+      there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward because she did
+      not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward this troubled
+      couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which neither of them
+      could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they had talked it over,
+      day after day, from the very hour when they heard Sheridan was to build
+      his New House next door. For&mdash;so quickly does any ideal of human
+      behavior become an antique&mdash;their youth was of the innocent old days,
+      so dead! of &ldquo;breeding&rdquo; and &ldquo;gentility,&rdquo; and no craft had been more
+      straitly trained upon them than that of talking about things without
+      mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital difference between Mr.
+      and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor. Sheridan, though his youth
+      was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such matters. He had been chopping
+      wood for the morning fire in the country grocery while they were still
+      dancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+      clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+      Mary's laugh, and &ldquo;Yes&mdash;if you aren't afraid&mdash;to-morrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath of
+      cold and bracing air into her mother's room. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, before Mrs.
+      Vertrees could speak, &ldquo;he brought me home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+      rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light pat
+      upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that she
+      had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. &ldquo;Why don't you ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. &ldquo;I don't&mdash;&rdquo; she
+      faltered. &ldquo;Ask you what, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I got along and what he's like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it isn't distressing!&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;And I got along so fast&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She broke off to laugh; continuing then, &ldquo;But that's the way I went at it,
+      of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what you mean,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+      plaintively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow afternoon,
+      and to the theater the next night&mdash;but I stopped it there. You see,
+      after you give the first push, you must leave it to them while YOU pretend
+      to run away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I don't know what to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What to make of anything!&rdquo; Mary finished for her. &ldquo;So that's all right!
+      Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and
+      tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures, but
+      I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned and
+      the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could manage at least twice as long
+      on the cost of the 'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone would have
+      lasted us a couple of months. There they were, before me, but I couldn't
+      steal 'em and sell 'em, and so&mdash;well, so I did what I could!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. &ldquo;It
+      seemed to be a success&mdash;what I could,&rdquo; she said, clasping her hands
+      behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+      accompaniment to her narrative. &ldquo;The girl Edith and her sister-in-law,
+      Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things on me.
+      The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it. He's what he
+      is. I like him.&rdquo; She paused reflectively, continuing, &ldquo;Edith's
+      'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not stupid, but I
+      think he's&mdash;&rdquo; She interrupted herself with a cheery outcry: &ldquo;Oh! I
+      mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make Edith like him, I
+      ought to respect him as a colleague.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand a thing you're talking about,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees
+      complained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+      always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that know.
+      He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those people you
+      wondered about at the theater, the last time we went&mdash;dressed in
+      ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She flatters
+      the father, and so did I, for that matter&mdash;but not that way. I
+      treated him outrageously!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of us
+      follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the
+      Palatine. He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em
+      listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present of the
+      house. What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples
+      panorama in the hall. He made us look at all the plumbing&mdash;bath-rooms
+      and everywhere else&mdash;and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples.
+      He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And
+      he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken a
+      prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed in
+      mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful and
+      nice&mdash;he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was
+      modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
+      after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street to
+      her house with them&mdash;her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim
+      Sheridan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. &ldquo;'Jim'!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Mary, PLEASE&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I'll make it as easy for you as I can, mamma. Mr.
+      James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe explained that
+      'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed that Mr. Lamhorn
+      was the only one near death's door on that account. Edith and Mrs. Roscoe
+      said they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They were objectionably
+      apologetic about it, and they seemed to think NOW we were going to have a
+      'good time' to make up for it. But I hadn't been bored at the dinner, I'd
+      been amused; and the 'good time' at Mrs. Roscoe's was horribly, horribly
+      stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mary,&rdquo; her mother began, &ldquo;is&mdash;is&mdash;&rdquo; And she seemed unable
+      to complete the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?
+      I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise&mdash;Oh, what
+      right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly my
+      kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the
+      Sheridan Building&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees cried. &ldquo;Surely not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and two other things of that kind&mdash;I don't know what. But,
+      after all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a
+      palace in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver
+      pieces had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I
+      shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it picturesque and stately&mdash;I'd
+      have been impressed. And what's the real difference? The icing is
+      temporary, and that's much more modest, isn't it? And why is it vulgar to
+      feel important more on account of something you've done yourself than
+      because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides, if we go back a
+      few generations, we've all got such hundreds of ancestors it seems idiotic
+      to go picking out one or two to be proud of ourselves about. Well, then,
+      mamma, I managed not to feel superior to Mr. James Sheridan, Junior,
+      because he didn't see anything out of place in the Sheridan Building in
+      sugar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+      conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head gravely.
+      &ldquo;My dear, dear child,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it seems to me&mdash;It looks&mdash;I'm
+      afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say as much of it as you can, mamma,&rdquo; said Mary, encouragingly. &ldquo;I can
+      get it, if you'll just give me one key-word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything you say,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, &ldquo;seems to have the air
+      of&mdash;it is as if you were seeking to&mdash;to make yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees,
+      speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. &ldquo;But you said that&mdash;that
+      you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan's
+      unentertaining&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at
+      dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+      understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she asked, gravely, &ldquo;is there anything else I can do? You and papa
+      don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the
+      only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress me.
+      That's all there is about it, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But nothing MUST distress you!&rdquo; the mother cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I say!&rdquo; said Mary, cheerfully. &ldquo;And so it doesn't. It's all
+      right.&rdquo; She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+      room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
+      the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet. &ldquo;Mother,
+      you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter whom a girl
+      marries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees protested. &ldquo;I never said such a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
+      marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
+      right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
+      One man as well as another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Mary, indulgently. &ldquo;I don't mean you and papa. But isn't
+      it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there must be
+      something in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that.&rdquo; And Mrs. Vertrees lifted
+      pleading eyes to her daughter&mdash;eyes that begged to be spared. &ldquo;It
+      sounds&mdash;almost reckless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. &ldquo;Never fret,
+      dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do&mdash;I've always
+      been too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does
+      our choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for
+      more than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very
+      house next door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
+      this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. &ldquo;Oh, the
+      one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he speak of it?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
+      But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
+      he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
+      'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
+      ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if&mdash;if one were
+      in the Sheridan family&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed a little ruefully&mdash;&ldquo;he
+      might be interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks
+      and bonds. I didn't see him after dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be something wrong with him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;They'd have
+      introduced him if there wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much&mdash;sometimes
+      people like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke
+      of sending him back to a machine-shop of some sort; I suppose he meant
+      when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr.
+      Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me; and
+      he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic change
+      came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, thoughtfully, &ldquo;I don't think he is; but he might be
+      uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he once
+      sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy just
+      then! I'm afraid I'll keep remembering&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't.&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the
+      remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. &ldquo;I'd keep my mind on pleasanter
+      things, Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary laughed and nodded. &ldquo;Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and
+      probably, if all were known, too good&mdash;even for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+      were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Edith, glancing casually into the &ldquo;ready-made&rdquo; library, stopped abruptly,
+      seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and
+      golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+                  <span style="margin-left: 4em;">FUGITIVE</span><br />
+<br />
+  I will forget the things that sting:<br />
+    &nbsp; The lashing look, the barbed word.<br />
+  I know the very hands that fling<br />
+    &nbsp; The stones at me had never stirred<br />
+  To anger but for their own scars.<br />
+    &nbsp; They've suffered so, that's why they strike.<br />
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars<br />
+    &nbsp; Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like<br />
+  These wounded ones I must not be,<br />
+    &nbsp; For, wounded, I might strike in turn!<br />
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free<br />
+    &nbsp; Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she
+      came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than
+      that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by
+      the poem. &ldquo;Pretty young, isn't it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There must have been
+      something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe the
+      poem did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low
+      voice: &ldquo;I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs.
+      I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't want them
+      to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about it; but
+      here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it aloud to the
+      whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what other poems I'd
+      written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more, and if I didn't,
+      why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought I'd die of shame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp,&rdquo; Bibbs suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every time
+      anybody speaks of the thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked grieved. &ldquo;The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
+      only seventeen when you wrote it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up!&rdquo; she snapped. &ldquo;I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time
+      I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was.
+      I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he said, comfortingly. &ldquo;It was the very most flattering thing
+      ever happened to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
+      machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I DON'T like it!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I don't even understand it&mdash;and
+      papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
+      truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe they expected father to endow the school,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE! I
+      hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how I
+      'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
+      thing, the way he says it. I hate it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another name
+      you might find&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance
+      I get.&rdquo; She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. &ldquo;I'd like to think
+      I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith!&rdquo; he called, as she went into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth do you mean?&rdquo; she said, coming back as far as the
+      threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I first came you couldn't look at me,&rdquo; Bibbs explained, in his
+      impersonal way. &ldquo;But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if I'd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's because you look so much better,&rdquo; she told him, cheerfully. &ldquo;This
+      month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium&mdash;the change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw,&rdquo; said Edith, with supreme
+      candor. &ldquo;But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
+      life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you
+      mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say. But
+      you're right about my not being able to look at you at first. You had a
+      kind of whiteness that&mdash;Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose, but
+      you've got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody could
+      look at you now, Bibbs, and no&mdash;not get&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;almost that!&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;And you're getting a better color
+      every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I'm afraid so,&rdquo; he said, ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean father
+      might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough. I heard
+      him say something about it the night of the&mdash;&rdquo; The jingle of a
+      distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. &ldquo;Bobby
+      Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the country.
+      Afternoon, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his
+      eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted almost
+      entirely of handsome &ldquo;uniform editions&rdquo;: Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith,
+      Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott,
+      Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe,
+      Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves of
+      encyclopedias, of anthologies, of &ldquo;famous classics,&rdquo; of &ldquo;Oriental
+      masterpieces,&rdquo; of &ldquo;masterpieces of oratory,&rdquo; and more shelves of &ldquo;selected
+      libraries&rdquo; of &ldquo;literature,&rdquo; of &ldquo;the drama,&rdquo; and of &ldquo;modern science.&rdquo; They
+      made an effective decoration for the room, all these big, expensive books,
+      with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames
+      that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an
+      impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief,
+      and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody
+      else considered them at all. Himself, he disturbed not one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house, and
+      white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs. &ldquo;Awready,
+      Mist' Bibbs,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you' ride, an'
+      she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at fo' 'clock.
+      Aw ready, suh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in the
+      manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the hall they
+      passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket opened the
+      door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the chauffeur in the car
+      which stood waiting in the driveway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I
+      first came home, George,&rdquo; said Bibbs, thoughtfully. &ldquo;What did you tell
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh!&rdquo; George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+      reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. &ldquo;You ast
+      me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty near ev'y
+      day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me twicet.&rdquo; He shook
+      his head solemnly. &ldquo;Look to me mus' be somep'm might lamiDAL 'bout 'at
+      statue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty lamiDAL!&rdquo; George, burst out laughing. &ldquo;What DO 'at word mean,
+      Mist' Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I nev' DID hear it!&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f
+      an' she pop in my head&mdash;'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so
+      good, seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do she?&rdquo; cried George. &ldquo;WHAT she mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's exactly the word for the statue,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with conviction, as he
+      climbed into the car. &ldquo;It's a lamiDAL statue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hiyi!&rdquo; George exulted. &ldquo;Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+      statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>	  &ldquo;I expect she is!&rdquo;
+       said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept
+      from sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in the
+      hallway. &ldquo;Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson&mdash;'I expec' she is!' Ev'y
+      day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways, las'
+      thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git well,
+      'at young man go' be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh, right
+      now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out with all 'at money, George!&rdquo; Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+      &ldquo;White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you. You the on'y man
+      bettin' on 'im!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I risk it!&rdquo; cried George, merrily. &ldquo;I put her all on now&mdash;ev'y cent!
+      'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for the
+      meaning of &ldquo;lamiDAL,&rdquo; differed radically from another prediction
+      concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some twenty
+      minutes later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees beside
+      him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon the highroad.
+      The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the occupants of Jim's
+      had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on the back seat&mdash;his
+      white face startlingly white against cap and collar of black fur&mdash;but
+      he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim waved his left hand carelessly. &ldquo;It's Bibbs, taking his
+      constitutional,&rdquo; he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I bowed to him, too, though I've never met him.
+      In fact, I've only seen him once&mdash;no, twice. I hope he won't think
+      I'm very bold, bowing to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if he noticed it,&rdquo; said honest Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see!&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is
+      funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he? How?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;He strikes me as anything but funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm his brother,&rdquo; Jim said, deprecatingly, &ldquo;but I don't know what
+      he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS his
+      brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half alive to
+      me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we were too
+      big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his own age.
+      He'd rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself. Nobody could
+      ever get him to DO anything; you can't get him to do anything now. He
+      never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I
+      believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever made! Father put him in
+      the machine-shop over at the Pump Works&mdash;best thing in the world for
+      him&mdash;and he was just plain no account. It made him sick! If he'd had
+      the right kind of energy&mdash;the kind father's got, for instance, or
+      Roscoe, either&mdash;why, it wouldn't have made him sick. And suppose it
+      was either of them&mdash;yes, or me, either&mdash;do you think any of us
+      would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it, but Bibbs
+      Sheridan'll never amount to anything as long as he lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked thoughtful. &ldquo;Is there any particular reason why he should?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
+      believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much money
+      his father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be carried on
+      by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've got and see
+      other fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things already, isn't it
+      every man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger? Isn't it his duty?
+      Don't we always want to get bigger and bigger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es&mdash;I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He
+      looked so lonely&mdash;and sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's gettin' better every day,&rdquo; Jim said. &ldquo;Dr. Gurney says so. There's
+      nothing much the matter with him, really&mdash;it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+      'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous diseases,
+      because they don't have time to imagine 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean his trouble is really mental?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he's not a lunatic,&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;He's just queer. Sometimes he'll say
+      something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off the
+      subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance, the
+      other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The darky
+      asked him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody else in
+      the world would have just said what time they DID want it, and that would
+      have been all there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says, and I heard him
+      with my own ears. 'What time do I want the car?' he says. 'Well, now, that
+      depends&mdash;that depends,' he says. He talks slow like that, you know.
+      'I'll tell you what time I want the car, George,' he says, 'if you'll tell
+      ME what you think of this statue!' That's exactly his words! Asked the
+      darky what he thought of that Arab Edith and mother bought for the hall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary pondered upon this. &ldquo;He might have been in fun, perhaps,&rdquo; she
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary&mdash;of a work of
+      art! Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just kind-hearted&mdash;and
+      that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Isn't there any way for us to get over this Mister
+      and Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed to be
+      with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you know
+      how I feel by this time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked panic-stricken immediately. &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; she protested, quickly.
+      &ldquo;No, I don't, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do,&rdquo; he said, and his voice shook a little. &ldquo;You couldn't help
+      knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do!&rdquo; she denied, hurriedly. &ldquo;I do help knowing. I mean&mdash;Oh,
+      wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for? You do know how I feel, and you&mdash;well, you've certainly
+      WANTED me to feel that way&mdash;or else pretended&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now!&rdquo; she lamented. &ldquo;You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Spoilin' it!'&rdquo; He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+      squarely. &ldquo;See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! Stop the car a minute.&rdquo; And when he had complied she faced him as
+      squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. &ldquo;Listen. I don't want
+      you to go on, to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean it's just a whim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest,
+      and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell me something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever told any man you loved him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. &ldquo;No,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that&mdash;or ever
+      know what it means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&mdash;you've just been flirting with me!&rdquo; Poor Jim looked both
+      furious and crestfallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one bit!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant
+      every single thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you don't!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start
+      the car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I have
+      not flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing more, and
+      then I want you to take me straight home, talking about the weather all
+      the way. I said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care' for any man, and
+      that is true. I doubt the existence of the kind of 'caring' we hear about
+      in poems and plays and novels. I think it must be just a kind of emotional
+      TALK&mdash;most of it. At all events, I don't feel it. Now, we can go
+      faster, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just where does that let me out?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;How does that excuse you
+      for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't an excuse,&rdquo; she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+      wholly desolate. &ldquo;I haven't said I should never marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Jim gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+      unfathomably sorrowful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise nothing,&rdquo; she said, faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't!&rdquo; shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. &ldquo;You needn't! By George!
+      I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise whenever
+      you're ready!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't forget what I asked,&rdquo; she begged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!&rdquo; cried the
+      happy Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields and
+      sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean air
+      beneath a glorious sky&mdash;that sky so despised in the city, and so
+      maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible for
+      men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+      resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.
+      How largely this apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his
+      face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the
+      result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than the
+      circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a month
+      before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it seemed
+      to Bibbs that she must have meant to convey her forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to his
+      experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the impression
+      that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her veil
+      tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind&mdash;and that
+      look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed
+      and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the
+      smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon, that
+      nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine shrouded
+      in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very heart of it,
+      for a commanded interview with his father, the distant cloud was like an
+      implacable genius issuing thunderously in smoke from his enchanted bottle,
+      and irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of November
+      late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and here the sky
+      shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray; the smoke did not
+      visibly permeate the air, but it was there, nevertheless&mdash;impalpable,
+      thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And then, as the car drove on, the
+      chimneys and stacks of factories came swimming up into view like miles of
+      steamers advancing abreast, every funnel with its vast plume, savage and
+      black, sweeping to the horizon, dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation
+      over league on league already rich and vile with grime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar
+      and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car
+      passed two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways
+      possible to make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and lurid
+      the next with the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing
+      blackened giants, half naked, in passionate action, struggling with
+      formless things in the hot illumination. And big as these shops were, they
+      were growing bigger, spreading over a third block, where two new
+      structures were mushrooming to completion in some hasty cement process of
+      a stability not over-reassuring. Bibbs pulled the rug closer about him,
+      and not even the phantom of color was left upon his cheeks as he passed
+      this place, for he knew it too well. Across the face of one of the
+      buildings there was an enormous sign: &ldquo;Sheridan Automatic Pump Co., Inc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and adding
+      their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses of a
+      thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots and
+      nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from one
+      another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch some
+      night when the right wind blew. They were only waiting for that wind and a
+      cigarette, and then they would all be gone together&mdash;a pinch of
+      incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there a
+      forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people said
+      it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure that
+      asphalt and &ldquo;improving&rdquo; the streets did it; but Bigness was in too Big a
+      hurry to bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles and
+      telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the thousand
+      to take their places. So he let the trees die and put up his poles. They
+      were hideous, but nobody minded that; and sometimes the wires fell and
+      killed people&mdash;but not often enough to matter at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the town where
+      the few solid old houses not already demolished were in transition: some,
+      with their fronts torn away, were being made into segments of
+      apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into trade, brazenly
+      putting forth &ldquo;show-windows&rdquo; on their first floors, seeming to mean it for
+      a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped humorously over the tops
+      of temporary office buildings of one story erected in the old front yards.
+      Altogether, the town here was like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after
+      Thanksgiving; the old ingredients were discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the
+      roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing while
+      the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before
+      it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet
+      above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them, rising
+      higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings were coming
+      down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked
+      underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders
+      in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the wind
+      like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners;
+      motor-cars of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings
+      and frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage;
+      steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic tentacle and claw;
+      riveters rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook to the thunder of
+      gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was the sound of
+      earthquake playing accompaniments for battle and sudden death. On one of
+      the new steel buildings no work was being done that afternoon. The
+      building had killed a man in the morning&mdash;and the steel-workers
+      always stop for the day when that &ldquo;happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+      brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the
+      pagan women&mdash;there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For the
+      Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush
+      and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be &ldquo;to the minute&rdquo; or his father would
+      consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's office
+      marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with his
+      entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under Sheridan's
+      direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or audible
+      suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to the new-comer. As
+      the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly stenographer, the last
+      of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that they all understood that he
+      was a failure as a great man's son, a disappointment, the &ldquo;queer one&rdquo; of
+      the family, and that he had been summoned to judgment&mdash;a well-founded
+      impression, for that was exactly what they understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+      fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+      silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his
+      big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They
+      were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as might be
+      still damp from a basin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said at last, not altering his attitude, &ldquo;do you know
+      what I'm goin' to do with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon the
+      ceiling. &ldquo;I heard you tell Jim,&rdquo; he began, in his slow way. &ldquo;You said
+      you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to Miss
+      Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo; said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That brought his father sharply round to face him. &ldquo;You beat the devil!
+      Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liver, maybe,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you organically.
+      No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter, and that's ALL the
+      matter. Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put through the big deals!
+      No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just sets out on the back fence
+      and thinks about how much trouble there must be in the world! That ain't
+      the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs; it's the kind that borrows
+      fifteen cents from his wife's uncle's brother-in-law to get ten cent's
+      worth o' plug tobacco and a nickel's worth o' quinine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned again
+      to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out there!&rdquo; he bade his son. &ldquo;Look out o' that window! Look at the
+      life and energy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
+      tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young men
+      are doin' in this town!&rdquo; He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk in
+      the middle of the room. &ldquo;Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look at
+      what your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look at Jim! I
+      made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last New-Year's, with
+      charge of every inch o' ground and every brick and every shingle and stick
+      o' wood we own; and it's an example to any young man&mdash;or ole man,
+      either&mdash;the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found out we wanted
+      two more big warehouses at the Pump Works&mdash;wanted 'em quick.
+      Contractors said it couldn't be done; said nine or ten months at the
+      soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What'd Jim do? Took the contract
+      himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process; kept men
+      on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day himself&mdash;and,
+      by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week! Four months and a
+      half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o' these fellers that
+      make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young man can be like Jim,
+      because there's mighty few got his ability, but every young man can go in
+      and do his share. This town is God's own country, and there's opportunity
+      for anybody with a pound of energy and an ounce o' gumption. I tell you
+      these young business men I watch just do my heart good! THEY don't set
+      around on the back fence&mdash;no, sir! They take enough exercise to keep
+      their health; and they go to a baseball game once or twice a week in
+      summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice families, with sons to take their
+      places sometime and carry on the work&mdash;because the work's got to go
+      ON! They're puttin' their life-blood into it, I tell you, and that's why
+      we're gettin' bigger every minute, and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why
+      it's all goin' to keep ON gettin' bigger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing
+      that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still
+      fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was
+      impelled to groan. &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is the way you always were.
+      I don't believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You don't LOOK
+      as if you did. By George! it's discouraging!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand about getting&mdash;about getting bigger,&rdquo; said Bibbs,
+      bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. &ldquo;I don't see
+      just why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT?&rdquo; Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+      staring across it incredulously at his son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand&mdash;exactly&mdash;what you want it all bigger for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great God!&rdquo; shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+      clenched fist. &ldquo;A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the poorest
+      day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did once,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted; &ldquo;when I was in the machine-shop. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wha'd he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said, 'Oh, hell!'&rdquo; answered Bibbs, mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I reckon he would!&rdquo; Sheridan swung away from the desk. &ldquo;I reckon he
+      certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the same answer, then?&rdquo; Bibbs's voice was serious, almost tremulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damnation!&rdquo; Sheridan roared. &ldquo;Did you ever hear the word Prosperity, you
+      ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the word
+      PROGRESS?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,
+      his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. &ldquo;Now then,&rdquo; he said,
+      huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, &ldquo;what do you want to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you WANT to do, I said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. &ldquo;What&mdash;what do&mdash;I&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him&mdash;a profound
+      shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his
+      shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to the
+      desk in school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you do? Loaf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo; Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it
+      made was unquestionably a guilty sound. &ldquo;I suppose I'd&mdash;I'd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I'd try to&mdash;to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing important&mdash;just poems and essays, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+      putting upon himself. &ldquo;That is, you want to write, but you don't want to
+      write anything of any account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan got up again. &ldquo;I take my hat off to the man that can write a good
+      ad,&rdquo; he said, emphatically. &ldquo;The best writin' talent in this country is
+      right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for good writin'&mdash;look
+      on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for that kind o' writin'.
+      Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried it, and I can't do it.
+      I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes people do the hardest
+      thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to make 'em give up their
+      MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell you when it comes to the
+      actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to make things HAPPEN, R. T.
+      Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo
+      Emerson ever knew in his whole life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you may be&mdash;&rdquo; Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word
+      smothered in a cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up
+      with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'! My
+      Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper without
+      havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane Eyre,' or 'East
+      Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why, look at Edith! I
+      expect that poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water mark for you, young
+      man, and it's the only one she's ever managed to write in her whole LIFE!
+      When I wanted her to go on and write some more she said it took too much
+      time. Said it took months and months. And Edith's a smart girl; she's got
+      more energy in her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in
+      your whole body, Bibbs. Now look at the facts: say she could turn out four
+      or five poems a year and you could turn out maybe two. That medal she got
+      was worth about fifteen dollars, so there's your income&mdash;thirty
+      dollars a year! That's a fine success to make of your life! I'm not sayin'
+      a word against poetry. I wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for
+      that poem of Edith's; and poetry's all right enough in its place&mdash;but
+      you leave it to the girls. A man's got to do a man's work in this world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+      Bibbs confidentially on the knee. &ldquo;This city's got the greatest future in
+      America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're goin'
+      to have a mighty fair share of it&mdash;a mighty fair share. I love this
+      town. It's God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every day right
+      along, I don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own business,
+      and I'd fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family. It's a
+      beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any district you
+      want to; look at the park system we're puttin' through, and the boulevards
+      and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she grows!&rdquo; He had become
+      intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. &ldquo;Now, Bibbs, I can't take any of
+      it&mdash;nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds&mdash;away with me
+      in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave my share in it to my
+      boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and a maker; and two blades
+      of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever I laid my hand on the
+      ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built big, and I want the buildin' to
+      go on. And when my last hour comes I want to know that my boys are ready
+      to take charge; that they're fit to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs,
+      when that hour comes I want to know that my boys are big men, ready and
+      fit to take hold of big things. Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that
+      the big share I've made mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in
+      the charge of my boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned back, deeply moved. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; he said, huskily. &ldquo;I've never
+      spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you to
+      understand&mdash;and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that
+      way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;At least I think I do. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute!&rdquo; Sheridan raised his hand. &ldquo;If you see the least bit in
+      the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here
+      and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you must
+      understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have him come
+      back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because he
+      couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs. I've had a
+      whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another, and I
+      reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does, anyway! Now
+      here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder than what I did the
+      other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw you needed to be
+      shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of moody and mopish&mdash;and
+      you needed work that'd keep you on the jump. Now, why did it make you sick
+      instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of done? I
+      pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look here, ain't it really because
+      he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says, 'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it,
+      it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it, and that affects his nervous
+      system. The more he tries it, the more he hates it; and the more he hates
+      it, the more injury it does him.' That ain't quite his words, but it's
+      what he meant. And that's about the way it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;that's about the way it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to
+      make you like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+      ghostly. &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice. &ldquo;I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't go back to the shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Can't like it. I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
+      exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father
+      should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious
+      stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from
+      childhood. &ldquo;By George, you will!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You'll go back there and
+      you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like it, and he says
+      it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks as if it was about
+      up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work doesn't kill
+      anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you, whether you hate it or not.
+      I've never made a mistake in a serious matter in my life, and it wasn't a
+      mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And I'm goin' to prove it&mdash;I'm
+      goin' to send you back there and vindicate my judgment. Gurney says it's
+      all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin' to learn the right one! He says
+      in a couple more months this fool thing that's been the matter with you'll
+      be disappeared completely and you'll be back in as good or better
+      condition than you were before you ever went into the shop. And right then
+      is when you begin over&mdash;right in that same shop! Nobody can call me a
+      hard man or a mean father. I do the best I can for my chuldern, and I take
+      full responsibility for bringin' my sons up to be men. Now, so far, I've
+      failed with you. But I'm not goin' to keep ON failin'. I never tackled a
+      job YET I didn't put through, and I'm not goin' to begin with my own son.
+      I'm goin' to make a MAN of you. By God! I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. &ldquo;You say you give
+      me a couple of months?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. &ldquo;Gurney said two months more
+      would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself
+      in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by, sir,&rdquo; said Bibbs, meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the &ldquo;lamidal&rdquo;
+       George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of
+      temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception of
+      himself as a permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the mantelpiece
+      the two photographs that he owned: one, a &ldquo;group&rdquo; twenty years old&mdash;his
+      father and mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys&mdash;and the other a
+      &ldquo;cabinet&rdquo; of Edith at sixteen. And upon a table were the books he had
+      taken from his trunk: Sartor Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque, Huckleberry
+      Finn, and Afterwhiles. There were some other books in the trunk&mdash;a
+      large one, which remained unremoved at the foot of the bed, adding to the
+      general impression of transiency. It contained nearly all the possessions
+      as well as the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs sat beside it, the
+      day after his interview with his father, raking over a small collection of
+      manuscripts in the top tray. Some of these he glanced through dubiously,
+      finding little comfort in them; but one made him smile. Then he shook his
+      head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to read it. It was written on
+      paper stamped &ldquo;Hood Sanitarium,&rdquo; and bore the title, &ldquo;Leisure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Having read so far as the word &ldquo;peace,&rdquo; Bibbs suffered an interruption
+      interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the hall
+      just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel was in
+      progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and
+      continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you BETTER go home!&rdquo; Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.
+      &ldquo;You better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, Edie!&rdquo; he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see here!&rdquo; This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+      tremulous. &ldquo;Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother
+      Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she
+      thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did!&rdquo; And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. &ldquo;Yes, you did!
+      YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it up
+      between Bobby Lamhorn and me because&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edie, Edie! Now, now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+      tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what
+      about his not going to HER house. How&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've explained that to Mother Sheridan.&rdquo; Sibyl's voice indicated that she
+      was descending the stairs. &ldquo;Married people are not the same. Some things
+      that should be shielded from a young girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. &ldquo;'Shielded from a
+      young girl'!&rdquo; she shrilled. &ldquo;You seem pretty willing to be the shield! You
+      look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+      pacification were renewed. &ldquo;Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,
+      and you'd oughtn't to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!&rdquo; the girl cried, passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!&rdquo; And Edith,
+      flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung round
+      it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself, face
+      down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no perception of
+      Bibbs's presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a passion of tears,
+      she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched fists. &ldquo;Sneak!&rdquo; she
+      babbled aloud. &ldquo;Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward
+      the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some
+      sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; don't go.&rdquo; She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob, and
+      repeated her request. &ldquo;Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet, anyhow.
+      Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at all, but I
+      wish you'd sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo; And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. &ldquo;Go ahead and
+      cry all you want, Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No harm in that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sibyl told mamma&mdash;OH!&rdquo; she began, choking. &ldquo;Mary Vertrees had mamma
+      and Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had
+      some women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid
+      herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em ever
+      since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn is so
+      bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice people in
+      town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it's a falsehood,
+      and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place I know the
+      reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I won't SAY what
+      it is&mdash;not yet&mdash;because papa and all of you would think I'm as
+      crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably quit
+      speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I ask. Just
+      you watch that woman. You'll see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching &ldquo;that woman.&rdquo; Glancing from
+      the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old house
+      next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked quickly up the
+      path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of calling. But he did
+      not mention this to his sister, who, after delivering herself of a rather
+      vague jeremiad upon the subject of her sister-in-law's treacheries,
+      departed to her own chamber, leaving him to his speculations. The chief of
+      these concerned the social elasticities of women. Sibyl had just been a
+      participant in a violent scene; she had suffered hot insult of a kind that
+      could not fail to set her quivering with resentment; and yet she elected
+      to betake herself to the presence of people whom she knew no more than
+      &ldquo;formally.&rdquo; Bibbs marveled. Surely, he reflected, some traces of emotion
+      must linger upon Sibyl's face or in her manner; she could not have ironed
+      it all quite out in the three or four minutes it took her to reach the
+      Vertreeses' door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+      wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+      master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+      anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+      casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose
+      that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+      intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+      antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may and
+      does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex as
+      well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is a
+      type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought
+      greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women and by
+      its own &ldquo;lack of perspective,&rdquo; for it is a type that never sees itself.
+      Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question&mdash;it was
+      like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not even
+      the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make a
+      certain impression she believed that she made it. She believed that she
+      was believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,&rdquo;
+       Mary said, when they were seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had been
+      brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark addressed to
+      her by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms. It was intended
+      partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an impression of
+      sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just thought I'd fly in a minute,&rdquo; she said, continuing the cooing to
+      relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. &ldquo;I thought I'd just behave like
+      REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far from
+      down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted to tell
+      you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that afternoon.
+      You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here before, I've had
+      to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely, and I really've known
+      scarcely anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed in business ever
+      since he was a mere boy, why, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+      afternoon,&rdquo; Sibyl went on. &ldquo;They're really delightful people. Indeed they
+      are! Yes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+      another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+      errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+      abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+      errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected with
+      the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of cheerful
+      ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people
+      here in town the other day,&rdquo; said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and
+      protracting it. &ldquo;They said something that took ME by surprise! We were
+      talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary interrupted her promptly. &ldquo;Do you mean 'mutual' to include my mother
+      and me?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+      ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. &ldquo;That's just
+      the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!&rdquo; she cried, with a vehemence that made Mary
+      stare. &ldquo;Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families here speak of
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.
+      &ldquo;I had the impression he was a friend of yours,&rdquo; she said; adding,
+      hastily, &ldquo;and your husband's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said the caller, absently. &ldquo;He is, certainly. A man's reputation
+      for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to married people,
+      of course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN it may be very,
+      very dangerous. There are a great many things safe and proper for married
+      people that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young girl. Don't you agree,
+      Miss Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; returned the frank Mary. &ldquo;Do you mean that you intend to
+      remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's doing
+      so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it exactly!&rdquo; was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. &ldquo;What I
+      feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable for
+      Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell you,&rdquo; she
+      cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, &ldquo;her father ought to put his
+      foot down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and then
+      retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one might
+      catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back into
+      hiding under a bush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Sibyl, much more composedly, &ldquo;I hardly need say that
+      it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as fond
+      of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting about
+      it. It would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with pathos,
+      but she flatted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the stress
+      of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not uncommonly
+      developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by
+      placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed.
+      In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness of Mary.
+      The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened to her
+      own frantic purpose&mdash;a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of penetrating
+      that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing that she was projecting the image
+      of herself that she desired to project, never dreaming that with every
+      word, every look, and every gesture she was more and more fully disclosing
+      the pitiable truth to the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw
+      was an overdressed woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as
+      a pan, but possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong&mdash;perhaps
+      even violent. What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began
+      to suspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled,&rdquo; Sibyl continued. &ldquo;It would be a
+      dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
+      Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
+      would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+      Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't
+      tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent and
+      hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too late.
+      You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just what
+      it's my duty to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, &ldquo;Does Miss Sheridan seem
+      to&mdash;to care very much about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's deliberately fascinated her,&rdquo; returned the visitor, beginning to
+      breathe quickly and heavily. &ldquo;Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she
+      wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that
+      were, and she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start that
+      made it easy for him&mdash;and he didn't need it. He could have done it,
+      anyway!&rdquo; Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice
+      shook. &ldquo;He went after her deliberately, the way he does everything; he's
+      as cold-blooded as a fish. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and
+      lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold of a piece of real
+      money&mdash;and there was Edith! And he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can
+      stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any money if she marries him,
+      and the only person that could make him understand that is Father
+      Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed, because Lamhorn is going to
+      hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so last night. He said he was
+      going to marry her the first minute he could persuade her to it&mdash;and
+      little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!&rdquo; Sibyl's eyes flashed green
+      again. &ldquo;And he swore he'd do it,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;He swore he'd marry Edith
+      Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+      creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
+      unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she saw
+      Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps&mdash;for
+      Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants might have heard. She saw
+      Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and Lamhorn&mdash;tired
+      of her&mdash;first evasive, then brutally letting her have the truth; and
+      at last, infuriated, &ldquo;swearing&rdquo; to marry her rival. If Sibyl had not
+      babbled out the word &ldquo;swore&rdquo; it might have been less plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, more quietly, &ldquo;whatever's going to be done ought to
+      be done right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard
+      about Lamhorn&mdash;oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before
+      Edith. I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because
+      nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend
+      would do. But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid to
+      ever come right out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith can
+      get anything she wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary
+      indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel rock.
+      If it's a question of his will against anybody else's he'd make his will
+      rule if it killed 'em both! Now, he'd never in the world let Lamhorn come
+      near the house again if he knew his reputation. So, you see, somebody's
+      got to tell him. It isn't a very easy position for me, is it, Miss
+      Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to be frank,&rdquo; said Sibyl, smiling, &ldquo;that's why I've come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To ME!&rdquo; Mary frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl rippled and cooed again. &ldquo;There isn't ANYBODY ever made such a hit
+      with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL hope
+      you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the family!&rdquo;
+       (This sally with another and louder effect of laughter). &ldquo;And if it's MY
+      duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this
+      story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a good
+      reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose (what's
+      most likely) she loses her temper and says I invented it, then what am I
+      going to do? Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter,
+      and they're out of the question, anyway. But suppose I could say: 'All
+      right, if you want proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came with me, and she's
+      waiting in the next room right now, to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Mary, quickly. &ldquo;You mustn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen just a minute more,&rdquo; Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
+      ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. &ldquo;You
+      naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but if
+      YOU take part in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what weight
+      you carry over there, and no one would have the right to say you did it
+      except out of the purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and his father
+      would admire you all the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen! Don't you see
+      we OUGHT to do it, you and I? Do you suppose Robert Lamhorn cares a snap
+      of his finger for her? Do you suppose a man like him would LOOK at Edith
+      Sheridan if it wasn't for the money?&rdquo; And again Sibyl's emotion rose to
+      the surface. &ldquo;I tell you he's after nothing on earth but to get his finger
+      in that old man's money-pile, over there, next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to
+      do it. Marry Edith?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I tell you he'd marry their nigger cook
+      for THAT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, afraid&mdash;at the wrong time&mdash;that she had been too
+      vehement, but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she
+      had produced the effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was
+      staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She
+      became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+      money-pile, over there, next door!&rdquo; The voice was vulgar, the words were
+      vulgar&mdash;and the plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary
+      Vertrees's ears! The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly in the
+      flawed one at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her
+      bargain. &ldquo;Now don't you worry,&rdquo; she said, sunnily, &ldquo;about this setting
+      Edith against you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she
+      tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in
+      over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a
+      house, and Jim likes to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that way;
+      she's too crazy to have you take her around with the smart crowd, but if
+      she DID, you needn't worry. And another thing&mdash;I guess you won't mind
+      Jim's own sister-in-law speaking of it. Of course, I don't know just how
+      matters stand between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about as much
+      alike as two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up his mind;
+      sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD. Now, what I mean is,
+      sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like that. There's
+      lots of little things can be said, and lots&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and
+      now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or any
+      other kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered something
+      neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and that she
+      would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of
+      absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her guest was
+      talking. And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think this
+      unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first considered it. There
+      might have been more excuse for it, she thought, had she been speaking of
+      matters less important&mdash;offering to do the girl all the kindness in
+      her power, too!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of her
+      shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory of the
+      furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and engravings. Then
+      she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window and stood looking
+      out upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair she had abandoned,
+      and sat again. There was no sound in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her face,
+      and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary&mdash;scarlet to the ears. She
+      looked at her watch again&mdash;and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since
+      she had looked at it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let
+      herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her
+      own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. &ldquo;Saw you from the window,&rdquo; he
+      explained. &ldquo;You must find a lot to say to that old lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What old lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the daughter
+      come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk on up the
+      street. Don't stand out on the porch,&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;Come in here.
+      There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you about. Come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house and
+      started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,
+      staring fixedly. &ldquo;Something's the matter over there,&rdquo; he muttered, and
+      then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, &ldquo;What's the
+      matter over there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed,
+      and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity,
+      and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had
+      followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she was
+      crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; gasped Roscoe. &ldquo;I believe somebody's dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he started for the New House at a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon, and
+      at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from foreign
+      parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with Sheridan and
+      his colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name, was a gentleman
+      of Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and Sheridan took
+      pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's finest city. They got
+      into an open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan Building, and were
+      driven first, slowly and momentously, through the wholesale district and
+      the retail district; then more rapidly they inspected the packing-houses
+      and the stock-yards; then skirmished over the &ldquo;park system&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;boulevards&rdquo;; and after that whizzed through the &ldquo;residence section&rdquo; on
+      their way to the factories and foundries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All cray,&rdquo; observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Cray'?&rdquo; echoed Sheridan. &ldquo;I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No white,&rdquo; said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the long rows
+      of houses on both sides of the street. &ldquo;No white lace window-curtains; all
+      cray lace window-curtains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh. I see!&rdquo; Sheridan laughed indulgently. &ldquo;You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
+      ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. &ldquo;There are NO white ones,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white window-curtains,
+      no white house, no white peeble!&rdquo; He pointed upward. &ldquo;Smoke!&rdquo; Then he
+      sniffed the air and clasped his nose between forefinger and thumb. &ldquo;Smoke!
+      Smoke ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites.&rdquo; He tapped his chest. &ldquo;Smoke in
+      your lunks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! SMOKE!&rdquo; Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+      patently finding it delicious. &ldquo;You BET we got smoke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exbensif!&rdquo; said Herr Favre. &ldquo;Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in
+      summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan laughed uproariously. &ldquo;They know it means new spring hats for
+      'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must need many, too!&rdquo; said the visitor. &ldquo;New hats, new all things,
+      but nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing peeble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip, and I
+      tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty dirty
+      and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin' right
+      down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town than in
+      Munich? I know you got more enterprise up there than the part of the old
+      country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're associated
+      with others like you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place, wouldn't you
+      heap rather be here than over there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me,&rdquo; said Herr Favre, &ldquo;no. Here I should not think I was living. It
+      would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
+      like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes.&rdquo; And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. &ldquo;The first generation,
+      they bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are Americans,
+      like you.&rdquo; He tapped his host's big knee genially. &ldquo;You are patriot; so
+      are they.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+      Farver!&rdquo; Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. &ldquo;You certainly stand up for your own
+      town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would here.
+      Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT&mdash;after you've seen
+      our city! It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire you
+      for it; every man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees the
+      other fellow's got the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in your
+      heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live right here than any place else in the
+      world, if you had your choice. Man alive! this is God's country, Mr.
+      Farver, and a blind man couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand where
+      you do in a business way and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are. This is
+      the big works, and I'll show you something now that'll make your eyes
+      stick out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+      personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+      president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll take you for a spin in the country,&rdquo; said Sheridan, when at last
+      they came out to the car again. &ldquo;We'll take a breezer.&rdquo; But, with his foot
+      on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out of the office
+      smiling a greeting. &ldquo;Hello, young fellow!&rdquo; Sheridan said, heartily. &ldquo;On
+      the job, are you, Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of it very often, I
+      guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in the country sometimes
+      with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside you!&rdquo; He roared with
+      laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder. &ldquo;That's all right with me&mdash;if
+      it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we goin' to move into your new
+      warehouses? Monday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sunday, if you want to,&rdquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried his father, delighted. &ldquo;Don't tell me you're goin' to keep
+      your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
+      contractor yet didn't want more time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be all ready for you on the minute,&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;I'm going over
+      both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I guess
+      they'll pass inspection, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, when you get through with that,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;you go and
+      take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell her you
+      stand high with ME!&rdquo; He stepped into the car, waving a waggish farewell,
+      and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his companion a
+      broad face literally shining with pride. &ldquo;That's my boy Jimmie!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine young man, yes,&rdquo; said Herr Favre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got two o' the finest boys,&rdquo; said Sheridan, &ldquo;I got two o' the finest
+      boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and I
+      tell you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM in
+      bed! My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's a
+      wizard. You saw them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?
+      Well, JIM built 'em. I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver.&rdquo; And he recited
+      this history, describing the new process at length; in fact, he had such
+      pride in Jim's achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it more than
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine young man, yes,&rdquo; repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an
+      hour later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is that!&rdquo; said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: &ldquo;I got a fine
+      family, Mr. Farver&mdash;fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her
+      and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.
+      There's culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,
+      and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it&mdash;her and
+      my daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.
+      I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and
+      you'll see&mdash;and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been
+      holdin' their own with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for
+      much o' that kind o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern;
+      and my daughter she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem she
+      wrote when I get you up at the house. She wrote it in school and took the
+      first prize for poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em any
+      smarter'n that girl, Mr. Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're a
+      pretty happy family; yes, sir. Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet, and I
+      haven't ever spoke to him and his wife about it&mdash;it's kind of a
+      delicate matter&mdash;but it's about time the wife and I saw some
+      gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker for about four
+      or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys, I hope, o'
+      course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+      splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard me
+      joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods here,
+      and I guess it was a mighty good stock&mdash;to raise HER! She's one these
+      girls that stand right up and look at you! And pretty? She's the prettiest
+      thing you ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good sense. Jim'll be
+      just right if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME to think o' the way
+      that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder. Four months and a half! Yes,
+      sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain the
+      stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they
+      reached the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan
+      allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were
+      shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, good night, Mr. Farver,&rdquo; said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+      shake hands with his guest. &ldquo;Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and
+      take you up to&mdash;Go on away, boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, &ldquo;Extry! Secon'
+      Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo; laughed Sheridan. &ldquo;Who wants to read about accidents? Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy moved away philosophically. &ldquo;Extry! Extry!&rdquo; he shrilled. &ldquo;Three
+      men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
+      Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't forget, Mr. Farver,&rdquo; Sheridan completed his interrupted farewells.
+      &ldquo;I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be here for you
+      about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed the drive much
+      as I have. Good night&mdash;good night!&rdquo; He leaned back, speaking to the
+      chauffer. &ldquo;Now you can take me around to the Central City barber-shop,
+      boy. I want to get a shave 'fore I go up home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry! Extry!&rdquo; screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+      bats in the dusk. &ldquo;Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!&rdquo; It
+      struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many &ldquo;Extras&rdquo;; they printed
+      &ldquo;Extras&rdquo; for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake,
+      he decided, critically. Crying &ldquo;Wolf!&rdquo; too often wouldn't sell the goods;
+      it was bad business. The papers would &ldquo;make more in the long run,&rdquo; he was
+      sure, if they published an &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; only when something of real importance
+      happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!&rdquo; a boy squawked under his
+      nose, as he descended from the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on away!&rdquo; said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see
+      the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+      barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus
+      cried his wares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Yallern,&rdquo; said this second, hoarse with awe, &ldquo;'n't chew know who
+      that IS?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's SHERIDAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeest!&rdquo; cried the first, staring insanely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about the same hour, four times a week&mdash;Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+      and Saturday&mdash;Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+      barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was their
+      habit to give him a &ldquo;reception,&rdquo; his entrance being always the signal for
+      a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses of briskness
+      and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shop was crowded. Copies of the &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; were being read by men
+      waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. &ldquo;Extras&rdquo; lay upon
+      vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+      patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened the
+      door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering of a
+      firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men turned
+      their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing silence
+      in the shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
+      left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section
+      of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above
+      it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's
+      closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber
+      remembered that there are no circumstances in life&mdash;or just after it&mdash;under
+      which a man does not need to be shaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped forward, profoundly grave. &ldquo;I be through with this man in the
+      chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan,&rdquo; he said, in a hushed tone. &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo;
+       And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, &ldquo;You goin'
+      RESIGN?&rdquo; he demanded in a fierce undertone. &ldquo;You goin' take Mist'
+      Sheridan's coat?&rdquo; He sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,
+      taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of
+      subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan,&rdquo; said the head barber, gently.
+      &ldquo;I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Go on get through with your man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo; And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+      Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know
+      what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand
+      for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been
+      imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd
+      look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the shop,
+      and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly shifted,
+      furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after wondering
+      if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the night before;
+      but there was no vacancy in either line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of the
+      &ldquo;Extra&rdquo; there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The first
+      of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+    </p>
+<div class="blok"><p class="c">
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to<br />
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the
+      print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,
+      pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've come for you, father,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Here's the boy with your coat
+      and hat. Put them on and come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
+      strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+      calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop, but
+      as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his son's
+      sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood face to
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo; His mouth could not do him the service he asked
+      of it, he was so frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extry!&rdquo; screamed a newsboy straight in his face. &ldquo;Young North Side
+      millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not&mdash;JIM!&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And YOU come to tell me that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
+      first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered cry
+      of accusation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why wasn't it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three days
+      later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite in his
+      mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs wondered
+      how many million times that had happened since men first made a word to
+      name the sons of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his strong
+      brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead son. He had
+      nothing to help him meet the shock, neither definite religion nor
+      &ldquo;philosophy&rdquo; definite or indefinite. He could only beat his forehead and
+      beg, over and over, to be killed with an ax, while his wife was helpless
+      except to entreat him not to &ldquo;take on,&rdquo; herself adding a continuous
+      lamentation. Edith, weeping, made truce with Sibyl and saw to it that the
+      mourning garments were beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed, and he shirked,
+      justifying himself curiously by saying he &ldquo;never had any experience in
+      such matters.&rdquo; So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who became, during this
+      dreadful little time, the master of the house; for as strange a thing as
+      that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He met the relatives from
+      out of town at the station; he set the time for the funeral and the time
+      for meals; he selected the flowers and he selected Jim's coffin; he did
+      all the grim things and all the other things. Jim had belonged to an order
+      of Knights, who lengthened the rites with a picturesque ceremony of their
+      own, and at first Bibbs wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he
+      offered no objection&mdash;he divined that the Knights and their service
+      would be not precisely a consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So
+      the Knights led the procession, with their band playing a dirge part of
+      the long way to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two
+      lines, plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the
+      carriages pass between.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty fine-lookin' men,&rdquo; said Sheridan, brokenly. &ldquo;They all&mdash;all
+      liked him. He was&mdash;&rdquo; His breath caught in a sob and choked him. &ldquo;He
+      was&mdash;a Grand Supreme Herald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had divined aright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dust to dust,&rdquo; said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+      Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
+      shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to &ldquo;Dust to dust.&rdquo; Bibbs stood
+      passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a
+      familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long
+      time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between
+      himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if he
+      had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close&mdash;as
+      Dr. Gurney predicted&mdash;that no one would be able to tell the
+      difference between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him
+      truly, would be all the more determined to &ldquo;make a man&rdquo; of him, now that
+      there was a man less in the family. To Bibbs's knowledge, no one and
+      nothing had ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans,
+      once he had determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing
+      that any plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His
+      nature unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible
+      persistence, and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way
+      he would hold to that way of &ldquo;making a man&rdquo; of Bibbs, who understood very
+      well, in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
+      make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The truth
+      about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so thoroughly
+      formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that no doubt he
+      had forgotten&mdash;by this time&mdash;where he had put some of them,
+      especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
+      feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange to
+      his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that Sheridan's
+      plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would bring about a
+      good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was to be, the son
+      had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the big, woeful
+      figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid hands upon
+      Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering; Edith wept
+      audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her husband; but
+      Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and Bibbs
+      nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line of
+      waiting carriages. Roscoe understood&mdash;Bibbs would stay and see the
+      grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over the
+      turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the carriages
+      filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs gazed
+      steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking back as
+      he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not want to see.
+      But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the
+      gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had gone. A coupe had
+      been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it,
+      and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking
+      thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock
+      beneath the darkening November sky. &ldquo;It's too bad!&rdquo; he half whispered, his
+      lips forming the words&mdash;and his meaning was that it was too bad that
+      the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was his last thought
+      before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone,
+      on the other side of the drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope
+      where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric
+      and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned
+      columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved
+      children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting&mdash;in unthought
+      pathos&mdash;their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such a
+      background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long
+      and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
+      undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
+      box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without hope and
+      without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting&mdash;she
+      was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a graveyard is not
+      the place for people to look charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused
+      than Bibbs. In &ldquo;Edith's&rdquo; poem he had declared his intention of hiding his
+      heart &ldquo;among the stars&rdquo;; and in his boyhood one day he had successfully
+      hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade of other boys or
+      of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were only a few
+      fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All his life Bibbs
+      had kept himself to himself&mdash;he was but a shy onlooker in the world.
+      Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the unexpected lady before
+      him had causes other than his shyness and her unexpectedness. For Mary
+      Vertrees had been a shining figure in the little world of late given to
+      the view of this humble and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes
+      find their hearts beating faster than those of the actors in the
+      spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started and stared; he lifted his hat
+      with incredible awkwardness, his fingers fumbling at his forehead before
+      they found the brim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; said Mary, &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
+      you. I&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;yes,&rdquo; Bibbs stammered. &ldquo;I'll&mdash;I'll be de&mdash;Won't
+      you get in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then
+      Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're very kind,&rdquo; she said, somewhat breathlessly. &ldquo;I should have had to
+      walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It&mdash;it is beginning to get dark. I&mdash;I
+      noticed that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; Mary began, confusedly. She bit her
+      lip, sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure. &ldquo;It must seem odd, my&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Bibbs protested, earnestly. &ldquo;Not in the&mdash;in the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does, though,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I had not intended to come to the cemetery,
+      Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered
+      to me that 'the family wished me to'&mdash;I think your sister sent him.
+      So I came. But when we reached here I&mdash;oh, I felt that perhaps I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded gravely. &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;I mean
+      opposite from&mdash;from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in
+      the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time it takes. From
+      where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving&mdash;at least I didn't
+      notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here. I
+      didn't know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they
+      didn't think to wait for me. That's why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo; And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary looked out through the dusty window. &ldquo;I think we'd better be going
+      home, if you please,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Bibbs agreed, not moving. &ldquo;It will be dark before we get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a quick little glance. &ldquo;I think you must be very tired, Mr.
+      Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;If you'll
+      let me, I'll&mdash;&rdquo; And without explaining her purpose she opened the
+      door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Driver!&rdquo; she called, in her clear voice, loudly. &ldquo;Driver! We'd like to
+      start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+      please.&rdquo; The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once
+      more. &ldquo;I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I suppose
+      they have a great deal of night work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice. &ldquo;I've
+      never been able to apologize quickly,&rdquo; he said, with his accustomed
+      slowness, &ldquo;because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe whipped me
+      once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil. It took me so
+      long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle
+      voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state of
+      their vehicle was an &ldquo;accident.&rdquo; She had formed a casual impression of
+      him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was unlike
+      any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she saw a
+      picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy hammering
+      a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not that picture
+      alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a glimpse of
+      Bibbs's life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new to her
+      experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little; and then,
+      with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat so long,
+      after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had not started.
+      What she did not realize, however, was that she had made no response to
+      his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates, neither having
+      spoken again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was silence.
+      The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a rich
+      presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the two
+      could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither had
+      any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling presently
+      on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance, of the
+      plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible, coughing
+      asthmatically, or saying, &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; with a spiritless flap of the whip
+      upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps at
+      street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and, thinning
+      rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness. And yet
+      neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral broke the
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it&mdash;too late. Abruptly
+      she realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+      companion and not talking to him. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she began, not knowing
+      what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized
+      the queerness of this drive&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. Sheridan, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The coupe stopped. &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; said the driver, reproachfully, and climbed
+      down and opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo; Bibbs inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+      mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Bibbs demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're there, sir,&rdquo; said the driver, sympathetically. &ldquo;Next house north of
+      Mr. Sheridan's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs descended to the curb. &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, you seem to be
+      right.&rdquo; And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front windows
+      of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me help you,&rdquo; said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she
+      was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;I think I can&mdash;&rdquo; She meant that she could get
+      out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already
+      accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, JOE!&rdquo; cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he rumbled
+      away at his team's best pace&mdash;a snail's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; said Mary, stiffly. She
+      did not offer her hand. &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked beside
+      her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran. Realization
+      of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her, beginning to shock
+      her; she stepped aside from the light that fell through the glass panels
+      of the door and withheld her hand as it touched the old-fashioned
+      bell-handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm quite safe, thank you,&rdquo; she said, with a little emphasis. &ldquo;Good
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the street
+      he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+      from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are your eyes, Bibbs?&rdquo; demanded Roscoe. &ldquo;Sleep-walking, as usual?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. &ldquo;Come over to our house for a
+      little while, Bibbs,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;I want to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'd better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet over
+      there&mdash;all worn out. Just come for a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with real
+      feeling: &ldquo;'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And I don't
+      wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get down sick
+      again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and was
+      grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+      decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+      heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+      leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+      recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed
+      Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted, she
+      went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you. How
+      did you happen to be there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had only been to the door,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Good night, Sibyl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;We saw you coming out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't,&rdquo; he explained, moving to depart. &ldquo;I'd just brought Miss
+      Vertrees home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, and stepped out upon the porch, &ldquo;that was it. Good night,
+      Sibyl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; she said, following him across the threshold. &ldquo;How did that
+      happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the&mdash;the&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there,&rdquo; he said, reluctantly. &ldquo;She had
+      walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were leaving.
+      When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow
+      breathlessness. &ldquo;And she drove home from Jim's funeral&mdash;with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually
+      over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the door
+      shut behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.
+      The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it
+      seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and
+      that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had she
+      wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement? He
+      found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he wished
+      that he had not encountered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering about
+      the house, several mournfully admiring the &ldquo;Bay of Naples,&rdquo; and others
+      occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for trains.
+      Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but Bibbs
+      interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives summoned to
+      the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon Sheridan from
+      Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of him. He
+      ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last by accident.
+      Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard a murmurous sound,
+      and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a quavering and rickety
+      voice, monotonously bleating:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that; we
+      got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin' along, and
+      I've seen a-many of 'em go&mdash;two daughters and a son the Lord give me,
+      and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth
+      away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the Shuhite
+      says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people, nor any
+      remaining in his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in his
+      underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging
+      backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard and
+      gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but Uncle
+      Gideon paid no attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bildad the Shuhite spake and he says, 'If thy children have sinned
+      against Him and He have cast them away&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows rattled.
+      The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but Uncle Gideon
+      leaped from his chair. &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+      Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+      discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy of
+      fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+      &ldquo;flash-lights&rdquo; of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+      explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the
+      Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded him
+      to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing the
+      door of his father's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several
+      attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was
+      a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to
+      convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train. They were the last
+      to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to the
+      window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary
+      Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book
+      half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+  <p>Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, &ldquo;Darktown is Out To-night.&rdquo;  That
+  is natural&mdash;but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.</p>
+
+<p>  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady&mdash;
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.</p>
+
+<p>
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak&mdash;she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as&mdash;as Bildad the Shuhite!</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
+      period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
+      and slippers, and went softly out into the hall&mdash;to his father's
+      door. Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in
+      the evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room&mdash;but the food
+      was untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
+      There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
+      bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+      experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little pause&mdash;sleep
+      has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is a curious half-void, a
+      glimpse of aphasia; and although the person experiencing it may not know
+      for that instant his own name or age or sex, he may be acutely conscious
+      of depression or elation. It is the moment, as we say, before we
+      &ldquo;remember&rdquo;; and for the first time in Bibbs's life it came to him bringing
+      a vague happiness. He woke to a sense of new riches; he had the feeling of
+      a boy waking to a birthday. But when the next moment brought him his
+      memory, he found nothing that could explain his exhilaration. On the
+      contrary, under the circumstances it seemed grotesquely unwarranted.
+      However, it was a brief visitation and was gone before he had finished
+      dressing. It left a little trail, the pleased recollection of it and the
+      puzzle of it, which remained unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the
+      morning is not usually the result of a drive home from a funeral. No
+      wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs Sheridan!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father had gone when he came down-stairs. &ldquo;Went on down to 's office,
+      jes' same,&rdquo; Jackson informed him. &ldquo;Came sat breakfas'-table, all by
+      'mself; eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat a
+      thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I reckon
+      putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
+      passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried a
+      little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be seen.
+      Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved herself
+      able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving calls in the
+      earliest stages of &ldquo;mourning.&rdquo; Lunch was as usual&mdash;for Jim and his
+      father had always lunched down-town&mdash;and the afternoon was as usual.
+      Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother went with him, as she sometimes
+      did when the weather was pleasant. Altogether, the usualness of things was
+      rather startling to Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.
+      &ldquo;But you wouldn't remember about that,&rdquo; she said, after narrating an
+      episode. &ldquo;You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that.
+      And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon
+      it'll just about kill your father to put somebody in his place as
+      president of the Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe over;
+      he told me last week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any one man
+      could handle and not go crazy. Oh, it's a pity&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped to wipe
+      her eyes. &ldquo;It's a pity you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and kind o'
+      pick up his ways. Think what it'd meant to papa now! You never did run
+      with either Roscoe or Jim any, even before you got sick. Of course, you
+      were younger; but it always DID seem queer&mdash;and you three bein'
+      brothers like that. I don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit down
+      together for a good talk in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother, I've been away so long,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, gently. &ldquo;And since I
+      came home I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Jim ain't been home much
+      of an evening since you got back&mdash;what with his work and callin' and
+      goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house for
+      dinner. Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some
+      miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'
+      the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he
+      told papa he would. I reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if
+      there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you
+      scarcely really knew him right well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't
+      much to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know
+      much about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!&rdquo; she moaned. &ldquo;And you'll have to learn to
+      know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it
+      was all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will
+      just kill him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this! You
+      mustn't LET him, Bibbs&mdash;you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved
+      over you, and now he can't stand any more&mdash;he just can't! Whatever he
+      says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise me
+      you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would if I could,&rdquo; he said, sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Why can't you?&rdquo; she cried, clutching his arm. &ldquo;He wants you to go
+      back to the machine-shop and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;'like it'!&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's it&mdash;to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it
+      wouldn't hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit&mdash;the doctor said
+      that himself, Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for
+      your father? You ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a
+      beautiful house to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur
+      coats and warm clothes; you been taken care of all your life. And you
+      don't KNOW how he worked for the money to give all these things to you!
+      You don't DREAM what he had to go through and what he risked when we were
+      startin' out in life; and you never WILL know! And now this blow has
+      fallen on him out of a clear sky, and you make it out to be a hardship to
+      do like he wants you to! And all on earth he asks is for you to go back to
+      the work in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you! That's all he asks.
+      Look, Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we get there I want
+      you to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to. Promise me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see him
+      better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her before
+      he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she exclaimed, satisfied. &ldquo;That's a good boy! That's all I wanted
+      you to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't give me any credit,&rdquo; he said, ruefully. &ldquo;There isn't anything else
+      for me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he soothed her. &ldquo;We'll have to begin to make the spirit a
+      cheerful one. We may&mdash;&rdquo; They were turning into their own driveway as
+      he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was
+      visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the
+      door open behind her. She bowed gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'We may'&mdash;what?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo; said Bibbs, blankly. &ldquo;Well, what WERE we saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the queer boys!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You always were. Always! You haven't
+      forgot what you just promised me, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, as the car stopped. &ldquo;No, the spirit will be as cheerful
+      as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she failed
+      to hear his final words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behave like who, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was fretful in her grief. &ldquo;You said it wouldn't do to behave like
+      SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was just nonsense,&rdquo; he explained, turning to go in. &ldquo;An obscure person
+      I don't think much of lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behave like WHO?&rdquo; she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+      insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell Dr.
+      Gurney about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like Bildad the Shuhite!&rdquo; was what Bibbs said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was Sheridan's
+      custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the library, while his
+      wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit) or allowed herself to
+      be repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms of solitaire. To-night
+      she did neither, but sat in her customary chair, gazing at the fire, while
+      Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his lap, though now and then he
+      lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall back upon his knees again. Bibbs
+      came in noiselessly and sat in a corner, doing nothing; and from a
+      &ldquo;reception-room&rdquo; across the hall an indistinct vocal murmur became just
+      audible at intervals. Once, when this murmur grew louder, under stress of
+      some irrepressible merriment, Edith's voice could be heard&mdash;&ldquo;Bobby,
+      aren't you awful!&rdquo; and Sheridan glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose at once and went into the &ldquo;reception-room&rdquo;; there was a flurry of
+      whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall&mdash;Edith and her
+      suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned to
+      her chair in the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't bother you any more, papa,&rdquo; she said, in a comforting voice.
+      &ldquo;She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening, and
+      I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd already
+      told him he could.&rdquo; She paused, then added, rather guiltily: &ldquo;I got kind
+      of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used to. Maybe&mdash;maybe
+      you better ask Roscoe, papa.&rdquo; And as Sheridan nodded solemnly, she
+      concluded, in haste: &ldquo;Don't say I said to. I might be wrong about it,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+      Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+      brought tears. &ldquo;That Miss Vertrees was a good girl,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;SHE was
+      all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of thought,
+      for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you&mdash;How did you fix it about the&mdash;the Realty Company?&rdquo; she
+      faltered. &ldquo;Did you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair. &ldquo;I
+      fixed it,&rdquo; he said, in a husky voice. &ldquo;I moved Cantwell up, and put
+      Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the four
+      men with salaries high enough to take it.&rdquo; He went to her, put his hand
+      upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath. &ldquo;It's my
+      bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up.&rdquo; He dropped the hand from her shoulder and
+      moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped and spoke
+      again, without turning to look at her. &ldquo;The Realty Company'll go right on
+      just the same,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's like&mdash;it's like sand, mamma. It puts
+      me in mind of chuldern playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks his
+      finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of 'em'll pat the place
+      with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill it up and
+      settle against one another; and then, right away it's flat on top again,
+      and you can't tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty Company'll go
+      on all right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I reckon, that
+      wouldn't go right on&mdash;just the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread
+      upon the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+      &ldquo;It's so forlone,&rdquo; she said, chokingly. &ldquo;That's the first time he spoke
+      since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to
+      hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come,
+      right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She just
+      seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what Sibyl
+      said the other day, and&mdash;and you heard what&mdash;what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Edith said to Sibyl?&rdquo; Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;Oh, it looks as if
+      movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares me!&rdquo;
+       She put both her hands over her face. &ldquo;Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you only
+      wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son! I don't
+      know what we're all comin' to!&rdquo; And, weeping, she followed her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man who
+      has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room&mdash;it was called
+      &ldquo;the smoking-room&rdquo;&mdash;where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up
+      in no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a
+      less conspicuous adjacency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good evening,&rdquo; said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a leather
+      easy-chair near them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he returned, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She frowned. &ldquo;Did you want something?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't be
+      going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left for
+      me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'CHAT with'!&rdquo; she echoed, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can talk about almost anything,&rdquo; said Bibbs with an air of genial
+      politeness. &ldquo;It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about business&mdash;if
+      that's what you happened to be talking about. But you aren't in business,
+      are you, Mr. Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not, either,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+      noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
+      to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of which
+      had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he sat
+      expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if implying
+      that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with a mixture of
+      astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was obviously
+      disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in presenting
+      the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in
+      his mind at any time except &ldquo;personalities&rdquo;&mdash;he could talk about
+      people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous, offered the
+      weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+      leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for the
+      rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would move, and
+      Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just going,&rdquo; he said, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh NO!&rdquo; Edith cried, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Good night! I think I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too bad,&rdquo; said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+      while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard
+      Bibbs offering to &ldquo;help&rdquo; Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather
+      curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed by
+      the closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you?&rdquo; she cried, furiously. &ldquo;What do you MEAN? How
+      did you dare come in there when you knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+      stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up, a
+      few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Bibbs,&rdquo; she said, shaking her head woefully, &ldquo;you'd oughtn't to
+      distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the
+      house. You'd ought to been more considerate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+      naive shadow motionless across its threshold. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He doesn't
+      appear to be much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: &ldquo;You call yourself one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't claim&mdash;&rdquo;
+       But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, sighing. &ldquo;That's almost the first time in my life I ever
+      tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in what I
+      tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hurt her feelin's,&rdquo; she groaned. &ldquo;You must 'a' gone at it too rough,
+      Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked upon her wanly. &ldquo;That's my trouble, mother,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;I'm a
+      plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. &ldquo;Hush your
+      nonsense!&rdquo; she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+      appearing. &ldquo;You go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her and obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't do that under a misapprehension,&rdquo; he warned her, when they
+      were alone in the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what under a what?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'&rdquo; he
+      told her, gravely. &ldquo;I have a prejudice against that young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+      prejudices against!&rdquo; In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+      implores. &ldquo;Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence
+      with papa against him!&rdquo; And she laughed louder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said, with peculiar earnestness. &ldquo;I'll tell you now, because&mdash;because
+      I've decided I'm one of the family.&rdquo; And then, as if the earnestness were
+      too heavy for him to carry it further, he continued, in his usual tone,
+      &ldquo;I'm drunk with power, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to tell me?&rdquo; she demanded, brusquely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lamhorn made love to Sibyl,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith hooted. &ldquo;SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat between
+      us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and said something
+      like that to you afterward&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, gravely. &ldquo;I KNOW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+      Lamhorn&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith screamed with laughter. &ldquo;You were with ROSCOE&mdash;and you heard
+      Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I heard them quarreling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You say he made love to her
+      because you heard them quarreling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can&mdash;by
+      the way they quarrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!&mdash;it's
+      always certain&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. &ldquo;You ought to
+      know. You've had so much experience, yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't any, Edith,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My life has been about as exciting as an
+      incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you look out through the glass you must know
+      what effect such stuff would have upon ME!&rdquo; She rose, visibly agitated.
+      &ldquo;What if it WAS true?&rdquo; she demanded, bitterly. &ldquo;What if it was true a
+      hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to
+      giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about
+      Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think it
+      matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'? What
+      if I understood WHY she&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off with a violent gesture, a
+      sweep of her arm extended at full length, as if she hurled something to
+      the ground. &ldquo;Do you think a girl that really cared for a man would pay any
+      attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady. She
+      met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she had
+      spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm sorry,
+      Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see until you
+      see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of it&mdash;especially
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's sensible,&rdquo; she responded, curtly. &ldquo;You're most surprising of all
+      when you're sensible, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and George
+      appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting there, he
+      announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch upon the
+      shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+      glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over fifty,
+      in spite of Sheridan's habitual &ldquo;ole Doc Gurney.&rdquo; He was gray, however,
+      almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said, not
+      rising. &ldquo;Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of
+      me&mdash;between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean you're too sleepy to move,&rdquo; returned Bibbs, complying. &ldquo;I think
+      you'll notice that I'm getting worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Taken on about twelve pounds,&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;Thirteen, maybe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it won't do.&rdquo; The doctor rubbed his eyelids. &ldquo;You're so much better
+      I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just where you
+      are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down&mdash;all the
+      way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded. &ldquo;Machine-shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still hate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs nodded again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't blame you!&rdquo; the doctor grunted. &ldquo;Yes, I expect it'll make a lump in
+      your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've got the
+      old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use?&rdquo; Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. &ldquo;My kind of writing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the doctor agreed. &ldquo;I suppose if you broke away and lived on roots
+      and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of
+      editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred
+      dollars a year by the time you're fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's about it,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know what you want to do,&rdquo; said Gurney, drowsily. &ldquo;You don't
+      hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show&mdash;the noise and
+      jar and dirt, the scramble&mdash;the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'
+      You'd like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask
+      on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it
+      and have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I
+      can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another of
+      his boys if you don't go to Sicily?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to go to Sicily,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I want to stay right here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his patient
+      a sharp glance. &ldquo;It's a risk,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think we'll find you're so much
+      better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick. Something's got hold
+      of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as you used to be. But I
+      warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did before, and
+      perhaps even harder, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. &ldquo;Well, when we go over you
+      this afternoon what are we going to say about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him I'm ready,&rdquo; said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; Gurney laughed. &ldquo;Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll see.
+      Don't forget I said to walk down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+      informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.
+      &ldquo;Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce,&rdquo; he said, gloomily, to his
+      next patient when Bibbs had gone. &ldquo;Doctor tells a man he's well, and
+      that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon this
+      point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any point,
+      so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy afternoon,
+      and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to his nostrils,
+      though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with the smell they could
+      no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked hurriedly, too intent upon
+      their destinations to be more than half aware of the wayside; they wore
+      the expressions of people under a vague yet constant strain. They were all
+      lightly powdered, inside and out, with fine dust and grit from the
+      hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of that also. They did not even
+      notice that they saw the smoke, though the thickened air was like a
+      shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new &ldquo;Sheridan Apartments,&rdquo; now
+      almost completed, he observed that the marble of the vestibule was already
+      streaky with soot, like his gloves, which were new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way
+      from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which
+      continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by a
+      street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his
+      preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that, having
+      crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the north, and
+      as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's daughter
+      emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the path to the
+      old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the pedestrian
+      from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the gate and he
+      was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she saw him she started
+      visibly. And if this thing had happened to Robert Lamhorn, he would have
+      had a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts.
+      Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought. He would have said: &ldquo;You
+      jumped because you were thinking of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand closing
+      the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction Bibbs was
+      walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they should walk
+      together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had paused in his
+      slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either spoke or moved&mdash;it
+      was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each to seem to say, by
+      look and attitude, &ldquo;Why, it's YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's name
+      as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to a stop
+      simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk
+      on together he contrived to find his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;hate a frozen fish myself,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think three miles
+      was too long for you to put up with one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+      restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan, you're
+      lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's
+      turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know
+      each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for me
+      to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I decided
+      I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the car-line. I
+      never thought of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, earnestly. &ldquo;I didn't, either. I might have said
+      something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must
+      remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though
+      it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I ever
+      met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what it
+      said. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one which
+      Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, &ldquo;a cripple would
+      crawl five miles to hear.&rdquo; And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's father's
+      son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. &ldquo;I'll be any kind of
+      idiot,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be difficult
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+      perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+      description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the first
+      time. &ldquo;Rather tragic and altogether impossible.&rdquo; It seemed to her now that
+      she must have been blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed the New House without either of them showing&mdash;or
+      possessing&mdash;any consciousness that it had been the destination of one
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll keep on talking,&rdquo; Bibbs continued, cheerfully, &ldquo;and you keep on
+      laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
+      making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
+      bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes me
+      bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what I'll
+      think of myself later if I don't keep talking&mdash;talking now, I mean&mdash;and
+      I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides these two
+      things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as much as this
+      more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always in me to do
+      it, though, the first time I met any one who didn't know me well enough
+      not to listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you're not really talking to me,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;You're just thinking
+      aloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he returned, gravely. &ldquo;I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+      vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
+      subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,
+      but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't
+      know how to manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;Not even if you really talked about yourself.&rdquo; She turned her face toward
+      him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was pathetically amazed
+      by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look, warmly friendly and
+      understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was an eagerly interested
+      look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;you&mdash;I&mdash;I'm&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered, and the faint color
+      in his cheeks grew almost vivid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came
+      into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how
+      &ldquo;queer&rdquo; many people might think him; but he did not seem &ldquo;queer&rdquo; to Mary
+      Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited, and became coherent. &ldquo;YOU say something now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don't
+      even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny man's
+      solo! You&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she interrupted. &ldquo;I'd rather play your accompaniment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stop and listen to it, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;&rdquo; she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+      gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were
+      approaching. &ldquo;Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I could,&rdquo; he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+      &ldquo;But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better
+      say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason I
+      don't want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where you're
+      going, and where I'll be sent back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head in cheery negation. &ldquo;Not unless you want to be. Would
+      you like to come with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Anywhere!&rdquo; And again it was apparent
+      that he spoke in simple truthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come&mdash;if you care for organ music. The organist is an old
+      friend of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had
+      a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up
+      everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like
+      Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a
+      little. I hope so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. &ldquo;I think Beethoven
+      would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't kept you?&rdquo; Mary said to the organist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered, heartily. &ldquo;I would not mind so only you should
+      shooer come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The organist looked bluntly surprised. &ldquo;Iss that SO?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Well,
+      I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink. He iss
+      musician himself, then, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      played the&mdash;I tried to play&mdash;&rdquo; Fortunately he checked himself;
+      he had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master
+      the jews'-harp in his boyhood. &ldquo;No, I'm not a musician,&rdquo; he contented
+      himself with saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. &ldquo;Young man, you are fortunate! I
+      play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You are
+      the first one EVER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+      finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees in
+      a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though she stopped as he
+      did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking away from them toward
+      the front of the church, shaking his white Beethovian mane roguishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's false pretenses on my part,&rdquo; Bibbs said. &ldquo;You mean to be kind to the
+      sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back to work
+      in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, beginning to walk forward. &ldquo;Not unless you don't like
+      great music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+      ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+      ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they
+      covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,
+      reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician
+      ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain to overwhelm
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This afternoon some Handel!&rdquo; he turned to shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary nodded. &ldquo;Will you like that?&rdquo; she asked Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
+      about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
+      pretend, I would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, &ldquo;you wouldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air; the
+      huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+      listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with it.
+      The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about them, while
+      the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a tiny star of
+      light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it rhythmically, or
+      lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist thrusting, but he
+      was magnificently the master of his giant, and it sang to his magic as he
+      bade it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
+      unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike the
+      tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the
+      enchanted cave, and that&mdash;for Bibbs&mdash;was what made its magic
+      dazing. It seemed to him a long, long time since he had been walking home
+      drearily from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him that he had set out
+      upon a happy journey since then, and that he had reached another planet,
+      where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone together listening to a vast choiring
+      of invisible soldiers and holy angels. There were armies of voices about
+      them singing praise and thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was
+      incredible that the walls of the church were not the boundaries of the
+      universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky street
+      just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in evening papers from front
+      steps and where children were taking their last spins on roller-skates
+      before being haled indoors for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew it
+      could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,
+      saying: &ldquo;You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream
+      that these sounds bring to me?&rdquo; And it seemed to him as though she
+      answered continually: &ldquo;I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new one
+      that you are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring to you.
+      Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear&mdash;together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except
+      the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white
+      head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting
+      beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in
+      the darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting
+      of the organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be
+      chorusing of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing
+      for him the world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she
+      was so kind to him. It all meant Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+      silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+      walking slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what it meant to me,&rdquo; she said, as he did not immediately
+      reply. &ldquo;Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all
+      others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+      infinitesimal&mdash;it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+      infinitesimal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+      hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering every
+      way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town to-morrow.
+      And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to. They're like
+      servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery
+      itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss and dirt they
+      forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework has to be done,
+      but the people who do it have been so overpaid that they're confused and
+      worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet, poor things! they
+      haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of course, when the world gets
+      to paying its wages sensibly that will be different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean 'communism'?&rdquo; she asked, and she made their slow pace a
+      little slower&mdash;they had only three blocks to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+      now&mdash;especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+      'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for all
+      the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak ones a
+      fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even on the
+      stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all cross the
+      winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody&mdash;if he sees
+      the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead of other
+      people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel. And that,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see, if I keep
+      talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you what it did
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't it mean courage to you, too&mdash;a little?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Triumph
+      and praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they were all there,&rdquo; Bibbs said. &ldquo;I don't know the name of what he
+      played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that makes the
+      music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the name he puts
+      to it can't make much difference&mdash;except to himself and people very
+      much like him, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of the
+      people who hear it,&rdquo; Bibbs went on, musingly, &ldquo;according to their own
+      natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might
+      compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail, and
+      some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some would
+      think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself
+      at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white
+      horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the music, he'd
+      think of a circus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did not open
+      it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her kindnesses&mdash;not
+      to be prompt in leaving him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you didn't tell me whether you liked it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I didn't need to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you were
+      trying to keep from telling me what it did mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't keep from telling it any longer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The music meant to me&mdash;it
+      meant the kindness of&mdash;of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kindness? How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp&mdash;and sick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, decidedly. &ldquo;I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr. Kraft
+      play. And you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+      playing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary laughed. &ldquo;I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin&mdash;Grieg&mdash;Chaminade.
+      You wouldn't listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs drew a deep breath. &ldquo;I'm frightened again,&rdquo; he said, in an unsteady
+      voice. &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and
+      the words sank to a murmur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you want ME to play for you!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Yes, gladly. It will be
+      merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
+      thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
+      listen, and if you&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
+      and laughed ruefully. &ldquo;But my piano won't be here after to-night. I&mdash;I'm
+      sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to you
+      you'd have to come this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll let me?&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, if you care to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could play&mdash;&rdquo; he said, wistfully, &ldquo;if I could play like that
+      old man in the church I could thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
+      and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
+      especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
+      was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. &ldquo;You'll come after
+      dinner, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, not moving. &ldquo;Would you mind if I stood here until time to
+      come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+      response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+      windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok"><p>
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.</p>
+
+<p>  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it&mdash;and ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the &ldquo;Greek profile.&rdquo;  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a &ldquo;Greek profile&rdquo;; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.</p>
+
+<p>  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity&mdash;he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities&mdash;a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+</p>
+<p>  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be &ldquo;sent away.&rdquo;  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  &ldquo;Sent away&rdquo; is a euphuism for &ldquo;sent to prison.&rdquo;  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner&mdash;the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos &ldquo;sent away&rdquo;&mdash;and where?</p>
+
+<p>  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness&mdash;those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing&mdash;ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.</p>
+
+<p>  Yes&mdash;the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.</p>
+
+<p>  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;mystery about pianos&rdquo; which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to Mr.
+      Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs
+      scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon
+      Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until
+      after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found
+      not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and with
+      every phase of everything that they discussed&mdash;no extraordinary state
+      of affairs in a family which has always &ldquo;held up its head,&rdquo; only to arrive
+      in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on helplessly at the
+      processes of its own financial dissolution. For that was the point which
+      this despairing couple had reached&mdash;they could do nothing except look
+      on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and they knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She needn't to have done that about her piano,&rdquo; vapored Mr. Vertrees. &ldquo;We
+      could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
+      consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with
+      the&mdash;the dealer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thought that it might be&mdash;annoying for you,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees
+      explained. &ldquo;Really, she planned for you not to know about it until they
+      had removed&mdash;until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to&mdash;to
+      mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this morning.
+      She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's&mdash;it's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her other idea is&mdash;that is, it was&mdash;I think it can be avoided,
+      of course&mdash;it was about her furs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he exclaimed, quickly. &ldquo;I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
+      rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll try not,&rdquo; his wife promised. &ldquo;Of course, they're very handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason for her to keep them!&rdquo; he returned, irritably. &ldquo;We're
+      not THAT far gone, I think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not yet,&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees said. &ldquo;She seems to be troubled about the&mdash;the
+      coal matter and&mdash;about Tilly. Of course the piano will take care of
+      some things like those for a while and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way,&rdquo; she said, comfortingly.
+      &ldquo;She arranged with the&mdash;with the purchaser that the men will come for
+      it about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
+      really quite winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he agreed, moodily. &ldquo;So far as that goes people have a right to
+      move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I suppose,
+      even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much attention
+      just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early the morning
+      after the funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. &ldquo;I don't believe that
+      was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only because he
+      felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed wrapped up in
+      his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about most. He isn't
+      vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a great deal about
+      his&mdash;his actual money&mdash;though there was something about blades
+      of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something about his
+      energy&mdash;but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be not so
+      much a personal vainglory as about his family and the greatness of this
+      city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Greatness of this city'!&rdquo; Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+      &ldquo;It's nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who
+      has the luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any
+      YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows
+      that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else
+      gets the habit. But you have a different point of view if it's the city
+      that got what it wanted out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's 'great'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. &ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; she
+      began, timidly, &ldquo;he doesn't boast of&mdash;that is, I understand he has
+      never seemed so interested in the&mdash;the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon it; he
+      looked more haggard than before. &ldquo;'The other one',&rdquo; he repeated, averting
+      his eyes. &ldquo;You mean&mdash;you mean the third son&mdash;the one that was
+      here this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the&mdash;the youngest,&rdquo; she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+      almost a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either
+      look at the other during that silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly. &ldquo;What&mdash;ah&mdash;what
+      was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she came in this
+      afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but she answered in
+      such a low voice I didn't&mdash;ah&mdash;happen to catch it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&mdash;she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she
+      had enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful
+      creature I've ever known.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile&mdash;though he
+      doesn't seem quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window
+      when she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about
+      him I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, of course,&rdquo; she said, hurriedly. &ldquo;Nothing definite, that is.
+      Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we thought
+      at first. It's only&mdash;well, of course it IS odd, their attitude about
+      him. I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him&mdash;perhaps a
+      little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself to anything&mdash;or
+      perhaps does odd things. But, after all, of course, we only have an
+      impression about it. We don't know&mdash;that is, positively. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused, then went on: &ldquo;I didn't know just how to ask&mdash;that is&mdash;I
+      didn't mention it to Mary. I didn't&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; The poor lady
+      floundered pitifully, concluding with a mumble. &ldquo;So soon after&mdash;after
+      the&mdash;the shock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him,&rdquo; said Mr. Vertrees.
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of him is&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. &ldquo;I can't
+      imagine her&mdash;oh, NO!&rdquo; he gasped. And he began to pace the floor. &ldquo;A
+      half-witted epileptic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He may be all right. We&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's horrible! I can't&mdash;&rdquo; He threw himself back into his chair
+      again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply
+      at his sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. &ldquo;You mustn't give way so,&rdquo; she said, inspired
+      for once almost to direct discourse. &ldquo;Whatever Mary might think of doing,
+      it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if WE should&mdash;should
+      consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It isn't because we
+      think of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh God, no!&rdquo; he groaned. &ldquo;Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but
+      Mary can't be a stenographer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she murmured,
+      &ldquo;it all seems very premature, speculating about such things, but I had a
+      queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in this&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      had almost said &ldquo;in this one,&rdquo; but checked herself. &ldquo;In this young man.
+      It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and well, and he is&mdash;he
+      seems to be, that is&mdash;rather appealing to the&mdash;the sympathies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; he agreed, bitterly. &ldquo;Precisely. The sympathies!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;perhaps you might feel easier if I could have a
+      little talk with some one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought of&mdash;not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+      perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to be
+      talking with somebody that knew the family&mdash;and then I might find a
+      chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much, and&mdash;Something
+      of that kind perhaps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know anybody that knows the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That is&mdash;well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That
+      Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan is not a&mdash;that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced
+      little woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is
+      interested about&mdash;that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more
+      intimate with Mary, naturally. She's always looking over here from her
+      house; she was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I
+      noticed&mdash;though I don't think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't
+      think it out of place to&mdash;to be frank about matters. She called the
+      other day, and Mary must rather like her&mdash;she said that evening that
+      the call had done her good. Don't you think it might be wise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so do I,&rdquo; she returned, promptly. &ldquo;It isn't really a thing we should
+      be considering seriously, of course. Still&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say not! But possibly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the
+      lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between them
+      that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain definite
+      information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and physical status
+      of Bibbs. And if he were subject to attacks of lunacy, the unhappy pair
+      decided to prevent the sacrifice they supposed their daughter intended to
+      make of herself. Altogether, if there were spiteful ghosts in the old
+      house that night, eavesdropping upon the woeful comedy, they must have
+      died anew of laughter!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness had
+      fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano down
+      the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway behind
+      them, preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation; and Mrs.
+      Roscoe Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the light of the
+      doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;It did give me a fright!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+      informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+      &ldquo;Won't you come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Oh no, thank you!&rdquo; Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side. &ldquo;You
+      don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but your
+      piano!&rdquo; She laughed shrilly. &ldquo;You know, since our tragedy coming so
+      suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been&mdash;almost
+      hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago, and
+      saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,
+      carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the
+      way it looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in, next
+      door, only such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your daughter
+      start for a drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three o'clock&mdash;and&mdash;
+      They aren't back yet, are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Good heavens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the only thing I could think of was that something must have happened
+      to them, and I just dashed over&mdash;and it was only your PIANO!&rdquo; She
+      broke into laughter again. &ldquo;I suppose you're just sending it somewhere to
+      be repaired, aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;it's being taken down-town,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;Won't you
+      come in and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I
+      was&mdash;ah&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her
+      invitation. &ldquo;Won't you come in? I'd really&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home about
+      this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's very sweet.&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward
+      the street with Sibyl. &ldquo;It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't
+      it? Almost like a May evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano,&rdquo; said Sibyl, watching the
+      instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. &ldquo;She plays wonderfully,
+      Mrs. Kittersby tells me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her
+      yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean Bibbs?&rdquo; asked Sibyl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The&mdash;the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether
+      he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your
+      daughter expect the piano back soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear
+      her play because she had arranged with the&mdash;that is, it was to be
+      removed this afternoon. He seems almost well again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Sibyl nodded. &ldquo;His father's going to try to start him to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems very delicate,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vertrees. &ldquo;I shouldn't think he would
+      be able to stand a great deal, either physically or&mdash;&rdquo; She paused and
+      then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness&mdash;&ldquo;or
+      mentally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right,&rdquo; said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Entirely?&rdquo; Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, entirely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But has he ALWAYS been?&rdquo; This question came with the same anxious
+      eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor&mdash;&rdquo; Sibyl choked, and pressed her
+      handkerchief to her mouth. &ldquo;Good night, Mrs. Vertrees,&rdquo; she said,
+      hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+      above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where
+      the two ladies were standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you come in?&rdquo; urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound of
+      a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare. &ldquo;Do!
+      There's Mary now, and she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl was half-way across the street. &ldquo;No, thanks,&rdquo; she called. &ldquo;I
+      hope she won't miss her piano!&rdquo; And she ran into her own house and plunged
+      headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her handkerchief over
+      her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the quiet
+      house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of a
+      decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the
+      hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,
+      holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your excitement?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;What do you find to go into
+      hysterics over? Another death in the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's funny!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
+      THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!&rdquo; Lying prone, she elevated her feet in
+      the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come through, come through!&rdquo; said her husband, crossly. &ldquo;What you been up
+      to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+      &ldquo;Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!&rdquo; She wiped her eyes. &ldquo;They've had
+      to sell their piano!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago,&rdquo; said Sibyl.
+      &ldquo;They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as last
+      winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and
+      patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook had
+      HERS! And the night of the house-warming I kind of got suspicious, myself.
+      She didn't have one single piece of any kind of real jewelry, and you
+      could see her dress was an old one done over. Men can't tell those things,
+      and you all made a big fuss over her, but I thought she looked a sight,
+      myself! Of course, EDITH was crazy to have her, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well?&rdquo; he urged, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING! Just
+      absolutely NOTHING&mdash;and they don't know anywhere to turn! The
+      family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very
+      distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's
+      been wondering what WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to
+      marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the
+      men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and married other girls.
+      Gracious! they were lucky! Marry HER? The man that found himself tied up
+      to THAT girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible funny, terrible funny!&rdquo; said Roscoe, with sarcasm. &ldquo;It's so
+      funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little
+      while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men
+      go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute I
+      got the idea they were moving out&mdash;the house has been foreclosed on,
+      Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was
+      out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over&mdash;and
+      it was their PIANO! They'd sold it and were trying to sneak it out after
+      dark, so nobody'd catch on!&rdquo; Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but
+      resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. &ldquo;Wait a
+      minute, can't you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all
+      away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell all
+      kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they can't.
+      She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they'd sold it; and I hope
+      they'll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last week a
+      coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees. Their cook
+      told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN she'd seen any
+      money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that girl in your
+      LIFE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What girl? Their cook?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into this
+      neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and out, and
+      here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll the girl up in
+      her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan&mdash;she's
+      GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on first with
+      YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she was going to mash you, and
+      then she found out you were the married one, and turned right square
+      around to Jim and carried him off his feet. Oh, Jim was landed&mdash;there's
+      no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky; he didn't live to STAY landed, and
+      it's a good thing for him!&rdquo; Sibyl's mirth had vanished, and she spoke with
+      virulent rapidity. &ldquo;Well, she couldn't get you, because you were married,
+      and she couldn't get Jim, because Jim died. And there they were, dead
+      broke! Do you know what she did? Do you know what she's DOING?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; said Roscoe, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity. &ldquo;BIBBS!
+      She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S FUNERAL!
+      Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; she shrieked.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that. &ldquo;And
+      yesterday,&rdquo; she continued, between paroxysms&mdash;&ldquo;yesterday she came out
+      of the house&mdash;just as he was passing. She must have been looking out&mdash;waiting
+      for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window! And she got him
+      there last night&mdash;to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave that away! And
+      to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the cream of it is that
+      they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or not&mdash;they thought
+      maybe he was, but she went after him just the same! The old lady set
+      herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord! BIBBS!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Roscoe looked grim. &ldquo;So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
+      pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it might,&rdquo; she returned, sobering. &ldquo;It might, if those people weren't
+      such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to come down off
+      the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny, but to see 'em
+      sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating dirt&mdash;well, I
+      think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and
+      expects people to wallow on the ground before her until they get near
+      enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old patched shoes&mdash;oh,
+      she'd do THAT, all right!&mdash;and then she powders up and goes out to
+      mash&mdash;BIBBS SHERIDAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Roscoe, heavily; &ldquo;I don't care about that one way or
+      another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about. I
+      was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. &ldquo;What
+      is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began, frowning, &ldquo;what I was going to say then&mdash;&rdquo; He broke
+      off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
+      his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. &ldquo;I never expected I'd have to
+      say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask you
+      what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I felt the time had come for me to know about it,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;You never
+      told me anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never asked,&rdquo; she interposed, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;It looks to
+      me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
+      many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down to
+      work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed soon
+      as I'd got the paper read&mdash;unless there was some good musical show in
+      town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or so,
+      I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and excited
+      and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then, Lamhorn had
+      been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long ago you got
+      to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got to quarreling
+      with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see you'd been
+      quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you object to that?&rdquo; asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;when it injures my wife's health!&rdquo; he returned, with a quick
+      lift of his eyes to hers. &ldquo;You began to run down just about the time you
+      began falling out with him.&rdquo; He stepped close to her. &ldquo;See here, Sibyl,
+      I'm going to know what it means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you ARE?&rdquo; she snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're trembling,&rdquo; he said, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was all I was going to say the other day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was going to
+      ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
+      have you to say to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; he replied, with grim swiftness, &ldquo;I want to know why you keep
+      telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, &ldquo;And what
+      else did Edith want you to ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn,&rdquo; he said,
+      fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in
+      there on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you then
+      what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she didn't!&rdquo; he vociferated, his voice growing louder. &ldquo;She said,
+      'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see
+      her, because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want to
+      know what it means. I intend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. &ldquo;Dinner is ready,&rdquo; she said,
+      and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the
+      dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I intend to know exactly what has been going on,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;I mean to
+      know just what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you DO!&rdquo; she cried, shrilly. &ldquo;You mean to know just what's what, do
+      you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your wife,
+      and then you come home making a scene before the servants and humiliating
+      me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't hear every
+      word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go on! Go and
+      eat your dinner alone&mdash;because I won't eat with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon her,
+      and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room slam
+      overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+      through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+      found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A
+      window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his
+      note-book on the sill&mdash;and the sheets were loose. The door was open,
+      and when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two
+      sheets had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting
+      and put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George or
+      Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them down-town
+      with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and, having a
+      little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them out, and
+      glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were not
+      epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a &ldquo;private letter&rdquo; that came into
+      his possession in that way, though in a &ldquo;matter of business&rdquo; he might have
+      felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity afforded in any
+      manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's scribblings were
+      only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred to the
+      machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be justified in
+      reading them.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then&mdash;days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator&mdash;she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  &ldquo;WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?&rdquo;  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  &mdash;you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.</p>
+
+<p>  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.</p>
+
+<p>  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The &ldquo;business man&rdquo; feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work&mdash;he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.</p>
+
+<p>  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.</p>
+
+<p>  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.</p>
+
+<p>  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more. He
+      crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a
+      waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of Names,
+      which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a volume now
+      first put to use for the location of &ldquo;Midas.&rdquo; Having read the legend,
+      Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office, exhaling the breath of
+      contempt. &ldquo;Dam' fool!&rdquo; he mumbled. But this was no new thought, nor was
+      the contrariness of Bibbs's notes a surpise to him; and presently he
+      dismissed the matter from his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long
+      time he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a club
+      luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went to a small restaurant
+      near the Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes in the
+      consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came for his
+      father every day, at five minutes after twelve, and Sheridan was again in
+      his office at five minutes before one. But now that Jim no longer came,
+      Sheridan remained alone in his office; he had not gone out to lunch since
+      Jim's death, nor did he have anything sent to him&mdash;he fasted until
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the time he missed Jim personally the most&mdash;the voice and eyes
+      and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things
+      were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far
+      deeper. Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was a
+      great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily perceived
+      his own likeness. Jim was the one who would have been surest to keep the
+      great property growing greater, year by year. Sheridan had fallen asleep,
+      night after night, picturing what the growth would be under Jim. He had
+      believed that Jim was absolutely certain to be one of the biggest men in
+      the country. Well, it was all up to Roscoe now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
+      question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+      suggested it&mdash;though vaguely&mdash;and he had meant to speak to
+      Roscoe about it. However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for
+      several days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no
+      opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+      o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower
+      floor. He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer
+      room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would find his
+      son busy with others, and that his question would have to be postponed,
+      but when he entered the door marked &ldquo;R. C. Sheridan. Private,&rdquo; Roscoe was
+      there alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and
+      he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy,&rdquo; said
+      Sheridan. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself! I
+      just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll keep, if you're
+      workin' something out in your mind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused
+      with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in
+      the chair. Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the
+      office. &ldquo;You're all right, ain't you?&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Not sick, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. &ldquo;I
+      wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I guess your
+      mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him
+      longer'n any of us, so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't,&rdquo; said Roscoe, thickly&mdash;&ldquo;I won't say a dam' thing about
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position near the
+      window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were bloodshot and
+      vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted, and he was
+      deathly pale. The father stood aghast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;ROSCOE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;Can' help that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ROSCOE!&rdquo; Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
+      nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe&mdash;the
+      steady old wheel-horse&mdash;in this condition. &ldquo;How'd you GET this way?&rdquo;
+       he demanded. &ldquo;You caught cold and took too much for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. &ldquo;Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
+      lately. Firs' you notice it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; cried Sheridan. &ldquo;I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+      lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.
+      Boh! To see you like a common hog!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+      &ldquo;Hog!&rdquo; he repeated, chuckling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a hog!&rdquo; said Sheridan, angrily. &ldquo;In business hours! I don't object
+      to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor,
+      if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one to
+      baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe. It
+      ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way on a
+      grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them men out
+      there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think you can come
+      to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder how often this
+      has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look over your books
+      to-morrow, and I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+      contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the heavy
+      chair in which he had been sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hoo&mdash;hoorah!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you
+      want to&mdash;outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing
+      innerfere business hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink!
+      Die! L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling his
+      own office, overhead. &ldquo;Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's suite and
+      get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in room
+      two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows on the
+      Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over with
+      Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two. You needn't
+      come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be disturbed. Tell
+      Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a closed car. We may
+      have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at Roscoe's room as soon
+      as the car gets here. 'T's all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. &ldquo;Drunk in business
+      hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble,
+      mus'n' kill 'nybody&mdash;not in business hours! All right any other time.
+      Kill 'nybody you want to&mdash;'s long 'tain't in business hours! Fine!
+      Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your trouble 't
+      home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business! Have funerals
+      on Sunday&mdash;might innerfere business! Don' let your wife innerfere
+      business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad&mdash;your
+      tradegy&mdash;keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die, go on die 't home&mdash;don'
+      die round th' office! Might innerfere business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his
+      back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his
+      father's significant posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know wh' I think?&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly any
+      'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked, an' he
+      got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at me, I
+      ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to me!
+      Fine!&rdquo; He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable
+      gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair and
+      caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several
+      minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to the
+      newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by
+      holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed
+      in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He
+      rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what you ask me while ago?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did. What&mdash;what was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'. You better sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
+      won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and
+      said, &ldquo;Right down.&rdquo; Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and
+      brought them to his son. &ldquo;Get into this coat,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're goin'
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All ri',&rdquo; Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the
+      outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and
+      told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached the
+      ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the
+      automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own
+      house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word
+      in the interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without
+      meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he heard from
+      within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of
+      song:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...<br />
+  With a leap from the ground<br />
+  To the saddle in a bound.<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; And away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-yay!<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any
+      musical symptom whatever in Bibbs&mdash;he had never even heard him
+      whistle&mdash;and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool
+      should be merry to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he
+      did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and came
+      to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety manifest
+      and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his lunch had
+      &ldquo;disagreed&rdquo; with him a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had become
+      hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+      white-jacket's salver. &ldquo;Here's another difference between Midas and
+      chicken,&rdquo; Sheridan remarked, grimly. &ldquo;Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
+      can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
+      had the advantage there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his
+      plate without dropping it and to respond, &ldquo;Yes&mdash;he crows over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed&mdash;for
+      he could blush distinctly now&mdash;and his mother looked upon him with
+      pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon
+      to her. &ldquo;Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got to be such a gadabout,&rdquo; Edith giggled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+      anybody was up,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;I reckon if people lose things in this
+      house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it he lost?&rdquo; asked Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows!&rdquo; her father returned. &ldquo;Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
+      home with me. I looked it over&mdash;thought probably it was something
+      pretty important, belongin' to a busy man like him.&rdquo; He affected to search
+      his pockets. &ldquo;What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
+      remember leavin' it down at the office&mdash;in the waste-basket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good place for it,&rdquo; Bibbs murmured, still red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave him a grin. &ldquo;Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up early
+      enough to find things before I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+      evening, to Mary Vertrees&mdash;they had come to know each other that
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My time's here at last,&rdquo; he said, as they sat together in the melancholy
+      gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano. That removal
+      had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees that neither
+      of them had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gas-light,
+      though from a single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any
+      room seem bare that knew the glowing presence of Mary. He spoke lightly,
+      not sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
+      any longer. It's really my part to go to him&mdash;at least it would save
+      my face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
+      Hard labor for life, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary shook her head. &ldquo;I don't think so. He's too kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think my father's KIND?&rdquo; And Bibbs stared at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
+      only that he has to be kind in his own way&mdash;because he can't
+      understand any other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;If that's what you mean by 'kind'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. &ldquo;It's
+      going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;self-pity!&rdquo; he returned, smiling. &ldquo;This has been just the last
+      flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work. There'd
+      be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do
+      best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless&mdash;so I have
+      to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it like&mdash;exactly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I get up at six,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which
+      is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin buckets, and
+      tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty, and I'm at work
+      in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and work again from
+      one till five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the work itself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't muscularly exhausting&mdash;not at all. They couldn't give me a
+      heavier job because I wasn't good enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what will you do? I want to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I left,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;I was 'on' what they call over there a
+      'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
+      what I'll be sent back to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is it?&rdquo; she insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs explained. &ldquo;It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
+      zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
+      circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a
+      certain angle&mdash;and yet I was a very bad hand at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+      paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have known
+      it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do that all day long?&rdquo; she asked, and as he nodded, &ldquo;It seems
+      incredible!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
+      nine hours a day! No wonder&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off, and then, after a keen
+      glance at his face, she said: &ldquo;I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
+      hand at it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed ruefully. &ldquo;I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say
+      it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+      rhythmical crashing&mdash;a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute&mdash;a little
+      more than one a second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're close to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,&rdquo; he said, turning to her more
+      gaily. &ldquo;The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
+      have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing&mdash;I flinch
+      and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it.
+      I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
+      back. They used to laugh at me all day long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on
+      the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She was
+      staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you,&rdquo; she said, in a
+      low voice. &ldquo;No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
+      leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
+      published for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you SEE him?&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in his
+      voice. &ldquo;If he could understand what you're saying&mdash;and if you can
+      imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up posters
+      all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a Punch!' No.
+      It's just as well he never got the&mdash;But what's the use? I've never
+      written anything worth printing, and I never shall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't,&rdquo; said BIBBS, honestly. &ldquo;I never could&mdash;but you're the
+      kindest lady in this world, Miss Vertrees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+      &ldquo;That sounds wrong,&rdquo; she said, impulsively. &ldquo;I mean 'Miss Vertrees.' I've
+      thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't you
+      rather call me 'Mary'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't you?&rdquo; she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I CAN!&rdquo; he said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that's very pretty!&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;You're such an honest person, it's
+      pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.&rdquo; She became
+      grave again immediately. &ldquo;I hear myself laughing as if it were some one
+      else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.&rdquo; She got up
+      restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him.
+      &ldquo;You've GOT to go back to that place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other time you did it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just over it,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of a
+      repetition so much as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much as what?&rdquo; she prompted, as he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked up at her shyly. &ldquo;I want to say it, but&mdash;but I come to a
+      dead balk when I try. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on. Say it, whatever it is,&rdquo; she bade him. &ldquo;You wouldn't know how to
+      say anything I shouldn't like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say,&rdquo; he returned,
+      moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet&mdash;he seemed
+      to feel awkward, thoroughly. &ldquo;You see, all my life&mdash;until I met you&mdash;if
+      I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying things is a
+      new trick for me, and this&mdash;well, it's just this: I used to feel as
+      if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been of use to
+      anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself, except a kind of
+      haphazard thinking. But now it's different&mdash;I'm still of no use to
+      anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful, but I have had
+      something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy experience, and it
+      makes my life seem to be&mdash;I mean I'm glad I've lived it! That's all;
+      it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have, this strange,
+      beautiful, happy little while!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to
+      say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not speak,
+      but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to
+      her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet
+      that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. &ldquo;If you
+      think it has been&mdash;happy&mdash;to be friends with me&mdash;you'd want
+      to&mdash;to make it last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he gulped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to evade her. &ldquo;Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. &ldquo;You said what you did
+      because you think the shop's going to kill you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do think that!&rdquo; She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+      before him. &ldquo;Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+      Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm a
+      friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said&mdash;and
+      you did mean it, I know it!&mdash;you're not going to go back to the
+      sanitarium. The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid
+      in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I mean THAT much to you,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;they can't harm you! Go back to
+      the shop&mdash;but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
+      machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
+      that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stumbled to his feet. &ldquo;You say&mdash;&rdquo; he gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every evening, dear Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could only stare, bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!&rdquo; And she held out
+      her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. &ldquo;If I
+      could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
+      remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is done&mdash;won't
+      the night make up for the day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of
+      kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, &ldquo;To think you're there&mdash;with
+      me&mdash;standing beside the old zinc-eater&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it
+      meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father
+      sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before him.
+      &ldquo;I'm cured, father,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When do I go back to the shop? I'm ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The desolate and grim old man did not relax. &ldquo;I was sittin' up to give you
+      a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time! I just
+      wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take you over
+      there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you just one
+      more day. Well, you got to it before I did&mdash;pretty close to the
+      eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the month.
+      Think you can get up in time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Six o'clock,&rdquo; Bibbs responded, briskly. &ldquo;And I want to tell you&mdash;I'm
+      going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's YOUR lookout!&rdquo; his father grunted. &ldquo;They'll put you back on the
+      clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than I'm worth, too,&rdquo; said Bibbs, cheerily. &ldquo;That reminds me, I
+      didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;G'night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+      inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring
+      angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could be heard
+      descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression
+      and the state of her toilette being those of a person who, after trying
+      unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for burglars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa!&rdquo; she exclaimed, drowsily. &ldquo;Why'n't you go to bed? It must be goin'
+      on 'leven o'clock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the
+      fire. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+      sluggishly with each other in her voice. &ldquo;I knew you were worried all
+      dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein' taken
+      away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She jeered feebly. &ldquo;N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same as he did before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just pre-CISELY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&mdash;how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?&rdquo; she asked,
+      timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until he KNOWS something!&rdquo; The unhappy man struck his palms together,
+      then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
+      talked. &ldquo;He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
+      in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
+      it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn
+      it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went there I had
+      'em set him on the simplest machine we got&mdash;and he stuck there! How
+      much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole business if
+      he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there to make him
+      THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's whole life,
+      there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against everything I
+      want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be worked out of
+      him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what it was when we
+      were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles, the man that can
+      manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself. Well, I set Bibbs
+      to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE set himself to balk on
+      the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's lasted close on to three
+      years. If he balks again I'm just done with him! Sometimes I feel like I
+      was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew there was something else,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a
+      yawn. &ldquo;You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now&mdash;'less
+      you'll tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose something happened to Roscoe,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;THEN what'd I have to
+      look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
+      lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
+      groove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roscoe?&rdquo; she yawned. &ldquo;You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
+      strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
+      he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better go
+      up to bed, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
+      means, keepin' property together these days&mdash;just keepin' it ALIVE,
+      let alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
+      away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves come
+      out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off for
+      themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night and
+      day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen a big
+      fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone&mdash;there wasn't even a
+      dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again. My
+      Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like I
+      deserved it&mdash;no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
+      have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
+      to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+      bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays&mdash;a
+      man's got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes,
+      'd make you think the millennium had come&mdash;but right the next breath
+      you'll hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
+      'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
+      goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but
+      it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been fillin' up
+      with it from all over the world for a good many years, and the old
+      camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it used to be.
+      Nothin's what it used to be&mdash;everything's turned up from the bottom,
+      and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's an awful
+      ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin' to keep your
+      balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like bugs on the
+      bottom of a board&mdash;after any piece o' money they hear is loose. Fool
+      schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst! You
+      got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And the woods are
+      full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto: 'Get the other
+      fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's built as I have,
+      when he's built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper&mdash;THOSE
+      are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit
+      of it and put their names to it! And what's the use of my havin' ever been
+      born, if such a thing as that is goin' to happen? What's the use of my
+      havin' worked my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be
+      dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in the ground?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating&mdash;little regarding
+      the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
+      thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. &ldquo;You think this is a
+      time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was
+      such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is
+      despoiled while he sleeps&mdash;yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
+      eat him before he wakes!&mdash;but the live man can build straight up till
+      he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
+      soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
+      Sunday to go fishin'&mdash;it's turmoil! turmoil!&mdash;and you got to go
+      out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a
+      dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son
+      Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out
+      and do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense,&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+      irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. &ldquo;There isn't anything
+      goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
+      nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan halted. &ldquo;All right, mamma,&rdquo; he said, with a vast sigh. &ldquo;Let's go
+      up.&rdquo; And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you speak to Roscoe?&rdquo; she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+      drowsiness. &ldquo;Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I will to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+      Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the fourth
+      day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine in the
+      morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Sheridan, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then
+      walked away, smiling bitterly. &ldquo;Boh!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Still at it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What about
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,&rdquo; his father returned. &ldquo;I'd
+      bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I would!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better do it,&rdquo; Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When'd you begin this thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours&mdash;until the
+      other day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan began cutting. &ldquo;It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
+      office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and
+      he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You been
+      leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks. I
+      been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't done any
+      work, to count, in a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. &ldquo;It's all true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you goin' to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. &ldquo;I can't stand very much
+      talk about it, father,&rdquo; he said, pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; Sheridan cried. &ldquo;Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?&rdquo;
+       He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. &ldquo;I can't stand to
+      talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
+      what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't straighten me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Can you go back to your office and stay sober
+      to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple o'
+      huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand if
+      they see you tryin' to take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't worry about that,&rdquo; said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+      resentment. &ldquo;I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you got?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll see about that!&rdquo; said Sheridan, harshly. &ldquo;Now I can't fool with you
+      to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my office. You
+      bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last Sunday&mdash;but
+      you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the women-folks are
+      workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober till then? You
+      better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie down to your office
+      every little while, and he'll let me know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe paused at the door. &ldquo;You told Abercrombie about it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TOLD him!&rdquo; And Sheridan laughed hideously. &ldquo;Do you suppose there's an
+      elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  &ldquo;WHO looks a mustang in the eye?<br />
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!&rdquo;
+ </div></div>
+    <p>
+      So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+      because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that the
+      uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the
+      afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing
+      and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling
+      improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash
+      with vocal imitations:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Fearless and bold,<br />
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!<br />
+  With a leap from the ground<br />
+  To the saddle in a bound,<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; And away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!<br />
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; NIGHT'S on the way<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; EACH time I say,<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was
+      thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything
+      was implacably in motion&mdash;nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied
+      eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy
+      instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea to
+      faintness. But he felt neither now. &ldquo;ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY THOUGHTS TO
+      YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS BESIDE YOU.&rdquo; He saw
+      her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place became suffused with
+      radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop; he was still a poet
+      there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Away&mdash;and away!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAY!<br />
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!<br />
+    &nbsp; Wild are his eyes,<br />
+    &nbsp; Fiercely he dies!<br />
+      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hi-YAH!<br />
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!<br />
+    &nbsp; Ready to fling<br />
+    &nbsp; Our gloves in the ring&mdash;<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+      Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+      standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded to
+      those nearest him&mdash;he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of
+      them&mdash;but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily,
+      never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical
+      programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if you don't
+      try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's right&mdash;YOU'LL
+      never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a nice, shiny
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+      Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: &ldquo;Talkin' to himself! By George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs returned to song:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!<br />
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?<br />
+    &nbsp; &nbsp; Fearless and bo&mdash;
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      His father grasped him by the arm. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Let ME show you
+      how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n
+      you used to be, but that's no way to handle&mdash;Get out the way and let
+      me show you once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better be careful,&rdquo; Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Careful? Boh!&rdquo; Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. &ldquo;What you
+      talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so abused
+      you're goin' wrong in the head?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Abused'? No!&rdquo; shouted Bibbs. &ldquo;I was SINGING&mdash;because I 'like it'! I
+      told you I'd come back and 'like it.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply, but
+      began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it awkwardly&mdash;and
+      with bad results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin'
+      to it, if you put your mind on it.&rdquo; By his own showing then his mind was
+      not upon it. He continued to talk. &ldquo;All you got to look out for is to keep
+      it pressed over to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't run your hand up with it,&rdquo; Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run nothin'! You GOT to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+      forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and the
+      zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers. He
+      swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops over
+      himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch
+      my bag. It's in my machine, outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor still
+      grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin. Sheridan
+      had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at his son as
+      the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go on back to your work,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've had worse snips than that
+      from a pencil-sharpener.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, you haven't!&rdquo; said Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, too!&rdquo; Sheridan retorted, angrily. &ldquo;Bibbs, you go on back to your
+      work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc Gurney
+      tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs a little
+      court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back on your
+      job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HERE!&rdquo; Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door. &ldquo;You
+      watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I
+      slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you&mdash;YOU'RE liable to get
+      your whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo; And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+      outside, where conversation was possible. &ldquo;I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
+      have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you
+      for a drive and leave you at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. &ldquo;He wants me to
+      take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much
+      harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks have
+      got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your house!
+      But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half shut&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Bibbs interrupted, &ldquo;that's what they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's made
+      the difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the machine,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I've made a friend of it. I serenade it
+      and talk to it, and then it talks back to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, indeed? What does it say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I want to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+      repeatedly. &ldquo;Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take the
+      time off that he allowed for the examination, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till
+      five o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that,&rdquo; Bibbs said, thoughtfully; &ldquo;but the zinc-eater
+      doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being in
+      business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be
+      content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do beat the devil!&rdquo; exclaimed Gurney. &ldquo;Your father's right when he
+      tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing
+      when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm
+      off. Go on back to your murdering old machine.&rdquo; He climbed into his car,
+      which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately in
+      motion. &ldquo;Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him not
+      to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he didn't
+      pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show you how
+      to do something you were already doing a great deal better than he could.
+      You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the dressing
+      to-morrow morning. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than
+      change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of its
+      kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was rebellious
+      and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability only by means of
+      horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he appeared at the
+      dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which he seemed to regard
+      as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon the subject evidently
+      struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan, having been unable to
+      contain her solicitude several times during the day, and having been
+      checked each time in a manner that blanched her cheek, hastened to warn
+      Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to omit any reference to the
+      injury and to avoid even looking at the sling if they possibly could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
+      arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and the
+      members of the family were all seated at the table within two minutes
+      after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
+      awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as
+      she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that
+      of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent. Roscoe looked
+      ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive. Bibbs
+      had more color than any of these, and there was a strange brightness, like
+      a light, upon his face. It was curious to see anything so happy in the
+      tense gloom of that household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never
+      once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance,
+      heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like
+      Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself
+      with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting it
+      to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father gazed
+      heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and between
+      Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed
+      continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing
+      during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?&rdquo; his mother asked, in the
+      effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you go to church this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You THINK so! Don't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just down the street. It's brick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the sermon about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you hear me?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I asked you what the sermon was about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He roused himself. &ldquo;I think it was about&mdash;&rdquo; He frowned, seeming to
+      concentrate his will to recollect. &ldquo;I think it was about something in the
+      Bible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean
+      upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. &ldquo;He don't know they WAS any
+      suhmon!&rdquo; he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue. &ldquo;All he
+      know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!&rdquo; George was right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?&rdquo; Sibyl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;No, I didn't go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh?&rdquo; Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry,
+      and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. &ldquo;OH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that
+      completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to
+      other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the
+      library, but was not well received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks,&rdquo; Sheridan
+      commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs retreated. &ldquo;Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+      mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+      according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her
+      feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room,
+      examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs.
+      Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively
+      of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that she
+      thought it &ldquo;right pretty,&rdquo; and followed it with one of the former and the
+      same remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+      doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead,
+      he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the
+      room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing
+      after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy. He made it
+      perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions and that it
+      had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+      curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's another right pretty record,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting&mdash;with
+      patent nervousness&mdash;not to hear. And she unloosed the music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a
+      little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold
+      chair, with his eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did Edith go?&rdquo; she asked, curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith?&rdquo; he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. &ldquo;Is she gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing,
+      still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was
+      suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp
+      excitement. She listened intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+      library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+      husky: &ldquo;I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well
+      let me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+      protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started another
+      record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She
+      walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
+      instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+      foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so
+      white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences
+      became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and
+      contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit just as you were&mdash;both of you!&rdquo; she said. And then to Edith:
+      &ldquo;Did you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You march out of here!&rdquo; said Edith, fiercely. &ldquo;March straight out of
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good God!&rdquo; Lamhorn said. &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You knew that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HUSH!&rdquo; he begged, panic-stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
+      come&mdash;you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to
+      say! You were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand
+      times before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!&rdquo; she stormed. &ldquo;You
+      wouldn't even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat!
+      And SHE told my husband! You're a MAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+      Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to
+      her feelings. &ldquo;Get out of this house!&rdquo; she shrieked. &ldquo;This is my father's
+      house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! No! I mustn't SPEAK&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you DARE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+      fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled and
+      rose and cracked&mdash;they screeched. They could be heard over the noise
+      of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could be
+      heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could have
+      been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told my husband!&rdquo; screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+      Edith's. &ldquo;You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike
+      me with! HE did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's TIME
+      your husband&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. &ldquo;Do you want the neighbors
+      in?&rdquo; Sheridan thundered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his
+      mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved
+      slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the
+      hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily,
+      his eyes on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NOW THEN!&rdquo; said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the vicious
+      gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction
+      of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and
+      Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They
+      fled lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, papa!&rdquo; wailed Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't to
+      been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of
+      the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. &ldquo;Now then!&rdquo; he
+      repeated. &ldquo;You goin' to leave my house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will NOT!&rdquo; sobbed Edith. &ldquo;Don't you DARE order him out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you bother, dear,&rdquo; said Lamhorn, quietly. &ldquo;He doesn't understand.
+      YOU mustn't be troubled.&rdquo; Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very
+      handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught eyes
+      a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels&mdash;the
+      rabble being enacted by her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't come back, either!&rdquo; said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+      impersonation. &ldquo;Keep off the premises!&rdquo; he called savagely into the hall.
+      &ldquo;This family's through with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is NOT!&rdquo; Edith cried, breaking from her mother. &ldquo;You'll SEE about
+      that! You'll find out! You'll find out what'll happen! What's HE done? I
+      guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's HE
+      done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you s'pose
+      he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he
+      flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it was before he
+      met ME! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything, anyway&mdash;he
+      never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be serious, and she
+      was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long ago he cared about
+      me, but she kept persecuting him and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Sheridan, sternly; &ldquo;that's HIS side of it! That'll do! He
+      doesn't come in this house again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look out!&rdquo; Edith cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on
+      the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie look up
+      this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count on earth!
+      He's no good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was George
+      Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, papa,&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan began, &ldquo;if Edie says it was all Sibyl's fault,
+      makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'S enough!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;He keeps off these premises! And if any of you so
+      much as ever speak his name to me again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound
+      of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother.
+      However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her
+      husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her
+      pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She locked her door,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. &ldquo;She
+      wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said her husband, &ldquo;she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks
+      to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow&mdash;Here!
+      You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders. No,
+      you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better not,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father glared at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Mother, when you were in love with father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My goodness!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+      that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith feels about him just what you did about father,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;And
+      if YOUR father had told you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!&rdquo; she declared, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;What
+      is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her see him all she wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a&mdash;&rdquo; Sheridan gave it up. &ldquo;I don't know what to call you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her see him all she wants,&rdquo; Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. &ldquo;You're up
+      against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling you'd have
+      a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your determination,
+      father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll beat you. You can't
+      keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does
+      now. You can't make her think less of him, either. Nobody can. Your only
+      chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go
+      easy she probably will. Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's
+      just what you don't want, and as you DON'T want it, you'd better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't stand any more!&rdquo; Sheridan burst out. &ldquo;If it's come to BIBBS
+      advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that
+      nigger George? Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family.
+      Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'!
+      Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo; said Mrs. Sheridan, &ldquo;if you haven't got anything to do, you might
+      step over and take Sibyl's wraps home&mdash;she left 'em in the hall. I
+      don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo; And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and delivered
+      them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only, &ldquo;Forgot these,&rdquo;
+       and, &ldquo;Good night, Roscoe,&rdquo; cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the
+      New House. His mother and father were still talking in the library, but
+      with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there
+      he proceeded to write in his note-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+<div class="blok"><p>
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love&mdash;nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train&mdash;hatreds and jealousies&mdash;all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?</p>
+
+<p>   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!</p>
+
+<p>   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness&mdash;it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured&mdash;the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.</p>
+
+<p>   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.</p>
+
+<p>   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.</p>
+
+<p>   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning &ldquo;Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted.&rdquo;  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting&mdash;always there&mdash;for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?</p>
+
+<p>   Dawn and the sea&mdash;music in moonlit gardens&mdash;nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom&mdash;what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what</p> it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+      somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own
+      (and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to sleep
+      soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of affairs
+      of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote, &ldquo;Who would
+      wake from such a dream as this?&rdquo; Bibbs was a sympathetic person, easily
+      touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all things outside of it
+      were veiled and remote&mdash;for that is the way of youth in a dream. And
+      Bibbs, who had never before been of any age, either old or young, had come
+      to his youth at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+      down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of
+      soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile at
+      the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr. Gurney's,
+      but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist. And when he was once
+      more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater he whistled and sang to it,
+      as other workmen did to their own machines sometimes, when things went
+      well. His comrades in the shop glanced at him amusedly now and then. They
+      liked him, and he ate his lunch at noon with a group of Socialists who
+      approved of his ideas and talked of electing him to their association.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles
+      blew. When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested
+      himself of his overalls&mdash;his single divergence from the routine of
+      his fellow-workmen&mdash;and after that he used soap and water copiously.
+      This was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather
+      frail young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the
+      pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the
+      point of elegance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and boys
+      and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many hurried
+      and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one another, and
+      Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught sight
+      of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost passed her,
+      for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not recognize her,
+      though his shoulder actually touched hers. He would have gone by, but she
+      laughed delightedly; and he stopped short, startled. Two boys, one chasing
+      the other, swept between them, and Bibbs stood still, peering about him in
+      deep perplexity. She leaned toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew YOU!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; cried Bibbs. &ldquo;I thought it was your voice coming out of a
+      star!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only smoke overhead,&rdquo; said Mary, and laughed again. &ldquo;There aren't
+      any stars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, there were&mdash;when you laughed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his arm, and they went on. &ldquo;I've come to walk home with you,
+      Bibbs. I wanted to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But were you here in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have&mdash;you
+      ought to know better. What did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only waited about twelve seconds,&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;I'd just got here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was in this part of town already,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;At least, I was only
+      seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd have
+      had to go home alone&mdash;and I preferred going home with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's pretty beautiful for me,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with a deep breath. &ldquo;You'll
+      never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness&mdash;and then
+      to&mdash;to see you standing there! Oh, it was like&mdash;it was like&mdash;how
+      can I TELL you what it was like?&rdquo; They had passed beyond the crowd now,
+      and a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again
+      she was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
+      vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
+      had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
+      was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his solicitude
+      for her took another turn. &ldquo;I think you ought to have a car,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in winter,
+      anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I don't think I'd care for one particularly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would.&rdquo; Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. &ldquo;I think in
+      winter you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she interrupted, lightly. &ldquo;I don't need&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
+      for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl likes to walk, too,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;Let me tell you where I've been
+      this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
+      home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
+      He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
+      mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
+      I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see more of
+      them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever painted; I
+      don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in his life. He
+      gives drawing-lessons to keep alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean he paints the smoke?&rdquo; Bibbs asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the street&mdash;anywhere.
+      He just paints what's around him&mdash;and it's beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The smoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs of
+      cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and smoky
+      sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow columns of
+      smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing with the hazy
+      light in the distance; and he has others with the broken sky-line of
+      down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of vapor that have
+      colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take you there some
+      Sunday afternoon, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're showing me the town,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't know what was in it at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are workers in beauty here,&rdquo; she told him, gently. &ldquo;There are other
+      painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+      'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of it
+      that shows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beauty-workers seem buried very deep,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;And I imagine
+      that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest of
+      all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one of your
+      friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't get one
+      of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible&mdash;unless he could
+      use it for an advertisement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And really he's the town. They ARE buried
+      pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet it's all wonderful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's wonderful to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the town is wonderful to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city is
+      only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than the
+      horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater all
+      day long, helping me. Mary&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped with a gasp. &ldquo;That's the
+      first time I've called you 'Mary'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; She laughed, a little tremuously. &ldquo;Though I wanted you to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk
+      home with me. That must be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women like to have things said,&rdquo; Mary informed him, her tremulous
+      laughter continuing. &ldquo;Were you glad I came for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+      and up&mdash;over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way
+      most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person I
+      was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at all. It
+      seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly&mdash;somebody else&mdash;somebody
+      I don't understand now, a coward afraid of shadows&mdash;afraid of things
+      that didn't exist&mdash;afraid of my old zinc-eater! And now I'm only
+      afraid of what might change anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment, and then, &ldquo;You're happy, Bibbs?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don't you see?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I want it to last for a thousand, thousand
+      years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I wouldn't have
+      one thing different&mdash;nothing, nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Bibbs!&rdquo; she said, and laughed happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
+      after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
+      decided that he was &ldquo;a member of the family&rdquo;; but he appeared to have
+      relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy&mdash;he
+      was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days in
+      the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence&mdash;he
+      seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware
+      that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
+      imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
+      Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen
+      Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer wandered into
+      storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened. He was
+      sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but
+      their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
+      not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
+      days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
+      frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or no,
+      Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
+      information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
+      Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why
+      the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as of
+      yore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was not delirious&mdash;she was a thin little ego writhing and
+      shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+      herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of that
+      of a child after a bad bruise&mdash;there must be screaming and telling
+      mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
+      hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
+      end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to let me die!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;It's cruel not to let me die! What
+      harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive? Just look
+      at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what
+      that got me into!&mdash;look where I am now! He brought me to this town,
+      and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't even know
+      the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING! I had nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing
+      in the world! I wanted to have a good time&mdash;and how could I? Where's
+      any good time among these Sheridans? They never even had wine on the
+      table! I thought I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet
+      attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and go to dances&mdash;and,
+      oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did the best I could; I did,
+      indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every woman's got a right to
+      live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were just beginning to look
+      brighter&mdash;we'd moved up here, and that frozen crowd across the street
+      were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd have started us with the
+      right people&mdash;and then I saw how Edith was getting him away from me.
+      She did it, too! She got him! A girl with money can do that to a married
+      woman&mdash;yes, she can, every time! And what could I do? What can any
+      woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand it&mdash;and I
+      couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle&mdash;that Vertrees girl&mdash;and
+      she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt her. It
+      wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT little! She treated me as
+      if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take the trouble to sweep out of
+      her house! Let her WAIT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky whisper,
+      though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half upright, and the
+      nurse restrained her. &ldquo;I'd get up out of this bed to show her she can't do
+      such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and she walked out and left
+      me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket
+      was fairly underground, and she thinks she's landed that poor loon&mdash;but
+      she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able to walk across the street again
+      I'll show her how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help!
+      It wouldn't have hurt her any&mdash;it wouldn't&mdash;it wouldn't. And
+      Edith needn't have told what she told Roscoe&mdash;it wouldn't have hurt
+      her to let me alone. And HE told her I bored him&mdash;telephoning him I
+      wanted to see him. He needn't have done it! He needn't&mdash;needn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion, though she would
+      go over it all again as soon as her strength returned. She lay panting.
+      Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway, &ldquo;Don't come
+      in, Roscoe,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;I don't want to see you.&rdquo; And as he turned
+      away she added, &ldquo;I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she
+      had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the disadvantage
+      of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp
+      tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to telephoning
+      Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary
+      distraction over a counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
+      whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+      separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
+      the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like
+      legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly fuel
+      by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool, and thus
+      set her on fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
+      father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence had
+      done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing fast,
+      she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she went away;
+      it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not think always
+      of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little. She had written to
+      a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in apartments&mdash;and
+      a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring peace. Sheridan
+      shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a
+      Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and having kissed
+      everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have kissed Bibbs, but
+      he failed to realize that the day of her departure had arrived, and was
+      surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that evening, to find her
+      gone. &ldquo;I suppose they'll be maried there,&rdquo; he said, casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+      fuming. &ldquo;Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I
+      don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
+      are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept away
+      from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business. For
+      Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
+      sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
+      excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
+      wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
+      had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had the
+      habit of gesture; he could not &ldquo;take time to remember,&rdquo; he said, that he
+      must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his hurt; he
+      refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+      Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which the
+      doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before the appointed
+      time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom&mdash;there was
+      a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's office. The door was
+      slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the latter all Sheridan's,
+      and Gurney listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!&rdquo; he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+      breaking into thunder, &ldquo;I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick! You'd
+      lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his hind leg
+      at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what if it is?
+      There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to keep OUR money
+      tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a
+      crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a little skeery! You
+      listen to every street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try
+      to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on this&mdash;understand? I tell
+      you there never WAS better times. These are good times and big times, and
+      I won't stand for any other kind o' talk. This country's on its feet as it
+      never was before, and this city's on its feet and goin' to stay there!&rdquo;
+       And Gurney heard a series of whacks and thumps upon the desk. &ldquo;'Bad
+      times'!&rdquo; Sheridan vociferated, with accompanying thumps. &ldquo;Rabbit talk!
+      These times are glorious, I tell you! We're in the promised land, and
+      we're goin' to STAY there! That's all, gentlemen. The loan goes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened in.
+      His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his right
+      hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage as best
+      he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of Roscoe and
+      Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile reception.
+      But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic command Roscoe
+      awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the New House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney says your wife's able to travel,&rdquo; Sheridan said brusquely, as he
+      came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude which
+      had become his habit. &ldquo;Yes, she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I wouldn't put it that way,&rdquo; Roscoe protested, drearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I hear YOU wouldn't!&rdquo; There was a bitter gibe in the father's voice,
+      and he added: &ldquo;It's a good thing she's goin' abroad&mdash;if she'll stay
+      there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more&mdash;you least
+      of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use your talking that way,&rdquo; said Roscoe. &ldquo;You won't do any good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, when are you comin' back to your office?&rdquo; Sheridan used a brisker,
+      kinder tone. &ldquo;Three weeks since you showed up there at all. When you goin'
+      to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the foolishness and
+      start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a lot o' lost time and
+      a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself out o' the way and lets
+      you and all the rest of us alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
+      you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute before you talk that way!&rdquo; Sheridan began his sentry-go up
+      and down the room. &ldquo;I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good men
+      about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin' right
+      again, down in your office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be good men.&rdquo; Roscoe nodded indifferently. &ldquo;I thought I was
+      doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty men
+      drive harder'n I do, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with 'em.
+      They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use the rest of
+      their lives. The last's my case, I guess&mdash;'complicated by domestic
+      difficulties'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You set there and tell me you give up?&rdquo; Sheridan's voice shook, and so
+      did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
+      despondent figure. &ldquo;Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
+      down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
+      more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
+      you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
+      fastened on you yet. Don't say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use on earth,&rdquo; Roscoe mumbled. &ldquo;No use on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here! If you want another month's vacation&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney!&rdquo; Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. &ldquo;It's Gurney, Gurney,
+      Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+      everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
+      doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get its
+      Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
+      blattin'&mdash;'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
+      NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
+      emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
+      chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's the
+      matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and Work's
+      the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; Sheridan bellowed. &ldquo;I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel like
+      shootin' anybody that says it to me!&rdquo; He fumed and chafed, swearing
+      indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. &ldquo;Look here; do you think
+      you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+      outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at your
+      age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it's mine, and it's enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit there!
+      I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket, and all
+      you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right here,
+      you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and what
+      would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from now?
+      Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd either
+      get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be split up and&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room, and stood silent a
+      moment. Then he said, solemnly: &ldquo;Listen. If you go out now, you leave me
+      in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth to depend on but your
+      brother&mdash;and you know what he is. I've depended on you for it ALL
+      since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor, and he says maybe
+      you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that certainly you won't
+      be for a year or so&mdash;probably more. Now, that's all a lie. Men don't
+      break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell you, you can shake
+      this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and a little gumption. Men
+      don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING businesses like
+      ours&mdash;they lose the strings. And if you could, I won't let you&mdash;if
+      you lay down on me now, I won't&mdash;and that's because if you lay down
+      you prove you ain't the man I thought you were.&rdquo; He cleared his throat and
+      finished quietly: &ldquo;Roscoe, will you take a month's vacation and come back
+      and go to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Roscoe, listlessly. &ldquo;I'm through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a table,
+      went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
+      &ldquo;Best I can do,&rdquo; he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. &ldquo;I
+      figure it out a good deal like this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn't KNOW my job was
+      any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur&mdash;from what I
+      hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and the&mdash;the
+      trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I am. I tried
+      to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on whiskey&mdash;and
+      that put the finish to me! I&mdash;I'm not hitting it as hard as I was for
+      a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a little more
+      energy, I better try to quit entirely&mdash;I don't know. I'm all in&mdash;and
+      the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a few months
+      ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know it. Now, then,
+      I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you I wouldn't speak of her
+      as 'that woman,' because she's your daughter-in-law and going to stay that
+      way. She didn't do anything wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny
+      it, to find what she had done&mdash;encouraging that fellow to hang around
+      her after he began trying to flirt with her, and losing her head over him
+      the way she did. I don't deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a
+      hurt inside of me I'll never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't
+      understand a woman's nature.&rdquo; Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and
+      desolate earnest. &ldquo;A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting
+      attractive people, and traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things,
+      but I can give her the traveling&mdash;real traveling, not just going to
+      Atlantic City or New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman
+      has to have something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I
+      was. I never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and
+      I believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+      about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's all.
+      I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was so busy
+      with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her, I was so
+      busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us to&mdash;and
+      now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do when
+      anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me dizzy&mdash;it
+      makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had to go down-town
+      and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the floor, deathly sick.
+      You talk about a 'month's vacation'&mdash;and I get just as sick. I'm
+      rattled&mdash;I can't plan&mdash;I haven't got any plans&mdash;can't make
+      any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as I
+      can&mdash;and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His father rustled the paper. &ldquo;I said good-by, Roscoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; said Roscoe, listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then
+      he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Bibbs got home from work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mist' Bibbs? No, suh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yessuh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon the
+      newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond their
+      explanatory rubrics&mdash;there was nothing unusual or startling to
+      concentrate his attention:
+    </p>
+<div class="poetry"><div class="poem">
+  &ldquo;Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Burglars Make Big Haul.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Plan New Eighteen-story Structure.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;School-girl Meets Death under Automobile.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes Action by Coroner.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to     Governor in Church Rioting Case.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work.&rdquo;<br />
+   &ldquo;Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our<br />
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No<br />
+    European City Holds Candle.&rdquo; (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)<br />
+</div></div>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+      &ldquo;Well, father, did you want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Sit down.&rdquo; Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire,
+      holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came within seven of the shop record to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I handled more
+      strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest to me is
+      sixteen behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. &ldquo;What'd I tell you? I'd
+      like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you there&mdash;I
+      would just like to hear him! And you&mdash;ain't you ashamed of makin'
+      such a fuss about it? Ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time,&rdquo; Bibbs said,
+      smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. &ldquo;I didn't know
+      the difference it meant to like a thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
+      HAVE! I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
+      hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+      Ain't that so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks like it!&rdquo; Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead o'
+      hurting you, it's been the makin' of you&mdash;physically. You're a good
+      inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am if you'd
+      get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little. Physically,
+      it's started you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole family. Now,
+      then, mentally&mdash;that's different. I don't say it unkindly, Bibbs, but
+      you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like what's begun
+      physically. And I'm goin' to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his
+      son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. &ldquo;I got plans
+      for you, Bibbs,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. &ldquo;I&mdash;I'm all
+      right now, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen.&rdquo; Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of
+      a reasonable man reasoning. &ldquo;Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow
+      to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been
+      expectin' it some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll be
+      frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever called
+      you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of your life.
+      Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to use it. You
+      got will-power, I'll say that for you. I never knew boy or man that could
+      be stubborner&mdash;never one in my life! Now, then, you've showed you
+      could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop, in no time at
+      all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other things. I don't
+      deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't deny that, at all. Well,
+      that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as it looks. You're all
+      I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't as poor material as I
+      thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within seven strips of the shop's
+      record to-day looks to me like encouragin' information brought in at just
+      about the right time. Now, then, I'm goin' to give you a raise. I wanted
+      to send you straight on up through the shops&mdash;a year or two, maybe&mdash;but
+      I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's laid
+      down on me. If he ever comes back at all, he'll be a long time pickin' up
+      the strings, and, anyway, he ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count
+      on him. I got to have SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to
+      this: you're my last chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains
+      you got and see if we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin'
+      to put my time in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME,
+      and I won't be hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin'
+      to do the big thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the
+      big thing for me, in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the
+      shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over ahead
+      of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal to your
+      ambition that'll make you dizzy!&rdquo; He tapped his son on the knee again.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm goin' to make you a
+      director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to make you vice-president
+      of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust Company!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. &ldquo;Yes, sir!
+      And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+      vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+      directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop&mdash;oh, I
+      know you did!&mdash;but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so
+      right now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you to, I
+      deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger and bigger
+      every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand I deal you. I'm
+      startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't&mdash;I don't&mdash;I don't want it!&rdquo; Bibbs stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd you say?&rdquo; Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want it, father. I thank you&mdash;I do thank you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked perplexed. &ldquo;What's the matter with you? Didn't you
+      understand what I was tellin' you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know! But I can't take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you?&rdquo; Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+      &ldquo;Your head feel funny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never been quite so sane in my life,&rdquo; said Bibbs, &ldquo;as I have lately.
+      And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right life. I'm
+      earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages are enough. I
+      don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damnation!&rdquo; Sheridan sprang up. &ldquo;You've turned Socialist! You been
+      listening to those fellows down there, and you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+      &ldquo;Then what is it? What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; his son returned, nervously. &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;except that I'm
+      content. I don't want to change anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. &ldquo;I'll tell you, father,
+      if I can. I know it may be hard to understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think it may be,&rdquo; said Sheridan, grimly. &ldquo;What you say usually is
+      a LITTLE that way. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at
+      every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream&mdash;a
+      rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and
+      made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his
+      eyes lowered. &ldquo;You weren't altogether right about the shop&mdash;that is,
+      in one way you weren't, father.&rdquo; He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan
+      stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.
+      &ldquo;That's difficult to explain,&rdquo; Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again,
+      to follow the tracings of his finger. &ldquo;I&mdash;I believe the shop might
+      have done for me this time if I hadn't&mdash;if something hadn't helped me
+      to&mdash;oh, not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy
+      in it. I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I
+      don't want, I don't want to live a business life&mdash;I don't want to be
+      drawn into it. I don't think it IS living&mdash;and now I AM living. I
+      have the healthful toil&mdash;and I can think. In business as important as
+      yours I couldn't think anything but business. I don't&mdash;I don't think
+      making money is worth while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;You think
+      this city is rich and powerful&mdash;but what's the use of its being rich
+      and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools
+      because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they used
+      to because some people&mdash;not rich and powerful people&mdash;have
+      thought the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been
+      reading the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught
+      anything except what would help them to make money. You said it was
+      wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live.
+      When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's
+      the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has
+      meant really going ahead&mdash;it's just been getting bigger and dirtier
+      and noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when
+      it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an
+      utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics
+      just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman that
+      not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and
+      dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it?
+      And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time,
+      and was always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep
+      clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house
+      altogether unpeaceful and unlivable&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just one minute!&rdquo; Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy,
+      &ldquo;If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't quite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
+      whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon any
+      subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you mention
+      one single time when you were proved to be right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, &ldquo;If
+      I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm right
+      about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring
+      up my average.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
+      probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been
+      balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do,
+      you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now&mdash;and yet I
+      can't seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I
+      said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of this
+      country. Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be a part of it,&rdquo; said Bibbs, with unwonted decision. &ldquo;I
+      want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went down
+      there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money enough to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. &ldquo;You've never had
+      to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me
+      remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty
+      fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these
+      noisy housekeepers&mdash;me, for instance&mdash;decided to let you do your
+      own housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm earning nine dollars a week,&rdquo; said Bibbs, sturdily. &ldquo;It's enough. I
+      shouldn't mind at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My work!&rdquo; Bibbs answered. &ldquo;And I've done so well on that clipping-machine
+      I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job.
+      I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a
+      trade than be in business&mdash;I should, infinitely!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!&rdquo; But Sheridan
+      struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+      controlling it. &ldquo;You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+      either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning&mdash;or&mdash;you
+      can go to plumbing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently. &ldquo;I can get along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. &ldquo;O God,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a
+      week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for him?&rdquo;
+       Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of
+      dismissal. &ldquo;Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a
+      whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated
+      the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick
+      for over two years&mdash;and now, when I offer to take you out of it and
+      give you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy!
+      You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit,
+      and one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had a
+      crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First morning
+      he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out
+      into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' That's what
+      you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the pretty
+      dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust! Well,
+      mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are, I'll take
+      you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you&mdash;yes, and
+      I'll lam you, if I got to&mdash;until I've made something out of you
+      that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while I'm able to
+      stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin' at you till
+      they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't let me hear
+      from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked up, you poor,
+      pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for
+      once; but there was more than that&mdash;he seemed to be startled by his
+      father's last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm
+      nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the
+      consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of
+      Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading Maurice
+      Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet
+      might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose through the
+      glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And
+      while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights as these,
+      all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve to break the
+      spell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and
+      Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to
+      discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever
+      there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were
+      together, and it was light, she looked at him all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+      little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+      said: &ldquo;There's something I want to read over. This:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her&mdash;that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and looked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You boy!&rdquo; said Mary, not very clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;But it's true&mdash;especially my knees!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You boy!&rdquo; she murmured again, blushing charmingly. &ldquo;You might read
+      another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking
+      into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it&mdash;I can give it to
+      you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works&mdash;and going to stay one,
+      unless I have to decide to study plumbing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; She shook her head. &ldquo;You love and want what's beautiful and delicate
+      and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always
+      wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had
+      ever known, and that's what you were wistful for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or
+      two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. &ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I
+      wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here I am!&rdquo; she laughed, completely understanding. &ldquo;I think we're
+      like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough
+      Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told
+      everybody that the devil was dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn't, though,&rdquo; said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room
+      began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. &ldquo;He gets
+      into the clock whenever I'm with you.&rdquo; And, sighing deeply he rose to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're always very prompt about leaving me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I try to be,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+      everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you
+      look tired&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. You always look&mdash;you always look&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something,
+      you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it.
+      If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that look&mdash;and I'd
+      never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of
+      gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite understand why it should be,
+      either.&rdquo; He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. &ldquo;Mary, you haven't
+      a 'secret sorrow,' have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer she only laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
+      that's why you were so kind to me&mdash;you have nothing but happiness in
+      your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
+      happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours when
+      I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal
+      every time it comes&mdash;and then, when I've left the house, there's a
+      bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and
+      it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really beginning
+      another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But now's the
+      bad time&mdash;and I must go through it, and so&mdash;good night.&rdquo; And he
+      added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, &ldquo;I hate it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
+      motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary! Your eyes are so&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; But she looked quickly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought just then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know&mdash;it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+      understand&mdash;and didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. &ldquo;My eyes are
+      pleased,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She inclined her head. &ldquo;Yes. I'll&mdash;'let it'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to church,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It IS going to church when I go with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
+      formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
+      speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
+      doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
+      looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
+      the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but
+      the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to tell him
+      that she would never shut him out; he could always see that friendly light
+      of the open doorway&mdash;as if it were open for him to come back, if he
+      would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came between, when he
+      went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the beautiful symbol of
+      her friendship&mdash;of her thought of him; a symbol of herself and of her
+      ineffable kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she kept the door open&mdash;even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+      snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn
+      with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was
+      there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm
+      touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did&mdash;she
+      went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had spent
+      the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he was out of
+      sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of
+      him under the street-lamp that stood between the two houses, and saw that
+      he turned to look back again. Then, and not before, she looked at the
+      upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street. They were dark. Mary
+      waited, but after a little while she closed the front door and returned to
+      her window. A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe's house
+      flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them. Mary felt
+      the cold then&mdash;it was the third night she had seen those windows
+      lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for his
+      last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already
+      upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the
+      sheltering wing of the New House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+      aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
+      library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
+      rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
+      detonations&mdash;the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood;
+      then Gurney, sharply imperious, &ldquo;Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your
+      hand in that sling, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;LOOK!&rdquo; George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
+      tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he
+      had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of
+      Bibbs. &ldquo;Look at 'at lamidal statue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine&mdash;painted
+      colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded
+      and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the
+      spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had been a massacre in the oasis&mdash;the
+      Moor had been hurled headlong from his pedestal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hit 'at ole lamidal statue,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;POW!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's I
+      kin telefoam&mdash;she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't
+      takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago. You
+      done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what he
+      was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!&rdquo; He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a
+      crumpled telegraph form. &ldquo;Here what come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I pick 'er up when he
+      done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs&mdash;you' ma tell me tuhn
+      'er ovuh to you soon's you come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to
+      Mrs. Sheridan.
+    </p>
+<div class="blok">
+<p>   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.</p>
+                                                     <p class="rt">Edith Lamhorn.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+      thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors of
+      the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just then,
+      would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For that reason
+      he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade room, intending
+      to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan vociferously demanding his
+      presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him in.
+      Now you'll SEE!&rdquo; And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into the
+      hall, beckoned to her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+      cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was striding
+      up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that he seemed
+      to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot; his forehead
+      was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken loose, and there
+      were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THERE'S our little sunshine!&rdquo; he cried, as Bibbs appeared. &ldquo;THERE'S the
+      hope o' the family&mdash;my lifelong pride and joy! I want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep you hand in that sling,&rdquo; said Gurney, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. &ldquo;For God's sake,
+      sing another tune!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You said you 'came as a doctor but stay as
+      a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize ME&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, talk sense,&rdquo; said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. &ldquo;What do you
+      want Bibbs to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'&mdash;'hysterical,'
+      oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'! You
+      sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many another man
+      you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!&rdquo; He swung toward the
+      quiet figure waiting in the doorway. &ldquo;Bibbs, will you come down-town with
+      me Monday morning and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a
+      directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, father,&rdquo; said Bibbs, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+      instead of takin' up my offer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're too
+      high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find other work,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! You hear him for yourself!&rdquo; Sheridan cried. &ldquo;You hear what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+      broke, piping into falsetto: &ldquo;He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to be
+      a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business&mdash;he
+      wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+      &ldquo;There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance to
+      live,&rdquo; he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
+      throat. &ldquo;That's my one chance to live&mdash;that thing you see in the
+      doorway yonder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
+      and tossed it into the open bag. &ldquo;What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
+      chance to live?&rdquo; he said, coolly. &ldquo;I would if I were you. You've had TWO
+      that went into business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. &ldquo;Joe Gurney,&rdquo; he
+      said, when he could command himself so far, &ldquo;are you accusin' me of the
+      responsibility for the death of my son James?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accuse you of nothing,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But just once I'd like to
+      have it out with you on the question of Bibbs&mdash;and while he's here,
+      too.&rdquo; He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
+      his back and smiling. &ldquo;Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
+      and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at the
+      risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And he
+      did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't you
+      let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he couldn't
+      do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some message&mdash;something
+      to say that might make the world just a little bit happier or wiser? He
+      MIGHT&mdash;in time&mdash;it's a possibility not to be denied. Now he
+      can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you, and he won't
+      HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is likely to injure
+      his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the shop did, the first
+      time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But I tell you one thing I
+      know: if you take him down there you'll kill something that I feel is in
+      him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical body, and you'll kill it
+      deader than a door-nail! And so why not let it live? You've about come to
+      the end of your string, old fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish
+      fighting and give Bibbs his chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. &ldquo;What 'fighting?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours&mdash;with nature.&rdquo; Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his
+      fierce antagonist equably. &ldquo;You don't seem to understand that you've been
+      struggling against actual law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Natural law,&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
+      Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
+      powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
+      against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
+      grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame&mdash;and won in a walk! What's
+      taken Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
+      wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
+      could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
+      Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want him
+      to lead&mdash;and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
+      twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT!&rdquo; Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your son Bibbs,&rdquo; said the doctor, composedly, &ldquo;Bibbs Sheridan has the
+      kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
+      anything&mdash;if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to
+      remain asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the
+      life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT to
+      lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it&mdash;he's
+      obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
+      knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell you
+      something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
+      thwarted you&mdash;and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger
+      than your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
+      very self of the law&mdash;for it was the very self of the law that took
+      Jim from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The
+      very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+      beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
+      The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
+      the law&mdash;you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends,
+      to wield it and twist it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. &ldquo;Yes! And by
+      God, I will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Ajax defied the lightning,&rdquo; said Gurney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard that dam'-fool story, too,&rdquo; Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+      &ldquo;That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me tell
+      you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half a man
+      he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the lightning&mdash;we
+      hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A man nowadays
+      would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what about Bibbs?&rdquo; said Gurney. &ldquo;Will you be a really big man now
+      and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!&rdquo; Sheridan began to walk to and fro
+      again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot his bolt
+      the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target
+      seemed unaware of the marksman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder,&rdquo; Sheridan
+      went on, &ldquo;and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what&mdash;I
+      don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I mightn't
+      need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now&mdash;a spender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, put your hand back!&rdquo; said Gurney, wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in
+      the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and
+      half-way across the room&mdash;a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
+      Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it lay!&rdquo; he shouted, fiercely. &ldquo;Let it lay!&rdquo; And, weeping, she
+      obeyed. &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden
+      hush he put upon it. &ldquo;I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful
+      where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy&mdash;you remember
+      him, Doc&mdash;J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
+      messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
+      built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there from
+      nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he died&mdash;over
+      eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used to eat a bag o'
+      peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't stingy&mdash;he was just
+      livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or automobiles&mdash;he had
+      his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin'
+      heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pass one o'
+      these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the
+      streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? God! he wouldn't
+      'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the
+      bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd 'a'
+      had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every day of his
+      life was workin' for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it was for the
+      bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood and the blood
+      of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't. It was every bit&mdash;from the
+      time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three&mdash;it
+      was every last lick of it just slavin' for that turned-up-nose,
+      turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He
+      died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased him off the front steps
+      of his house once. The day after Tracy died his old-maid daughter married
+      the cigarette&mdash;and there AIN'T any Tracy bank any more! And now&rdquo;&mdash;his
+      voice rose again&mdash;&ldquo;and now I got a cigarette son-in-law!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+      Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,&rdquo; Sheridan went on. &ldquo;That's good,
+      and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be there
+      next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can
+      be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got me to
+      spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't give me a
+      minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's got it,
+      besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before this time
+      next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette behind&mdash;for
+      good&mdash;she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there ain't
+      goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there ain't
+      goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein', nor
+      God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll be back,
+      and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that cigarette, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; interposed Gurney, &ldquo;didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs
+      warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and
+      stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded
+      hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to
+      catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the
+      bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; he panted, choking. &ldquo;If he's shown gumption enough to guess right
+      the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin' him on!&rdquo;
+       And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs, thrusting forward
+      his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. &ldquo;My name ain't Tracy, I tell
+      you!&rdquo; he screamed, hoarsely. &ldquo;You give in, you stubborn fool! I've had my
+      way with you before, and I'll have my way with you now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+      &ldquo;splendid look&rdquo; of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage in
+      a struggle, so that he would &ldquo;never give up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. You can't have your way,&rdquo; he said. And then, obeying a significant
+      motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her husband's
+      room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the darkened chamber.
+      At the &ldquo;old&rdquo; house they had shared a room, but the architect had chosen to
+      separate them at the New, and they had not known how to formulate an
+      objection, although to both of them something seemed vaguely reprehensible
+      in the new arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the aperture
+      when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came and sat by the bed. &ldquo;I woke up thinkin' about it,&rdquo; she explained.
+      &ldquo;And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I
+      knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake, so&mdash;well, you got
+      plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't goin' to have the worry
+      with Bibbs it looks like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You BET I ain't!&rdquo; he grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works,&rdquo; she continued.
+      &ldquo;He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
+      say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
+      right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
+      time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
+      company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
+      look at the way he did when Jim&mdash;when Jim got hurt. He took right
+      hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all&mdash;and
+      the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do
+      in that kind o' trouble&mdash;still, he did take hold, and everything went
+      off all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says
+      he's got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right
+      considerable of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got
+      such a large practice&mdash;he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some
+      ways. Well, what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and
+      how much he'd amount to if he ever woke up&mdash;that's what I got to
+      thinkin' about. You heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger
+      business man than what Jim and Roscoe was put together&mdash;if he ever
+      wakes up,' he says. Wasn't that exactly what he says?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest. &ldquo;Gurney's
+      crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't&mdash;if what he says was true&mdash;what
+      of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.
+      You know where he goes all the time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord, yes!&rdquo; Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+      leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. &ldquo;You better
+      go back to sleep. He runs over there&mdash;every minute she'll let him, I
+      suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHY ain't there?&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;I know better&mdash;there is, too! You wait
+      and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest
+      young man alive up&mdash;yes, and make him JUMP up&mdash;and I don't care
+      who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it
+      into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and
+      chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll
+      see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you&mdash;moony, no-'count
+      young men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or
+      something; and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings
+      'em right down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is
+      Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister exactly&mdash;he's
+      so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS&mdash;but I know this is
+      goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say that Bibbs
+      has got the idea in his head yet&mdash;'r else he wouldn't be talkin' that
+      fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on.
+      But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him
+      out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary
+      and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more. That
+      girl's the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give things to!
+      She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look nice on her, and I guess
+      she'd like to have 'em about as well as the next. And I guess she isn't
+      gettin' many these days, either, and she'll be pretty ready for the
+      change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at the kitchen window the
+      other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their cook left two weeks ago,
+      and they haven't tried to hire another one. He says her and her mother
+      been doin' the housework a good while, and now they're doin' the cookin,'
+      too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that unless she's told him, and I reckon
+      she wouldn't; she's kind o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the
+      clouds to notice anything like that for himself. They've never asked him
+      to a meal in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either&mdash;he's
+      kind of innocent. Now I was thinkin'&mdash;you know, I don't suppose we've
+      hardly mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to
+      me maybe if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+      &ldquo;You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I?&rdquo; she demanded, crossly. &ldquo;Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are. There's nothin' in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet you,&rdquo; she said, rising&mdash;&ldquo;I'll bet you he goes to church
+      with her this morning. What you want to bet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back to bed,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+      nothin' in it, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head perplexedly. &ldquo;You think because&mdash;because Jim was
+      runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Nothin' to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;do you know something about it that you ain't told me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do,&rdquo; he grunted. &ldquo;Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
+      ain't had any yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo; She went to the door, her expression downcast. &ldquo;I thought
+      maybe&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; She coughed prefatorily. &ldquo;Oh, papa, something else
+      I wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night
+      when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but&mdash;well, Sibyl
+      wants to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants
+      to say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to
+      sit up&mdash;and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what
+      happened. They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she
+      wants to feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's
+      what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't
+      disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all along it
+      was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that foolishness
+      pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought was, no use
+      bein' rough with her, papa&mdash;I expect she's suffered a good deal&mdash;and
+      I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account. You'll&mdash;you'll
+      be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had pulled
+      over his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she said, timidly. &ldquo;I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl
+      all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw the coverlet off furiously. &ldquo;I presume so!&rdquo; he roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She departed guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to church
+      with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.
+      Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's
+      house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and
+      they had no other. They meant to go to church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation
+      as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and
+      Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with
+      Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other at
+      this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled among
+      groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this somewhat
+      prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it, and they
+      had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before they discovered
+      their error. However, feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if
+      they returned, they decided that a walk would make them as good. It was a
+      windless winter morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground. So
+      they walked, and for the most part they were silent, but on their way
+      home, after they had turned back at noon, they began to be talkative
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; said Bibbs, after a time, &ldquo;am I a sleep-walker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed a little, then looked grave. &ldquo;Does your father say you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He
+      has quite a list.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't mind,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;He's been getting some pretty
+      severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.
+      I've always been sure he's very big.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Big and&mdash;blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without
+      any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow
+      stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+      something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and his
+      kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it&mdash;so
+      great none of us could see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight,&rdquo; she finished for
+      him, cheerily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the smoke,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+      dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the little
+      pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of soot on
+      your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have
+      thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his
+      chance of my whipping him for it if I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+      rhetorically? IS there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary&mdash;a fleck on each. One
+      landed since I mentioned the first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+      transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
+      entirely matter-of-course about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for
+      the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the soot.
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; said the elderly wife. &ldquo;You're always wrong when you begin
+      guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't honeymooners at
+      all&mdash;they've been married for years. A blind man could see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I did know who threw that soot on you,&rdquo; said Bibbs, looking up at
+      the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. &ldquo;They arrest children for
+      throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the
+      houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make. I
+      wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year. Yes,
+      we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have money to
+      pay or none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it gets the pay?&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I!&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some of
+      the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to
+      get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, smiling to him, and nodding. &ldquo;And you don't want it, and
+      you don't need it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?&rdquo; He had told her of his
+      father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+      picturesqueness of their setting forth. &ldquo;You think I'm right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand times!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;There aren't so many happy people in this
+      world, I think&mdash;and you say you've found what makes you happy. If
+      it's a dream&mdash;keep it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thought of going down there&mdash;into the money shuffle&mdash;I hate
+      it as I never hated the shop!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hate it! And the city itself,
+      the city that the money shuffle has made&mdash;just look at it! Look at it
+      in winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the
+      ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting
+      dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the
+      unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise
+      aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and noise
+      MEAN&mdash;that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but
+      they're only the expression of a spirit&mdash;a blind embryo of a spirit,
+      not yet a soul&mdash;oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense!
+      Oughtn't it all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I
+      could&mdash;I'd want to help the other fellow to keep up with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I read something the other day and remembered it for you,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;It
+      was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: 'In the
+      first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city,
+      full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies
+      leaning from the windows all down great lengths of a street leading to the
+      city walls; and there the gates are wide open, letting in a space of green
+      field and cornfield in harvest; and all round his head a great rain of
+      swirling autumn leaves blowing from a little walled graveyard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I painted,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, &ldquo;I'd paint a lady walking in the
+      street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life&mdash;children
+      being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer,
+      and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the
+      gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and
+      freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a great rain of swirling
+      soot&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, adding, thoughtfully: &ldquo;And yet I believe I'm glad
+      that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were your brother&mdash;the
+      way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for you. Still, Edith
+      never&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she?&rdquo; said Mary, as he paused again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. And I&mdash;&rdquo; He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+      offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were
+      passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. &ldquo;Mary, our walk's almost
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked as blank. &ldquo;So it is, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly to a
+      stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl,
+      who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her illness,
+      however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not taking his
+      arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her
+      companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary gazed
+      after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Bibbs.&rdquo; And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly
+      unreasonably happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you want to go in&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I don't want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you&mdash;but&mdash;I
+      just wanted to say&mdash;I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning,
+      grumbling about soot and all that&mdash;while all the time I&mdash;Mary, I
+      think it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.
+      And&mdash;I don't know just why&mdash;but it's seemed to me that it was
+      one I'd always remember. And you,&rdquo; he added, falteringly, &ldquo;you look so&mdash;so
+      beautiful to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, will you tell me something?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever
+      just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much colder,
+      you don't&mdash;you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+      questions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I found I'd be warmer without them!&rdquo; She caught his hand quickly
+      in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth
+      will so often make even a ready-made library the actual &ldquo;living-room&rdquo; of a
+      family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed. Thus it was with
+      Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and
+      figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting&mdash;when
+      he was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far
+      end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a
+      solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the
+      length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his
+      expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but
+      the most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his
+      sling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at
+      him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were
+      nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.
+      There was a deadly silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she
+      was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them.
+      She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed
+      to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me,
+      and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I
+      acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and
+      to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never
+      happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come
+      back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you
+      never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the
+      way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only
+      wish her happiness and good in her new life. I thank you for all your
+      kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can
+      overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier&mdash;and
+      I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the
+      future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so
+      unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to excuse it this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+      never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
+      agitation of her hands within the muff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
+      heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There's something else&mdash;about something
+      different&mdash;I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear
+      it, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's up-stairs in her room,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Roscoe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin
+      to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the
+      chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, let me go,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want to speak to her a minute first,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
+      Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
+      room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter
+      Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of
+      the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the
+      recollection there had flashed the thought&mdash;out of her own experience&mdash;that
+      people are often much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by
+      words directly addressed to them. Sibyl intended to make it impossible for
+      Bibbs not to overhear. She did not hesitate&mdash;her heart was hot with
+      the old sore, and she believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in
+      the truth of what she was going to say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had
+      delivered into her hands the girl who had affronted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+      driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood,
+      and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again,
+      in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) &ldquo;have a fit right
+      there.&rdquo; She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her
+      hair before a mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just coming down,&rdquo; she said, as the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he wants you to,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;It's all right, mother Sheridan. He's
+      forgiven me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
+      daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+      wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I hope Edith will be happy,&rdquo; Sibyl added, inciting more applications
+      of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; murmured the good woman. &ldquo;We mustn't make the worst of
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it,
+      too,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;We better go down, mother Sheridan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to
+      a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. &ldquo;I want to tell you about it
+      first,&rdquo; she said, abruptly. &ldquo;It isn't a secret, of course, in any way;
+      it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole
+      family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL
+      not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all. But I want
+      to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help me to see I
+      got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it except the
+      good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of
+      course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I did that
+      night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help the family,
+      I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way. Well, what I
+      want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from being made a fool
+      of. I don't want to see the family just made use of and twisted around her
+      finger by somebody that's got no more heart than so much ice, and just as
+      sure to bring troubles in the long run as&mdash;as Edith's mistake is.
+      Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell you how it looks to me
+      and see if it don't strike you the same way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
+      wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
+      write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the
+      preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon
+      paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for
+      they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem,
+      and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it&mdash;he
+      would venture it upon an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day
+      would be of manual labor and thinking&mdash;he could think of his friend
+      and he could think in cadences for poems, to the crashing of the strong
+      machine&mdash;and if his father turned him out of home and out of the
+      Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere. His father had the
+      right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs&mdash;he faced the prospect of
+      a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He could find a
+      washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary
+      he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays&mdash;on
+      Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be
+      interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his
+      door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely
+      disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some
+      polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on, he started
+      violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but this
+      old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all THEY
+      got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a little longer.
+      Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the
+      streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he could call a 'position,'
+      and couldn't land it. You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while back,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;And now they're doin' the cookin', too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. &ldquo;I hope they find
+      something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy&mdash;of
+      all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
+      would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
+      happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
+      heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to him
+      that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically&mdash;and that
+      something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but
+      he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,&rdquo; said
+      Sibyl, sharply. &ldquo;Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+      started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not! They'd
+      got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs.
+      Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took the
+      daughter out auto-riding!&rdquo; She paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan,
+      but listening intently. There was no sound from within the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the truth,&rdquo; Sibyl declared, loudly. &ldquo;Oh, of course we were all crazy
+      about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up here, and
+      we thought she'd get us IN&mdash;but it didn't take ME long to read her!
+      Her family were down and out when it came to money&mdash;and they had to
+      go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
+      she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around to
+      Jim&mdash;and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
+      if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I
+      stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well&mdash;when Jim was
+      left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
+      Jim wasn't COLD&mdash;and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
+      but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
+      in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
+      with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I feel about it is,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it oughtn't to be allowed to go on.
+      It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made such a
+      fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of! I like
+      poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to
+      realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love
+      with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS&mdash;just
+      kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like men with some GO
+      to 'em&mdash;SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever looked at poor
+      Bibbs before, and neither'd she&mdash;no, SIR! not till she'd tried both
+      Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got desperate
+      that she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs&mdash;whiter than when he came from the sanitarium&mdash;opened the
+      door. He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
+      screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good heavens!&rdquo; cried Sibyl. &ldquo;Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. &ldquo;Come on,
+      mother Sheridan!&rdquo; she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
+      obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: &ldquo;Good gracious! Oh, I
+      wouldn't&mdash;too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
+      feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But, good
+      heavens&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the
+      stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+      following; he had gone back into his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&mdash;he looked&mdash;oh, terrible bad!&rdquo; stammered Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      wish&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,&rdquo; said Sibyl. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
+      Come on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance
+      to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account
+      of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the
+      fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But as I told mother Sheridan,&rdquo; she said, in conclusion, &ldquo;it might turn
+      out for the very best that he did hear&mdash;just that way. Don't you
+      think so, father Sheridan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of
+      his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no sign
+      of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
+      character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl&mdash;it was Bibbs
+      whom she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure it was all for the best,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's over now, and he knows
+      what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a
+      thing that way, a person can tell it's SO&mdash;and he knows I haven't got
+      any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
+      the stairway. &ldquo;I wish&mdash;I wish I knew what he was doin',&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;He did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him that
+      was&mdash;I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did. He
+      looked&mdash;so queer. It was like you'd&mdash;&rdquo; She called down the hall,
+      &ldquo;George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil' him
+      nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.&rdquo; He departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you expect he wants a fire for?&rdquo; she asked, turning toward her
+      husband. &ldquo;The house is warm as can be, I do wish I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quit frettin'!&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&mdash;I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
+      meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
+      harm if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
+      family? Why, she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, I don't know,&rdquo; the troubled woman quavered. &ldquo;If he liked
+      her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't ever
+      taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there was
+      more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If she
+      wants to marry him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. &ldquo;She don't!&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, father Sheridan, didn't she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cut her short. &ldquo;That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
+      wrong. So do you, mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl cried out, &ldquo;Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not,&rdquo; he said, curtly. &ldquo;She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
+      down cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's impossi&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not. I KNOW she did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And YOU needn't worry,&rdquo; he said, turning to his wife. &ldquo;This won't have
+      any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
+      D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs&mdash;after she wouldn't
+      take JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
+      but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
+      think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has&mdash;he'd 'a' been
+      at me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
+      on. There's nothin' in it&mdash;and I've got the same old fight with him
+      on my hands I've had all his life&mdash;and the Lord knows what he won't
+      do to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
+      stubborn, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SH!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. &ldquo;That's his
+      step&mdash;he's comin' down-stairs.&rdquo; She shrank away from the door as if
+      she feared to have Bibbs see her. &ldquo;I&mdash;I wonder&mdash;&rdquo; she said,
+      almost in a whisper&mdash;&ldquo;I wonder what he's goin'&mdash;to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose, frowning,
+      but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who
+      stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as the slow steps
+      descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
+      slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
+      father. Then he came and stood before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,&rdquo; he said, gently. &ldquo;You
+      won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan did not speak&mdash;he stared, astounded and incredulous; and
+      Bibbs had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound,
+      though he went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move.
+      She went nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs
+      had gone from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+      before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant&mdash;something in
+      her mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had
+      been done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+      charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large
+      upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
+      note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up
+      the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow&mdash;and that he had given
+      it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have done&mdash;and
+      yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a little before
+      she went down-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage
+      upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad,
+      thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual
+      wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing
+      the third&mdash;and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit
+      to dine with the wife's relatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?&rdquo; the husband
+      whispered. &ldquo;He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. &ldquo;Well, I don't know,&rdquo; she returned.
+      &ldquo;He looks to me like he had his own troubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect he has, like anybody else,&rdquo; said the young husband, &ldquo;but I guess
+      we could stand a good deal if we had his money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed as
+      the Sheridans. You can't tell.&rdquo; She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned
+      north. &ldquo;He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,&rdquo; said the young
+      husband, with bitter admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+      started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;What is the matter? I saw something was terribly
+      wrong when I&mdash;You look&mdash;&rdquo; She paused, and he came in, not
+      lifting his eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had
+      come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. &ldquo;Ah, poor boy!&rdquo;
+       she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity. &ldquo;I know what it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't tell me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They've made you give up. Your father's
+      won&mdash;you're going to do what he wants. You've given up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be glad
+      you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come because
+      you were happy.&rdquo; She did not speak again for a little while; then she
+      said: &ldquo;Bibbs&mdash;dear&mdash;could you tell me about it? Do you want to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a
+      question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;could you marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say, Bibbs?&rdquo; she asked, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone and attitude did not change. &ldquo;Will you marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks&mdash;she grew red and then white.
+      She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+      incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in
+      her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
+      strangeness in the long silence&mdash;the two were so strange to each
+      other. At last she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs, look at me!&rdquo; Her voice was loud and clear. &ldquo;What made you say
+      that? Look at me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it that made you?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want you to tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+      intensity of wonder. &ldquo;You've given up&mdash;to your father,&rdquo; she said,
+      slowly, &ldquo;and then you came to ask me&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you
+      want me to marry you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, just audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it that's
+      happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let me think. It's something that happened since our
+      walk this morning&mdash;yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
+      that&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement
+      and dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
+      House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, &ldquo;I do&mdash;I do want you
+      to&mdash;marry me, if&mdash;if&mdash;you could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you&mdash;&rdquo; Her
+      voice was as unsteady as his&mdash;little more than a whisper. &ldquo;Do you
+      think I'm&mdash;in love with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did
+      not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had nothing but dreams,&rdquo; Bibbs said, desolately, &ldquo;but they weren't
+      like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me.&rdquo; He smiled faintly,
+      though still he did not look at Mary. &ldquo;And when I first came home Edith
+      told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
+      meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed either
+      of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as&mdash;well, not as
+      particularly captivating!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. &ldquo;Those two!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: &ldquo;Lamhorn!
+      That's like them!&rdquo; She turned away, went to the bare little black mantel,
+      and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: &ldquo;WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe
+      Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary drew a deep breath. &ldquo;I think I'm beginning to understand&mdash;a
+      little.&rdquo; She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in
+      her voice. &ldquo;Answer me once more,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Bibbs, do you know now why I
+      stopped wearing my furs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I heard her say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know what happened, now.&rdquo; Mary's breath came fast and her voice
+      shook, but she spoke rapidly. &ldquo;You 'heard her say' more than that. You
+      'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried
+      first to marry your brother&mdash;and then&mdash;&rdquo; But now she faltered,
+      and it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. &ldquo;And
+      then&mdash;that I tried to marry&mdash;you! You 'heard her say' that&mdash;and
+      you believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for
+      you&mdash;but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was&mdash;that
+      you&mdash; And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you&mdash;except
+      for my 'extremity'&mdash;you took your father's offer and then came to ask
+      me&mdash;to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon
+      the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, Mary!&rdquo; he cried, helplessly. &ldquo;Oh NO&mdash;you&mdash;you don't
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, though!&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came and stood beside her. &ldquo;You kill me!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can't make it
+      plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
+      always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent&mdash;I did
+      nothing but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all
+      about my idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of
+      wonderful being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy.
+      You seemed to lean down&mdash;out of a rosy cloud&mdash;to be kind to me.
+      I never dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could
+      need anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that&mdash;that
+      you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard that I needed to marry&mdash;some one&mdash;anybody&mdash;with
+      money,&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;And you thought we were so&mdash;so desperate&mdash;you
+      believed that I had&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he said, quickly. &ldquo;I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for me&mdash;for
+      that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except generously&mdash;to
+      give. I said I couldn't make it plain!&rdquo; he cried, despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously,
+      like a child. &ldquo;Help me up, Bibbs.&rdquo; Then, when she was once more upon her
+      feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but
+      reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not
+      meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so
+      faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered
+      them no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me tell you what you want to tell me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can't, because
+      you can't put it into words&mdash;they are too humiliating for me and
+      you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You didn't
+      believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! Never for an instant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared
+      for you&mdash;but you didn't think I might be&mdash;in love with you. But
+      you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you because
+      you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, I only knew&mdash;for the first time&mdash;that you&mdash;that you
+      were&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were desperately poor,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You can't even say that! Bibbs, it was
+      true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!&rdquo; And she sank down
+      into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;I didn't know you COULD cry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Listen till I get through&mdash;I want you to
+      understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had been,
+      and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was plenty,
+      but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town; he
+      wanted to be richer, but instead&mdash;well, just about the time your
+      father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything. People say
+      that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with
+      other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't anything&mdash;we
+      hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything. You might
+      wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'&mdash;and I wonder myself
+      why, when a family loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought
+      to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!&mdash;as if a wave of the hand
+      made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either married
+      comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry. The poverty
+      came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there&mdash;and I didn't
+      know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to be anything except a
+      well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife&mdash;and I couldn't be a
+      well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how
+      to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I did it openly, at
+      least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your brother I had meant
+      to fascinate him and that I was not in love with him, but I let him think
+      that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I did mean to marry him. I had
+      never cared for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T
+      anything more than a kind of excited fondness. I can't be sure, but I
+      think that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it,
+      because that sort of a marriage is&mdash;it's sacrilege&mdash;something
+      would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law,
+      Sibyl. She meant no harm&mdash;but she was horrible, and she put what I
+      was doing into such horrible words&mdash;and they were the truth&mdash;oh!
+      I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me&mdash;and I
+      couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so
+      cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I
+      left her, and I wrote to your brother&mdash;just a quick scrawl. I told
+      him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I said I would not marry
+      him. I posted the letter, but he never got it. That was the afternoon he
+      was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know what I did&mdash;and you know&mdash;ME!&rdquo;
+       She pressed her clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far
+      forward, her head bowed before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. &ldquo;Couldn't
+      you&mdash;Isn't there&mdash;Won't you&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Mary, I'm
+      going with father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without&mdash;without&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a choked little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gave me something to live for,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You kept me alive, I think&mdash;and
+      I've hurt you like this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not you&mdash;oh no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could forgive me, Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a thousand times!&rdquo; Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture,
+      and just touched his own for an instant. &ldquo;But there's nothing to forgive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you can't&mdash;you can't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't what, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You couldn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry you?&rdquo; she said for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she
+      did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a
+      little. &ldquo;I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more&mdash;please&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MARY&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never, never!&rdquo; she cried, in a passion of tears. &ldquo;You mustn't come
+      any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
+      got himself to the door and out of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to the
+      New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but so that
+      the others might hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would be
+      apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+      thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me. It
+      proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
+      refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
+      had entered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's SO queer!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan gasped. &ldquo;Who on earth would thought of his
+      doin' THAT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; said her husband, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't tell us he'd go over there and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+      didn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl was altogether taken aback. &ldquo;Do you supose it's true? Do you suppose
+      she WOULDN'T?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed up
+      fine with his girl,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Not to me, he didn't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; he interrupted, angrily, &ldquo;she ain't that kind of a girl! If
+      you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with, though
+      I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about my dead
+      boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him, and it was
+      a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he never saw it.
+      She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,&rdquo; said
+      Roscoe. &ldquo;Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it&mdash;I was
+      waiting for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It
+      was just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
+      and called me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down, for,
+      although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were
+      dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed&mdash;after some
+      further fragmentary discourse&mdash;visibly elated. After all, the guilty
+      had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely,
+      that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a contented
+      glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the
+      street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
+      she said, uneasily, &ldquo;Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
+      about that letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; he answered, walking moodily to the window. &ldquo;I been
+      thinkin' about it.&rdquo; He came to a decision. &ldquo;I reckon I will.&rdquo; And he went
+      up to Bibbs's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you goin' back on what you said?&rdquo; he inquired, brusquely, as he
+      opened the door. &ldquo;You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't know
+      as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord
+      knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!&rdquo; Sheridan was
+      baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
+      unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
+      abuse went on in spite of him. &ldquo;I can't say I expect much of you&mdash;not
+      from the way you always been, up to now&mdash;unless you turn over a new
+      leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do THAT!
+      If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the whole
+      office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any, you
+      better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I'll try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You better, if it's in you!&rdquo; Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
+      always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
+      bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
+      angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
+      like a drudge-driver. &ldquo;You better come down there with your mind made up
+      to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you, or you'll
+      not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get ahead&mdash;and
+      you better set it down in your books&mdash;the way to get ahead is to do
+      ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But you don't
+      know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand around and
+      feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home and take a bath
+      and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty different
+      proposition now, and if you're worth your salt&mdash;and you never showed
+      any signs of it yet&mdash;not any signs that stuck out enough to bang
+      somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice&mdash;well, I
+      want to say, right here and now&mdash;and you better listen, because I
+      want to say just what I DO say. I say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a
+      hopeless blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked up patiently&mdash;an old, old look. &ldquo;Yes, father; I'm
+      listening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all,&rdquo; said Sheridan, frowning heavily. &ldquo;That's all I came to say,
+      and you better see't you remember it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him
+      with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure. He
+      stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more. Then
+      abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead liberally
+      covered with perspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, crossly. &ldquo;That girl over yonder wrote Jim a letter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;She told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it&mdash;&rdquo; The door
+      closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence was
+      nevertheless audible&mdash;&ldquo;if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin'
+      and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to inquire
+      what Bibbs &ldquo;said,&rdquo; but after a second thought she decided not to speak at
+      all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal communication was
+      given over between them for the rest of that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next morning,
+      and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she worried about
+      what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She felt that
+      everything depended on how Bibbs &ldquo;took hold,&rdquo; and upon her husband's
+      return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity to ask him how
+      things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody tell by the
+      first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right at the start
+      and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair the first day or
+      so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as it was&mdash;Bibbs,
+      in fact&mdash;had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe had done;
+      and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position in the
+      Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks
+      of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant
+      where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this
+      to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the
+      table, and her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business,
+      although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the
+      evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner. Usually Bibbs was
+      silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the
+      third week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently
+      been the subject of previous argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+      father,&rdquo; he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. &ldquo;Abercrombie
+      agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen,&rdquo; Sheridan returned, &ldquo;but
+      you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof fell
+      because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions.
+      I want that building put just the way Jim planned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't have it,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;You can't, because Jim planned for the
+      building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one&mdash;the one that
+      didn't fall&mdash;is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for
+      storage. It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both
+      buildings down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and
+      cheapest in the long run for that type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan looked sarcastic. &ldquo;Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+      while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rent,&rdquo; Bibbs returned, promptly. &ldquo;We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+      anyhow&mdash;they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse
+      matter your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount
+      of stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until we
+      could patch up those process perils&mdash;and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+      Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on it
+      for us this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan's expression was queer. &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; he said, sharply. &ldquo;Did you
+      go and do that without consulting me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It didn't cost anything,&rdquo; said Bibbs. &ldquo;It's only until to-morrow
+      afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you did?&rdquo; Sheridan's tone was sardonic. &ldquo;Well, just suppose you
+      couldn't convince me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, though&mdash;and I intend to,&rdquo; said Bibbs, quietly. &ldquo;I don't think
+      you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, see here,&rdquo; said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; &ldquo;suppose I had my mind
+      set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was&mdash;well,
+      kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs looked at him compassionately. &ldquo;I'm sorry if you have a sentiment
+      about it, father,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But whether you have or not can't make a
+      difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and
+      that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want one
+      that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend
+      sentiment in this particular kind of affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you don't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. &ldquo;Why are you 'sorry'?&rdquo; he asked,
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon,&rdquo; said Bibbs,
+      &ldquo;and I had him condemn both those buildings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us&mdash;afraid
+      you'd see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them&mdash;they've got
+      to come down now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+      Finally he said, &ldquo;How long did they give you on that option to convince
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Sheridan, not relaxing. &ldquo;I'm convinced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs jumped up. &ldquo;I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch
+      agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle it
+      this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+      expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that
+      startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything
+      resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound&mdash;although it was grim
+      and dry&mdash;bore that resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brightened eagerly. &ldquo;Looks like he was startin' right well don't it,
+      papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I wanted&mdash;that's
+      why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat before we even
+      started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't reasonably defend
+      SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option for Us'! 'Stuff
+      piled up on Us'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. &ldquo;I don't just like the way he
+      looks, though, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you
+      start to frettin' about IT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then,&rdquo; said Sheridan.
+      &ldquo;You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And he'd
+      begun to fill out some, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
+      her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
+      still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. &ldquo;That's the way
+      it is with you, mamma&mdash;got to take your frettin' out one way if you
+      don't another!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he begun
+      to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he may 'a' lost something,&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;I expect he's lost a
+      whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
+      poetry and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; his wife persisted. &ldquo;I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
+      when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
+      readin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, here!&rdquo; said Sheridan. &ldquo;Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there the
+      rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did one
+      big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had to go
+      and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over there, and
+      it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty fair pay for
+      what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get over worries
+      like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the
+      procession nowadays&mdash;and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs
+      might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a year from now I'll
+      bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he
+      funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant
+      was, think about something useless. Well, I guess he's keepin' his mind
+      pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes, sir, it took a pretty
+      fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but it certainly did the
+      business.&rdquo; He patted his wife's shoulder again, and then, without any
+      prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But
+      no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness, and
+      the changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The priests wore
+      that &ldquo;settish&rdquo; look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning to develop about his
+      mouth and eyes&mdash;a wary look which she could not define, but it comes
+      with service at the temple; and it was the more marked upon Bibbs for his
+      sharp awakening to the necessities of that service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did as little &ldquo;useless&rdquo; thinking as possible, giving himself no time
+      for it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work
+      when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his
+      work. But he did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people
+      were not allowed to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of
+      hideous uproar&mdash;they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder
+      the thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they could
+      walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or screeching,
+      as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with business; though
+      street musicians were not tolerated, being considered a nuisance and an
+      interference. A man or woman who went singing for pleasure through the
+      streets&mdash;like a crazy Neopolitan&mdash;would have been stopped, and
+      belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen is allowed to
+      do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The streets were
+      dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing! and the Motor
+      Federation issued public warnings declaring that the pedestrian's life was
+      in his own hands, and giving directions how to proceed with the least
+      peril. However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to sing in the streets, or
+      anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy that, for the start, at
+      least, was bitter, and there was no song left in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among them he
+      found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period of neighborliness,
+      &ldquo;pioneer stock,&rdquo; usually; and there were men&mdash;particularly among the
+      merchants and manufacturers&mdash;&ldquo;so honest they leaned backward&rdquo;;
+      reputations sometimes attested by stories of heroic sacrifices to honor;
+      nor were there lacking some instances of generosity even nobler. Here and
+      there, too, were book-men, in their little leisure; and, among the
+      Germans, music-men. And these, with the others, worshiped Bigness and the
+      growth, each man serving for his own sake and for what he could get out of
+      it, but all united in their faith in the beneficence and glory of their
+      god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in
+      life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the
+      dangerous illness of a wife or child. In the way of &ldquo;relaxation&rdquo; some of
+      the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took &ldquo;shows&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      mixture of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some
+      took an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards; and some
+      took nothing. The high priests were vigilant to watch that no &ldquo;relaxation&rdquo;
+       should affect the service. When a man attended to anything outside his
+      business, eyes were upon him; his credit was in danger&mdash;that is, his
+      life was in danger. And the old priests were as ardent as the young ones;
+      the million was as eager to be bigger as the thousand; seventy was as busy
+      as seventeen. They strove mightily against one another, and the old
+      priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the most dangerous.
+      Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these&mdash;he must wear a
+      thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves
+      and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but these
+      were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had a good guide
+      to point them out to him. They were useful sometimes, he learned, and many
+      of them served as go-betweens in matters where business must touch
+      politics. He learned also how breweries and &ldquo;traction&rdquo; companies and banks
+      and other institutions fought one another for the political control of the
+      city. The newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political
+      influence, especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a
+      skeptical humor, believing the journals either to be retained partisans,
+      like lawyers, or else striving to forward the personal ambitions of their
+      owners. The control of the city lay not with them, but was usually
+      obtained by giving the hordes of negroes gin-money, and by other
+      largesses. The revenues of the people were then distributed as fairly as
+      possible among a great number of men who had assisted the winning side.
+      Names and titles of offices went with many of the prizes, and most of
+      these title-holders were expected to present a busy appearance at times;
+      and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and faithfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known and
+      customary, astonished him at first, and once&mdash;in a brief moment of
+      forgetting that he was done with writing&mdash;he thought that if he had
+      known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation of
+      them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and
+      sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it&mdash;it was a permeation;
+      the newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning
+      to stammer a few words of the local language. Everywhere the people
+      shouted of the power, the size, the riches, and the growth of their city.
+      Not only that, they said that the people of their city were the greatest,
+      the &ldquo;finest,&rdquo; the strongest, the Biggest people on earth. They cited no
+      authorities, and felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus
+      celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that
+      there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and
+      supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the
+      critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for
+      they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them,
+      harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them. For the
+      voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs, and
+      the door between the two rooms usually stood open&mdash;the father had
+      established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was alone,
+      Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bibbs,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when I
+      do I usually wish I hadn't&mdash;but for Heaven's sake what have you been
+      buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs leaned back from his desk. &ldquo;For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+      dollars. That's all it cost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to
+      know that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader'n Adam's cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be worth something&mdash;some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It mightn't be so dead&mdash;not if we went into it,&rdquo; said Bibbs, coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, &ldquo;Who'd you buy it
+      from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A broker&mdash;Fansmith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+      soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It belonged to Mr. Vertrees,&rdquo; said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to
+      his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So!&rdquo; Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Your business.&rdquo; And he went back to his own room. But presently he looked
+      in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day&rdquo;&mdash;he was shuffling
+      himself into his overcoat&mdash;&ldquo;because I just thought I'd go up to the
+      house and get THIS over with mamma.&rdquo; He glanced apologetically toward his
+      right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The bandages had
+      been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three fingers&mdash;the
+      forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated. &ldquo;She's bound to
+      make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than her dinner. I'll be
+      back about two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately
+      that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from the
+      lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his overcoat
+      in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, papa?&rdquo; she asked, quickly. &ldquo;Has anything gone wrong?
+      You ain't sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo; He laughed loudly. &ldquo;Me SICK?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had lunch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffee, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn
+      she said querulously, &ldquo;I just know there's something wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' in the world,&rdquo; he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the head
+      of the table. &ldquo;I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you, that's
+      all. It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. &ldquo;I guess it's time you had him, too.
+      I KNEW Bibbs&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+      anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances
+      with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole
+      Gurney had a talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on me
+      what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then I thought
+      he must want to get something out o' me, he got so flattering&mdash;for a
+      minute! 'Bibbs couldn't help havin' business brains,' he says, 'bein' YOUR
+      son. Don't be surprised,' he says&mdash;'don't be surprised at his makin'
+      a success,' he says. 'He couldn't get over his heredity; he couldn't HELP
+      bein' a business success&mdash;once you got him into it. It's in his
+      blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH brains,' he says, 'an only
+      third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but it does need a special KIND o'
+      brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire. I mean,' he says, 'when a man's
+      given a start. If nobody gives him a start, why, course he's got to have
+      luck AND the right kind o' brains. The only miracle about Bibbs,' he says,
+      'is where he got the OTHER kind o' brains&mdash;the brains you made him
+      quit usin' and throw away.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what'd he say about his health?&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan demanded, impatiently,
+      as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband. Sheridan helped
+      himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm comin' to that,&rdquo; he returned, placidly. &ldquo;See how easy I manage this
+      cup with my left hand, mamma?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You been doin' that all winter. What did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's wonderful,&rdquo; he interrupted, admiringly, &ldquo;what a fellow can do with
+      his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could with
+      my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I believe I
+      RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write, anyway&mdash;just
+      the signature. Rest's all dictatin'.&rdquo; He blew across the top of the cup
+      unctuously. &ldquo;Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole Gurney says he
+      believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o' mind he was in
+      about the machine-shop&mdash;that is, if he could some way get to feelin'
+      about business the way he felt about the shop&mdash;not the poetry and
+      writin' part, but&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, supplementing his remarks with a
+      motion of his head toward the old house next door. &ldquo;He says Bibbs is older
+      and harder'n what he was when he broke down that time, and besides, he
+      ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was then&mdash;and I should say he AIN'T!
+      I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age that's any wider awake! But he
+      says Bibbs's health never need bother us again if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. &ldquo;I don't see any help THAT way. You know
+      yourself she wouldn't have Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him
+      LOOK at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that
+      she won't let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy, and
+      some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the Bible,
+      but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o' thinkin' that if she'd let him
+      come back and set around with her an evening or two sometimes&mdash;not
+      reg'lar, I don't mean&mdash;why&mdash;Well, I just thought I'd see what
+      YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk about it to Bibbs himself&mdash;I
+      don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow&mdash;but I thought maybe you could
+      kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a little talk
+      with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land lays, and ask
+      her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ME!&rdquo; Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. &ldquo;No.&rdquo; She shook
+      her head decidedly. &ldquo;It wouldn't do any good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't try it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
+      believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T&mdash;and,
+      what's more, it'd only make things worse. If people find out you're
+      runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as much
+      for you as if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and I
+      couldn't do it if it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed with resignation. &ldquo;All right, mamma. That's all.&rdquo; Then, in a
+      livelier tone, he said: &ldquo;Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+      morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's splendid, papa!&rdquo; she cried, beaming. &ldquo;I was afraid&mdash;Let's
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket.
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute,&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;Now it may give you just a teeny bit
+      of a shock, but the fact is&mdash;well, you remember that Sunday when
+      Sibyl came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'&mdash;it was the
+      day after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's telegram came&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see your hand!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now wait!&rdquo; he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+      &ldquo;The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning, when
+      you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office&mdash;he'd told
+      me to, you see&mdash;and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything.&rdquo; And he
+      held out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. &ldquo;You see, these days
+      when it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple o'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to jump for her&mdash;she went over backward. For the second time
+      in her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own
+      room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat that
+      the &ldquo;fuss&rdquo; she was making irked him far more than his physical loss. He
+      permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his office, but
+      when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in attendance to
+      await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he himself proceeded
+      on foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as manna in
+      the wilderness; it came from heaven&mdash;by what agency he did not
+      particularly question. The broker informed him that &ldquo;parties were
+      interested in getting hold of the stock,&rdquo; and that later there might be a
+      possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his client.
+      It might go &ldquo;quite a ways up&rdquo; within a year or so, he said, and he advised
+      &ldquo;sitting tight&rdquo; with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+      again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and his
+      wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her piano,
+      and as for furs&mdash;spring was on the way, she said. But they paid the
+      butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook once more.
+      It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and presently
+      assured him that Miss Vertrees would &ldquo;be down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed
+      and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the cook.
+      She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second, but it
+      vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes by a
+      soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be surprised,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+      business I looked in here. It'll only take a minute, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; said Mary. &ldquo;I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+      neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so&mdash;lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I could manage that much.&rdquo; And they sat down, facing each other
+      and not far apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly,&rdquo; he said, more
+      gravely. &ldquo;Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed
+      to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it
+      myself and explain how I happened to have it. It's this&mdash;this letter
+      you wrote my boy.&rdquo; He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left
+      hand, and she took it gently from him. &ldquo;It was in his mail, after he was
+      hurt. You knew he never got it, I expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed. &ldquo;I'm glad he didn't. Not,&rdquo; he added, quickly&mdash;&ldquo;not but
+      what you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other
+      way when it came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you&mdash;you
+      were above-board all through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary said, &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all his
+      mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it all&mdash;once
+      I got started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;he leaned forward as if to rise&mdash;&ldquo;I guess that's about
+      all. I just thought you ought to have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you for bringing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might
+      have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this glance,
+      and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office,&rdquo; he said, rising
+      desperately. &ldquo;I told&mdash;I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock,
+      and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind
+      time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days&mdash;with
+      THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary rose with him. &ldquo;I've always heard YOU were the hard driver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He guffawed derisively. &ldquo;Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
+      couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end
+      o' the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some
+      day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is&mdash;once he
+      goes AT a thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she smiled. &ldquo;I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, looking away from her. &ldquo;It's just my way o' speakin' o' that
+      boy o' mine, Bibbs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+      careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, &ldquo;How IS
+      Bibbs?&rdquo; but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the silence
+      became embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there,&rdquo; he said, at last. &ldquo;He
+      might worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by&mdash;and thank you,&rdquo; said Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he said, blankly. &ldquo;You're welcome. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary put out her hand. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to excuse my left hand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had a little accident to
+      the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a pitying cry as she saw. &ldquo;Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.&rdquo; He laughed
+      jovially. &ldquo;Did anybody tell you how it happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you hurt your hand, but no&mdash;not just how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was this way,&rdquo; he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down
+      again. &ldquo;You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the
+      youngest o' my boys&mdash;the one that used to come to see you sometimes,
+      after Jim&mdash;that is, I mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my
+      partner; and the truth is that's what it's just about goin' to amount to,
+      one o' these days&mdash;if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I
+      expect, I had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd
+      kind o' sneak in there and see how he was gettin' along. Take a doctor
+      with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole
+      Doc Gurney&mdash;I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to
+      show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I wouldn't
+      listen, and I didn't look out&mdash;and that's how I got my hand hurt,
+      tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and I didn't.
+      Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS hurt&mdash;and
+      so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical measures with
+      me. He's a right good doctor, too. Don't you think so, Miss Vertrees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is so!&rdquo; Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip
+      with all day on his hands. &ldquo;Take him on Bibbs's case. I was talkin' about
+      Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to hear the way ole
+      Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a friend as he is
+      doctor&mdash;and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the
+      family. He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and he thinks he could
+      stand the pace and get fat on it if&mdash;well, this is what'd made YOU
+      laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees&mdash;honest it would!&rdquo; He paused
+      to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing straight before her
+      at the wall; her lips were parted, and&mdash;visibly&mdash;she was
+      breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing furiously
+      angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went on, determined
+      now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his voice to one of
+      confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone which
+      indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only a joke he shared with
+      her. &ldquo;Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed! Why, that ole man thinks
+      YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to blame it on him, young
+      lady, if it makes you feel like startin' out to whip somebody! He's
+      actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to gettin' better while he
+      worked over there at the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin'
+      good. And he says if you could manage to just stand him hangin' around a
+      little&mdash;maybe not much, but just SOMEtimes&mdash;again, he believed
+      it'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good. 'Course, that's only what the doctor
+      said. Me, I don't know anything about that; but I can say this much&mdash;I
+      never saw any such a MENTAL improvement in anybody in my life as I have
+      lately in Bibbs. I expect you'd find him a good deal more entertaining
+      than what he used to be&mdash;and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing
+      to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to ask you to
+      stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc GURNEY,
+      he's got you on his brain so bad&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary jumped. &ldquo;Mr. Sheridan!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed profoundly. &ldquo;There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I didn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But I don't understand&mdash;and I think you
+      don't. What is it you want me to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed again, but this time with relief. &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You're
+      right. It'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could with you,
+      all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you sometimes,
+      once more. Could you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't understand.&rdquo; She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+      gesture. &ldquo;Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make your
+      oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me
+      to marry him&mdash;because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him any
+      more,&rdquo; she cried in distress. &ldquo;I CAN'T!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. &ldquo;You mean because he thought
+      that about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! What he thought was TRUE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;you mean he was so much in&mdash;you mean he thought so much
+      of you&mdash;&rdquo; The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's
+      tongue; he seemed to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a
+      ghastly pause he bravely repeated them. &ldquo;You mean he thought so much of
+      you that you just couldn't stand him around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+      respected me&mdash;too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like,
+      and he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he
+      knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But the cheap,
+      bad things one has done seem always to come back&mdash;they wait, and pull
+      you down when you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn't
+      'in love' with me at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to do&mdash;it
+      was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad&mdash;he just threw
+      it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never would&mdash;just
+      for you. And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that must think quite a
+      heap o' the girl he does it for! You say it was only because he was sorry,
+      but let me tell you there's only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!
+      Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Bibbs isn't like other men&mdash;he would do anything
+      for anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan grinned. &ldquo;Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in 'sentiment
+      in business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he wanted was, just
+      plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was afraid his thinkin' so
+      much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him&mdash;the way it does
+      sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that ain't the
+      trouble.&rdquo; He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. &ldquo;Now here, Miss
+      Vertrees, I don't have to tell you&mdash;because you see things easy&mdash;I
+      know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to make Bibbs go
+      my way instead of his own&mdash;I had to do it for the sake o' my business
+      and on his own account, too&mdash;and I expect you got some idea how it
+      hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in half-hearted
+      or mean; he came in&mdash;all the way! But there isn't anything in it to
+      him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust
+      in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work
+      FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, and I believe&mdash;honest&mdash;that's
+      what hurt him the worst. Now you said we'd talk plain. Why can't you let
+      him come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She covered her face desperately with her hands. &ldquo;I can't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I mustn't press you,&rdquo; he said, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face.
+      &ldquo;Ah! He was only sorry for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty, and
+      it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear that
+      even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a change
+      came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't! Don't&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You mustn't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't tell him,&rdquo; said Sheridan, from the doorway. &ldquo;I won't tell anybody
+      anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+      sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+      thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
+      sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
+      liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their
+      wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was visible in
+      the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke than there had
+      been this day of February a year earlier; there was more noise; and the
+      crowds were thicker&mdash;yet quicker in spite of that. The traffic
+      policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent&mdash;they
+      retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross the
+      street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more frequently
+      than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the motormen, the
+      chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane nervousness. So the
+      traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves were killed, of
+      course, with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that they
+      could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally
+      perilous to go about their city. It was strange, for there were probably
+      no citizens of any length of residence who had not personally known either
+      some one who had been killed or injured in an accident, or some one who
+      had accidentally killed or injured others. And yet, perhaps it was not
+      strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of the faces&mdash;the people had
+      something on their minds; they could not stop to bother about dirt and
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+      until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
+      with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
+      department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
+      Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
+      some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
+      into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy and
+      repellent; it had nothing but strength and size&mdash;but in that
+      consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty.
+      Sheridan had made some of the things he said emphatic enough to remain
+      with her. She went over and over them&mdash;and they began to seem true:
+      &ldquo;Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!&rdquo; &ldquo;Gurney says he's got you on
+      his brain so bad&mdash;&rdquo; The man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.
+      The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+      traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the
+      passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from the
+      crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore black;
+      one was tall and broad and thick, and the other was taller, but noticeably
+      slender. And Mary caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and his father.
+      They did not see her, and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's mellow voice,
+      which had taken a crisper ring: &ldquo;Sixty-eight thousand dollars? Not
+      sixty-eight thousand buttons!&rdquo; It startled her queerly, and as there was a
+      glimpse of his profile she saw for the first time a resemblance to his
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead of
+      his father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of a
+      truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country
+      women who were in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs, and
+      shoved backward upon him violently. To extricate himself from them he
+      stepped back, directly in front of a moving trolley-car&mdash;no place for
+      absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still absorbed in thoughts concerned with
+      what he had been saying to his father. There were shrieks and yells; Bibbs
+      looked the wrong way&mdash;and then Mary saw the heavy figure of Sheridan
+      plunge straight forward in front of the car. With absolute disregard of
+      his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a football-player shunting
+      off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed that they both went down together.
+      But that was all she could see&mdash;automobiles, trucks, and wagons
+      closed in between. She made out that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and
+      she saw a policeman breaking his way through the instantly condensing
+      crowd, while the traffic came to a standstill, and people stood up in
+      automobiles or climbed upon the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a
+      chance of seeing anything horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to help
+      the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again. The
+      crowd became pliant, dispersing&mdash;there was no figure upon the ground,
+      and no ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by the
+      clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What IS the matter, lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are they?&rdquo; Mary cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His SON&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him&mdash;oh, he's not
+      bad off, I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The
+      fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook up.
+      They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse me,
+      lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+      ascending. &ldquo;Whisk-broom up in the office,&rdquo; Sheridan was saying. &ldquo;You got
+      to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got any
+      call to blow, though&mdash;because I tried to cross after you did. That's
+      how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out
+      after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand
+      flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather take
+      it that way, and I don't know but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; &ldquo;he won't get it.
+      Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you in five
+      minutes.&rdquo; He followed his father into the office anteroom&mdash;and
+      convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color,
+      Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his
+      side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he
+      wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again. He
+      knew that his father had not &ldquo;happened&rdquo; to run into him; he knew that
+      Sheridan had instantly&mdash;and instinctively&mdash;proved that he held
+      his own life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir.
+      Bibbs had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for
+      Sheridan, just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside&mdash;as of no
+      importance, since all was well&mdash;reverting immediately to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he had never
+      perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and indomitable&mdash;and
+      lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's very self; laughing at
+      the lightning and at wounds and mutilation; conquering, irresistible&mdash;and
+      blindly noble. For the first time in his life Bibbs began to understand
+      the meaning of being truly this man's son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said,
+      Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He had
+      given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary Vertrees
+      in her need. And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking how he had
+      gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him&mdash;with his head on
+      his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had not known
+      her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his real
+      awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein he
+      dreamily celebrated the superiority of &ldquo;friendship&rdquo;! The sleep-walker had
+      wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a failure in
+      both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the sacrifice had
+      been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for him was the work
+      he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in that, though it was
+      indeed no more than &ldquo;dust in his mouth.&rdquo; If there had been anything &ldquo;to
+      work for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+      below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+      across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast,
+      foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly
+      against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while
+      tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings would
+      overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here,
+      where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and
+      how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had
+      begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them that
+      they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live
+      in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well, their
+      posterity was here&mdash;and there was only turmoil. Where was the
+      promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it
+      had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the
+      very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and
+      sacrificing in turn&mdash;for what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+      beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in it&mdash;a
+      broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like a titanic
+      voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic&mdash;the voice of the god,
+      Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and work!&rdquo; it seemed to yell. &ldquo;Come and work for Me, all men! By
+      your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
+      summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
+      your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
+      your hope of children I summon you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
+      Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
+      You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
+      worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
+      children shall perish knowing no other god!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
+      voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but the
+      tone was exultant&mdash;and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
+      hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of Bigness
+      to some visitor from out-of-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But with
+      the old, old thought again, &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; Bibbs caught a glimmer of far,
+      faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled and
+      conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
+      conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served blindly&mdash;but
+      was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not he who had been
+      in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired before the vase is
+      glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble in a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of some
+      high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. &ldquo;Ugly I am,&rdquo; it seemed to
+      say to him, &ldquo;but never forget that I AM a god!&rdquo; And the voice grew in
+      sonorousness and in dignity. &ldquo;The highest should serve, but so long as you
+      worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man who makes me
+      ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him, I should be
+      beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself&mdash;in
+      the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs&mdash;a
+      gigantic figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and
+      shoulders disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly
+      blackened with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further&mdash;for there
+      was still a little poet lingering in the back of his head&mdash;and he
+      thought that up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with
+      his hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+      there&mdash;perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+      were children now&mdash;a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted the thing from his desk and answered&mdash;and as the small
+      voice inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
+      violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong&mdash;he
+      had been mistaken&mdash;yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice;
+      startlingly kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to
+      hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; he said, his own voice shaking&mdash;like his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: &ldquo;IS IT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+      &ldquo;Bibbs&mdash;I wanted to&mdash;just to see if you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs. They
+      said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I wasn't hurt at all&mdash;Mary. It was father who came nearer
+      it. He saved me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
+      you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;would you&mdash;have minded?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long interval before she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what to say,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It's so wonderful to hear your
+      voice again&mdash;I'm shaking, Mary&mdash;I&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I
+      don't know anything except that I AM talking to you! It IS you&mdash;Mary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&mdash;I've seen you from my window at home&mdash;only five times
+      since I&mdash;since then. You looked&mdash;oh, how can I tell you? It was
+      like a man chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary.
+      Mary, won't you&mdash;let me see you again&mdash;near? I think I could
+      make you really forgive me&mdash;you'd have to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I DID&mdash;then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not really&mdash;or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me
+      any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't the reason.&rdquo; The voice was very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; he said, even more tremulously than before, &ldquo;I can't&mdash;you
+      COULDN'T mean it was because&mdash;you can't mean it was because you&mdash;care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary?&rdquo; he called, huskily. &ldquo;If you mean THAT&mdash;you'd let me see you&mdash;wouldn't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but if
+      it did, the words were, &ldquo;Yes, Bibbs&mdash;dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the voice was not in the instrument&mdash;it was so gentle and so
+      light, so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air&mdash;and it came
+      from the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly and incredulously he turned&mdash;and glory fell upon his shining
+      eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary stood upon the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE END <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1098-h.htm or 1098-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/1098/
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser, and David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&ldquo;the Foundation&rdquo;
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; appears, or with which the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo; is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+&ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original &ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, &ldquo;Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.&rdquo;
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+&ldquo;Defects,&rdquo; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &ldquo;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&rdquo; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1098.txt b/old/1098.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..484f982
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10533 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Turmoil
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Posting Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #1098]
+Release Date: December, 1997
+[Last updated: November 25, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TURMOIL
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+1915.
+
+
+To Laurel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
+must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
+him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
+it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
+loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
+tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked
+and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of
+dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has
+the meager alternative of suicide.
+
+The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
+to one tune: "Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
+Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
+dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean--but I
+will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall
+be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!" And yet it
+is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is
+hasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for
+wealth is in the smoke.
+
+Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much
+of the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike," it
+was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State Asylum
+for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from a
+little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burghers
+were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys for
+a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; the
+air was clean, and there was time to live.
+
+But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+American hearts--Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
+
+In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound
+longing for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became
+an accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!
+Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became
+a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax
+them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get
+them! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of
+people; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag!
+Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is
+patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is
+Money! We want Bigness!
+
+They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
+years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people
+and yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and
+thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than
+they could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came,
+the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish,
+Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes,
+Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians,
+Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, and
+every hybrid that these could propagate. And if there were no Eskimos
+nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might furnish failed
+to swim and bubble in this crucible?
+
+With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to
+roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under
+the tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of
+the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney
+type began to emerge discernibly--a cynical young mongrel barbaric
+of feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned
+apparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians.
+The female of his kind came with him--a pale girl, shoddy and a little
+rouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences and
+elisions. Nay, the common speech of the people showed change: in
+place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean, and not
+unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to
+be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by the
+public journals.
+
+The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,
+and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its
+vitals, like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body
+of a man, missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to the
+saloons and all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation
+and ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase by the
+venturesome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimes
+killed; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; while
+house-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality. Life
+itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it was in
+medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer was more
+like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath the wheels lay
+in ambush at every crossing.
+
+The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did
+not matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+dangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!
+They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke.
+They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; though
+sometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new laws
+that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget both new and old.
+Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes--or wherever it was too
+much to bother--it became a joke. Influence was the law.
+
+So the place grew. And it grew strong.
+
+Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
+  Power to get more power!
+  Riches to get more riches!
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He
+had come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and
+he had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; but
+each time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally,
+after a year of overwork and anxiety--the latter not decreased by a
+chance, remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in the
+penitentiary--he found himself on top, with solid substance under
+his feet; and thereafter "played it safe." But his hunger to get was
+unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew fiercer.
+
+He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And
+when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. "It's
+good! It's good!" he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. "Good, clean
+soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!" The smoke was one of his
+great enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who
+called to beg his aid against it. "Smoke's what brings your husbands'
+money home on Saturday night," he told them, jovially. "Smoke may hurt
+your little shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhal
+climate and the adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makes
+the climate better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people wash
+more. They have to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You go
+home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' the
+pay-roll--and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out more
+smoke instead o' chokin' it off!"
+
+It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection
+in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and
+unquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out
+he believed it was the finest city in the world. "Finest" was his word.
+He thought of it as his city as he thought of his family as his family;
+and just as profoundly believed his city to be the finest city in
+the world, so did he believe his family to be--in spite of his son
+Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a matter of fact, he knew
+nothing worth knowing about either.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered
+the failure--the "odd one"--of the family. Born during that most
+dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and
+the father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and
+grew meagerly, only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At his
+christening he was committed for life to "Bibbs" mainly through lack of
+imagination on his mother's part, for though it was her maiden name, she
+had no strong affection for it; but it was "her turn" to name the baby,
+and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of anything else she
+liked AT ALL!" She offered this explanation one day when the sickly boy
+was nine and after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for
+his name's being Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to
+be allowed to exchange names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling
+Sheridan, or with the oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being
+refused went down into the cellar and remained there the rest of
+that day. And the cook, descending toward dusk, reported that he had
+vanished; but a search revealed that he was in the coal-pile, completely
+covered and still burrowing. Removed by force and carried upstairs,
+he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to utter a syllable of
+explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing was wholly a
+mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to trace and
+connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and mysterious
+fool, an impression not effaced as the years went by.
+
+At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding
+of a man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked,
+long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired
+and dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at
+first sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for
+he seemed upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not
+grief, but mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching
+scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he seemed about to burst out
+crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but it
+was impossible to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion of his
+life, either laughed aloud or wept.
+
+He was a "disappointment" to his father. At least that was the parent's
+word--a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to make
+a "business man" of the boy. He sent Bibbs to "begin at the bottom and
+learn from the ground up" in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic
+Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs
+to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.
+
+"You needn't worry, mamma," Sheridan told his wife. "There's nothin' the
+matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put
+him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well
+as the next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.
+Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He
+makes me tired!"
+
+Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease
+was incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack
+of physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some
+subtle weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or
+slyness. He understood typhoid fever, pneumonia, and appendicitis--one
+had them, and either died or got over them and went back to work--but
+when the word "nervous" appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly
+suspicious: he had the feeling that there was something contemptible
+about it, that there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+
+"Look at me," he said. "Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
+twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin'
+wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a
+country grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR
+because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man
+he wouldn't be sick."
+
+He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental
+discussions--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and
+gesticulating to his bedded spouse. "My Lord!" he said. "If a little,
+teeny bit o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for
+anything! It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I
+won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of
+it's put on!"
+
+"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan. "It was when he was
+here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
+Honey, you better come to bed."
+
+"Eat!" he snorted. "Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's
+imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for
+that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice
+about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs.
+Sheridan: busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick.
+You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the
+sick people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!"
+
+"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."
+
+"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her. "Look at Jim and Roscoe.
+Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies.
+Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my
+shoulders already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter
+business man in this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me
+something to push AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look
+at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that boy's done for himself, and barely
+twenty-seven years old--married, got a fine wife, and ready to build
+for himself with his own money, when I put up the New House for you and
+Edie."
+
+"Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet," she murmured. "You better
+come to bed."
+
+"And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl," he continued, emphatically,
+"as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good
+wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in
+the United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school
+and took the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and
+she'd never even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I
+ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough
+literary judge for me--turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any
+man in the city. I tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me
+to get me to promise the New House--and I guess you had your finger
+in that, too, mamma! This old shack's good enough for me, but you and
+little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and push her
+the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them
+three chuldern! But Bibbs--" He paused, shaking his head. "Honest,
+mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth
+their salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget
+about Bibbs."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. "You did the
+best you could, papa," she said, impatiently, "so come to bed and quit
+reproachin' yourself for it."
+
+He glared at her indignantly. "Reproachin' myself!" he snorted. "I ain't
+doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want
+to reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was
+the best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was
+in him and make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous
+dyspepsia' on me!"
+
+He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and
+muttered his way morosely into bed.
+
+"What?" said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+
+"More like hook-worm, I said," he explained, speaking louder. "I don't
+know what to do with him!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the
+basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he
+was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a
+nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the
+building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode
+of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was
+found sufficient to his support.
+
+Edith met him at the station. "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he came
+slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.
+She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick
+glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. "Do
+you think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!"
+
+"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as
+his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak
+quickly he stammered. "Up to about a month ago it took two people to see
+me. They had to get me in a line between 'em!"
+
+Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
+quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
+troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some
+obligation of business to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital. She was
+nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness
+of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close
+upon beauty. Her movements were eager and restless: there was something
+about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was
+something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was
+a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her
+a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an
+automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+
+"That's the new car," she said. "Everything's new. We've got four now,
+besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two."
+
+"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
+
+"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
+his tone had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
+
+"You look--" He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
+brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
+and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
+mode--all suited to the October day.
+
+"How do I look?" she insisted.
+
+"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
+watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!" That
+was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
+preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
+glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+intimacies.
+
+"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
+glance. "Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening
+thing, for the theater--but my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby
+Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want
+Claus to help you in?"
+
+"Oh no," said Bibbs. "I'm alive." And after a fit of panting subsequent
+to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course, I have to
+TELL people!"
+
+"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to
+move rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.
+"Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month."
+
+"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he
+explained, gently. "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep
+me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They
+told me to go home--and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
+right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day."
+
+"Pshaw!" She laughed nervously. "Of course we're all of us glad to have
+you back."
+
+"Yes?" he said. "Father?"
+
+"Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?" She did not turn
+to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly
+forward.
+
+"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
+
+She flushed a little. "I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one
+of the boys--"
+
+"Oh no; that was all right."
+
+"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often
+planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would turn
+up. And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of
+course we knew mamma was writing often and--"
+
+"Of course!" he said, readily. "There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
+glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
+forgotten how sooty it is here."
+
+"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us." She blew the
+flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+
+He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like
+a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a
+decoration. "Yes," said Bibbs. "It's very gay." A few moments later, as
+they passed a corner, "Aren't we going home?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
+
+"No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
+
+"No. This is right. We're going straight home."
+
+"But we've passed the corner. We always turned--"
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried. "Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know
+we were in the New House?"
+
+"Why, no!" said Bibbs. "Are you?"
+
+"We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--" She broke
+off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: "Of course, mamma's never
+been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but
+keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's
+got some of his business friends and people from around the
+OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and
+'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all on her
+hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa would have
+her up again before--"
+
+"Of course," said Bibbs. "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
+
+"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
+finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa
+bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's
+perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the
+front hall, and it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old
+fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new
+dining-room. You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced open,
+and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with two dead
+prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-store years and
+years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the
+museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of
+date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn
+giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told
+papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he
+did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me
+tired! Sibyl!"
+
+Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full
+gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation
+of her sister-in-law.
+
+"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
+to strike fire on her lips. "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
+married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good! He could
+have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and
+Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of
+that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully
+nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last
+spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even HEARD of 'em!"
+
+"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.
+
+"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
+vehemence. "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
+lately--"
+
+"It's only lately?"
+
+"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. "Of course, I
+always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
+ROSCOE!"
+
+"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
+
+The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: "Why, she'd have
+married YOU!"
+
+"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
+
+"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--I didn't mean--"
+
+"Never mind, Edith," he consoled her. "You see, she couldn't have
+married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
+mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even
+had to lend me the money for my ticket home."
+
+"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled. "I only
+meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
+marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight." And, perceiving that
+his sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set
+matters perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+
+"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later. "Too
+lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a
+MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!"
+
+"'Behave'?"
+
+"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically
+evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and
+in this not unique of her sex.
+
+Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. "Business
+is crawling up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand
+indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. "The boarding-houses
+come first and then the--"
+
+"That isn't for shops," she informed him. "That's a new investment of
+papa's--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
+
+"Well, well," he murmured. "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+known here already."
+
+"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently. "I guess
+there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't
+know who we are. But we aren't in with the right people."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed. "Who's all that?"
+
+"Who's all what?"
+
+"The 'right people.'"
+
+"You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people
+that have the real social position in this town and that know they've
+got it."
+
+Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. "I
+thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it
+didn't know it," he said. "I've always understood that it was very
+unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and
+if you had it you didn't know it."
+
+"That's just bosh," she retorted. "They know it in this town, all right!
+I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building
+out in this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
+society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't
+all belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their
+clubs--but they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling
+and they're just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about
+anywhere in the world. Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and
+the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and--"
+
+"I see," Bibbs interrupted, gravely. "Their ancestors fled together
+from many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I
+always understood the first house was built by an old party of the name
+of Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to
+these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him."
+
+Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. "You mustn't repeat that
+story, Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and
+of course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before
+Mary Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded this
+settlement. He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives
+there YET--some of the best people in Lynn!"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+
+"And there are other old families like the Vertreeses," she went on,
+not heeding him; "the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston
+Smiths--"
+
+"Strange names to me," he interrupted. "Poor things! None of them have
+my acquaintance."
+
+"No, that's just it!" she cried. "And papa had never even heard the name
+of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see
+him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his
+wages from the pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I
+thought I just couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr.
+Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of
+course. They're the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And
+to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees
+country mansion--it's in the very heart of the best new residence
+district now, and that's where the New House is, right next door to
+them--and I must say it makes their place look rather shabby! I met Mary
+Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers, but she never did
+any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break I doubt if
+she'll do that! They haven't called."
+
+"And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing
+Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--"
+
+"Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him
+understand that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and
+meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't
+know THEM, it's practically no use in our having built the New House;
+and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the
+right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told
+Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but
+it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees
+decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs Lamhorn'll never come. That's
+ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage! She SAID Bobby offered to bring his
+mother--"
+
+"You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Oh, he's a friend of the whole family," she returned, with a petulance
+which she made an effort to disguise. "Roscoe and he got acquainted
+somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night.
+Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps--" She broke off with an angry
+little jerk of the head. "We can see the New House from the second
+corner ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you
+know. Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes--the way
+she pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets
+anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him
+behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She got
+him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it
+was--"
+
+"Good heavens!" said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and
+the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. "Is that the
+New House?"
+
+"Yes. What do you think of it?"
+
+"Well," he drawled, "I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+bigger; I can't be certain till I measure."
+
+And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+"But it's beautiful!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect
+who loved the milder "Gothic motives" had built what he liked: it was to
+be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
+picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
+time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
+accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look
+of newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at
+least one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was
+thinner in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart
+of the town, it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather
+could be malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and
+corn had been growing not ten years gone.
+
+Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
+successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing
+of the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses
+that cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every
+inch of mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no
+matter what be done to it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the
+old name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind
+to change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places
+of its type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides;
+rich families, one after another, take title and occupy such houses as
+fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to
+imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New
+House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it--"beautiful."
+
+What the architect thought of the "Golfo di Napoli," which hung in its
+vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
+be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
+
+"Edith, did you say only eleven feet?" Bibbs panted, staring at it, as
+the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
+overcoat.
+
+"Eleven without the frame," she explained. "It's splendid, don't you
+think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before."
+
+"No gloom now!" said Bibbs.
+
+"This statue in the corner is pretty, too," she remarked. "Mamma and I
+bought that." And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
+grove of tubbed palms, a "life-size," black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
+composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his
+chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped
+spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
+
+"Hallelujah!" was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
+saying she would "find mamma," left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
+after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood
+waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. "What do YOU think of it?"
+Bibbs asked, solemnly.
+
+"Gran'!" replied the servitor. "She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
+'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'."
+
+"I expect she must be," said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
+to the black bull beard for a moment. "Is there a place anywhere I could
+lie down?"
+
+"Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
+staihs, suh. Nice room."
+
+He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to
+rest, and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the
+exodus from the "old" house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the
+patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly
+enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+
+"Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night," Bibbs's
+guide explained, chuckling. "Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
+doin's!"
+
+The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in
+every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
+pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have
+seemed pleasant to him after his journey. He stretched himself flat
+immediately, and having replied "Not now" to the attendant's offer to
+unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
+
+White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
+an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
+overseer--in the hall without. Said the emerging one: "He mighty shaky,
+Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all black.
+Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I change
+'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an'
+keep out the ground!"
+
+Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. "Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+somebody awready laid out," he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
+near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
+pessimistic.
+
+"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper. "It give me a turn to see him
+go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
+make ye kind o' sick to look at um?"
+
+"Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"
+
+"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--"
+She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+
+It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+
+She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
+like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
+husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
+she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
+two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
+absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and
+Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago
+become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his. She
+invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when she
+did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost
+spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not comprehend it
+and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one actual
+altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the early
+days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
+impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he
+had thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of "The
+Black Crook." But she had not once referred to this during the last ten
+years.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
+more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time
+and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down
+over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's
+door.
+
+At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+
+"Don't go, mother," he said. "I'm not asleep." He swung his long legs
+over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
+restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+
+"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for a
+minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--"
+
+"Poor Edith!" he murmured. "She couldn't look at me. She--"
+
+"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
+back to the bedside. "You look a great deal better than what you did
+before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body
+can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't
+got much color--"
+
+"No," he said, "I haven't much color."
+
+"But you will have when you get your strength back."
+
+"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully. "THEN I will."
+
+"You look a great deal better than what I expected."
+
+"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.
+
+"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her exaggerate
+a little. What about your diet?"
+
+"That's all right. They told me to eat anything."
+
+"Anything at all?"
+
+"Well--anything I could."
+
+"That's good," she said, nodding. "They mean for you just to build up
+your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you
+at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's
+only a little time ago. How long was it?"
+
+"Eight months, I think."
+
+"No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
+longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
+even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
+along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
+Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up
+pretty well on the home news."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up a
+little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
+morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
+appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--"
+
+"Plans?" Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
+with his hand, so that he might see her better. "What--" He paused.
+"What plans is he making for me, mother?"
+
+She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
+"Well, you better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible
+nervousness. "He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any
+call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway."
+She came and stood by the bedside once more. "But you must remember,
+Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and
+wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always find he's
+right in the end."
+
+He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
+she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.
+"You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night."
+
+"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
+quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly,
+"Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"
+
+"Well, I think he does," she answered. "You see, it's the
+'house-warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern
+ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's
+just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You
+don't feel too bad to come down, do you?"
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Take a good look at me," he said.
+
+"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. "You're not so bad
+off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
+any harm to please your--"
+
+"It isn't that," he interrupted. "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
+spoil somebody's appetite. Edith--"
+
+"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn.
+"You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look
+like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all
+there is to it."
+
+"All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
+can!"
+
+"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall. "Now take
+a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
+dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!"
+
+Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something
+she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+interminably. "His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
+you--his plans for you--" And then, taking the place of "his plans for
+you," after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice came
+back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: "He loves his
+chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern"--"you'll find
+he's always right--you'll find he's always right--" Until at last, as he
+drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted realities, the voice
+seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that came out of the
+wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing within the room,
+and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky, bridging the
+whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke, and out
+of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over, "His
+plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--" And then there
+was nothing.
+
+He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
+against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting
+to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that
+it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+
+He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
+next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old Vertrees
+country mansion." It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the
+Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box
+of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been
+spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of
+it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and
+the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
+
+The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of
+the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly
+opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make
+a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic "summer-house." It was
+almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and
+it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses
+in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the
+juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the "summer-house" was
+pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little
+girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and "housekeeping,"
+or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm
+afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
+dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
+
+Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
+with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the
+window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He
+looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end
+to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic
+seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an
+entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared
+to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again
+and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete
+disapproval.
+
+"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.
+
+And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly,
+he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a
+rustic aperture of the "summer-house" and staring full into his
+window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
+a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
+Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her
+action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in
+the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending,
+and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any
+other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she
+had allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of
+things of which she was in reality unconscious.
+
+Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the
+same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan
+or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained
+composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of
+the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door
+and came to meet her.
+
+"Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?"
+
+"Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows," said Mary
+Vertrees. "I got caught at it."
+
+"Mary!" cried her mother. "Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!"
+
+"We'll go, just the same," the daughter returned. "I suppose those women
+would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground."
+
+"But WHO saw you?" insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+
+"One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
+At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
+about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
+Then he looked out and caught me."
+
+"What did he--"
+
+"Nothing, of course."
+
+"How did he look?"
+
+"Like a ghost in a blue suit," said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
+street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who
+was observing them from the window of his library. "Rather tragic and
+altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!"
+
+And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
+their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who
+had something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and
+began to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was
+about sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little
+sketch of an elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache--relic of a
+forgotten Anglomania--had been profoundly black, but now, like his
+smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though
+his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for
+greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow
+black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket,
+a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling
+him the descendant of patriot warriors.
+
+The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
+marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
+"Eastlake" bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
+incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless "woodwork" everywhere,
+and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
+sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
+"very fine things." They had been the first people in town to possess
+Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
+had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when
+Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's
+houses he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he
+found an edition of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final
+corroboration of culture, he would say, inevitably, "Those people know
+good pictures and they know good books."
+
+The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
+had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin
+to grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody.
+Mr. Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At
+about the time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance,
+an office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
+winter; and he had a country place--a farm of four hundred acres--where
+he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
+home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit
+still and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but,
+strangely enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall
+down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the
+role of Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of
+the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
+buying bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers
+and read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained
+milkers milked her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and
+the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then
+he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to pay the
+taxes on the suburban lots and to "keep them up." The lots refused to
+stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his family up,
+so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully the next year)
+for "traction stock" that was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased
+to buy and sell. Thus he disappeared altogether from the commercial
+surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top; and
+Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her "anti-smoke"
+committee, had never heard the name.
+
+Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+"managed somehow" on the dividends, though "managing" became more and
+more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But
+there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took
+greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long
+after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there
+was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the "traction stock" henceforth
+was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help
+"manage somehow" according to his conception of his "position in
+life"--one of his own old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the
+completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses
+and the worn Victoria and "station-wagon," to pay the arrears of his two
+servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--and a
+pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
+ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service.
+Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in
+all the buzzing city--he could do nothing.
+
+It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come
+in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if
+his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+
+The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
+closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round
+about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone
+of firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
+rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
+ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
+return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
+
+She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
+the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
+Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary,
+she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite
+certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
+
+"Papa! Oh, oh!" And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
+her eyes. "I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. "I suppose I'm very dull," she said,
+gently. "I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the
+house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--"
+
+"Papa!" Mary cried, breaking in. "They asked us to DINNER!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"And I'm GOING!" she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
+"Think of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the
+daughter--and just BARELY met her--"
+
+"What about you?" interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his
+wife.
+
+She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
+not agree with her. "I couldn't!" she said. "I--"
+
+"Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!"
+cried Mary, choking. "And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn
+it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a
+squeal!"
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, "that Mary will have an
+uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--"
+
+Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
+and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her
+shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
+
+"THEY didn't notice anything," she said. "So far as they were concerned,
+mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed."
+
+"Who were 'they'?" asked her father. "Whom did you see?"
+
+"Only the mother and daughter," Mary answered. "Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy
+and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the
+fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have
+their pictures in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very
+successfully--partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly
+because she began too late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted
+plaster or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was
+to her credit that she selected it!"
+
+"They have oil-paintings, too," added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+gentle pride at the Landseers. "I've always thought oil-paintings in a
+private house the worst of taste."
+
+"Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!" said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
+the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. "Go on,
+Mary. None of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
+or--" He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with
+the poker. "Or one of the sons?"
+
+Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
+He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+
+"No," she said, "no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
+sons thoroughly!"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+
+"Oh, most adroitly, too!" laughed the girl. "Only she couldn't help
+unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!"
+
+"Mary Vertrees!"
+
+"Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
+could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
+same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
+oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is
+very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me
+that 'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one,
+caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem
+to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan
+mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,'
+and had been to some cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the
+subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me! The other
+brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house
+across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert,
+goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch with
+Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim'
+still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night. Papa--" She
+stepped nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were
+troubled as he did. There may have been a trouble deep within her own,
+but she kept their surface merry with laughter. "Papa, Bibbs is the
+youngest one's name, and Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a
+lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does it have to be Jim?"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. "You're outrageous! That's a
+perfectly horrible way of talking!"
+
+"Well, I'm close to twenty-four," said Mary, turning to her. "I haven't
+been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
+never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
+my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began
+to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything--but
+something's got to be done."
+
+"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother,
+plaintively. "It's not--it's not--"
+
+"No, it's not," said Mary. "I know that!"
+
+"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+uneasily. "'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"
+
+"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it. "We were so very cordial and
+easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
+old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who
+did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's
+in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it
+might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort of
+house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it--and
+then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And
+mamma--" Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment.
+"Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I
+mean you coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had
+promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
+daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am,
+and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at
+seven-thirty!"
+
+And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture
+of flying grace as she sped.
+
+When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
+the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
+the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
+was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded
+gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said. "I LOOK rich,
+don't I, papa?"
+
+She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+"regal." A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
+poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were
+like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and
+livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
+
+"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.
+
+"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.
+
+"And my dress?" She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
+of white and silver. "Anything better at Nice next winter, do you
+think?" She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again.
+"Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over."
+
+"You can do anything, Mary."
+
+There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
+significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
+he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
+breath.
+
+And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted
+her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he
+should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+
+"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely. "I know exactly
+what you want me to do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
+was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room,
+and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to
+converse--necessarily at the tops of their voices. The whole company
+of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the occasion by
+carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed
+a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of crystal and
+silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
+white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
+marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end,
+white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing.
+They were models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan
+Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the
+guests recognized them without having to be told what they were, and
+pronounced the likenesses superb.
+
+The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
+great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
+then on each side came the neighbors of the "old" house, grading down to
+vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments,
+and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a
+consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the thralls and
+bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could
+look at him and eat.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
+for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
+devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked
+at Bibbs.
+
+He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
+effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
+fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when
+each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health,
+turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the talk
+went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the
+orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass,
+and there was a mighty babble.
+
+"Yes, sir! Started without a dollar."... "Yellow flounces on the
+overskirt--"... "I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
+this year,' I says."... "Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
+weeks."... "One of the biggest men in the biggest--"... "The wife says
+she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--"... "Say, did you see
+that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever--"...
+"Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I
+says, and so he ups and--"... "Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost
+now."... "Well, they got their raise, and they went in big."... "Yes,
+sir! Not a dollar to his name, and look at what--"... "You wait! The
+population of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she
+stops."... "Well, if you can show me a bigger deal than--"
+
+And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+sentence, "Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+just what'll do it for my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass
+grow where one grew before!" It was his familiar flourish, an old
+story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary
+Vertrees.
+
+It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave. He sat
+there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
+smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
+simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health,
+of good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none
+bought, and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was
+thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big
+beneath its vast facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds
+twinkled, circling three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong,
+and he used them freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and,
+though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the
+look of readiness and activity.
+
+He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at
+every one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they
+were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure,
+and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
+discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a
+band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out
+for a band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra
+they hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
+
+He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the
+table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
+or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
+real business of eating and shouting.
+
+"Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!" he would bellow down the length of
+the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the
+"Toreador" song, perhaps. "Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy
+Lee'!" And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer
+to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the "Toreador" continuing
+vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments of "Nancy
+Lee," naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that uxorious
+tribute.
+
+"Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's
+wife a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy
+Lee! Oh, Na-hancy Lee!"
+
+"HAY, there, old lady!" he would bellow. "Tell 'em to play 'In the
+Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they
+don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S
+good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin,
+get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter you
+folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!"
+
+"What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
+watch, ahoy!"
+
+No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
+conviction, it bore none now; though "mineral waters" were copiously
+poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
+wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
+could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
+Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
+said, he had "plans for Bibbs"--plans which were going to straighten out
+some things that had gone wrong.
+
+So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps,
+turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the
+table at his right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less
+naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired
+the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her--it needed but the
+sight of her.
+
+The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the
+jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the
+rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court
+to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the
+sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and
+admiration. "Wonder who that lady is--makin' such a hit with the old
+man." "Must be some heiress." "Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it
+to marry rich, then!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
+with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
+Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
+but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
+She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
+she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
+bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It
+enchanted him.
+
+As he proclaimed to the table, she had "a way with her." She had,
+indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the
+feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed
+upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the
+look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech to him--
+
+"I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and "Why?" was all he managed to say.
+
+She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
+mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one,
+reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would
+"really flirt" with married men--she was obviously the "opposite of all
+that." Edith defined her as a "thoroughbred," a "nice girl"; and the
+look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and
+she was another whom it puzzled--though not because its recipient was
+married.
+
+"Because!" said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. "And
+also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times
+ahead for both of us if we don't get along."
+
+Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+brought up to believe that when a man married he "married and settled
+down." It was "all right," he felt, for a man as old as his father to
+pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but
+for himself--"a young married man"--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
+friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+"flirted"--they were always very matter-of-fact with each other. Roscoe
+would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped he was
+susceptible.
+
+"Yes--we're neighbors," he said, awkwardly.
+
+"Next-door neighbors in houses, too," she added.
+
+"No, not exactly. I live across the street."
+
+"Why, no!" she exclaimed, and seemed startled. "Your mother told me this
+afternoon that you lived at home."
+
+"Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the
+street."
+
+"But you--" she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into
+her cheek. "But I understood--"
+
+"No," he said; "my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year,
+but that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course."
+
+"I--I see," she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from
+him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
+name, "Mr. James Sheridan, Jr." And from that moment Roscoe had little
+enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
+coquetries.
+
+Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor
+to "get through with old Roscoe," as he thought of it, and give a
+bachelor a chance. "Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always been
+the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was "steady" enough, but was
+considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for
+Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
+"capable, hard-working young business men," and the principal difference
+between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
+bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of
+hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches
+taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the
+father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have
+sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing "rich
+suitings in dark mixtures."
+
+Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+color, which increased his approbation. "What's that old Roscoe saying
+to you, Miss Vertrees?" he asked. "These young married men are mighty
+forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush."
+
+"Am I blushing?" she said. "Are you sure?" And with that she gave him
+ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
+upon Roscoe. "I think you must be mistaken," she continued. "I think
+it's your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion."
+
+"How?"
+
+She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
+confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. "By trying
+to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!"
+
+This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
+nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized
+that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was
+instantly snared by that realization.
+
+"By George!" he said. "I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+anything--yes, and get away with it, too!"
+
+She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
+laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
+she said: "But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not.
+I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away
+with YOU?"
+
+"More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!" Jim was inspired
+to reply. "Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making
+fun of me like that."
+
+"I mightn't be so much in fun as you think," she said, regarding him
+with sudden gravity.
+
+"Well," said Jim, in simple honesty, "you're a funny girl!"
+
+Her gravity continued an instant longer. "I may not turn out to be funny
+for YOU."
+
+"So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+manage to be satisfied." And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
+turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+
+"Yes," he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, "I can see
+you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
+means anything!"
+
+"'Laugh'!" she cried, gaily. "Why, it might be a matter of life and
+death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
+considering the mistake I made with your brother."
+
+Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
+nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it;
+he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
+consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
+lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he
+mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
+
+"Put what question?" he said, breathlessly.
+
+"As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family," she returned,
+speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, "I think it would
+be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with
+any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?"
+
+"Not yet," he gasped. "Are you?"
+
+"NO!" she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+
+Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
+lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
+Vertrees was "starting rather picturesquely with Jim." And he added,
+languidly, "Do you suppose she WOULD?"
+
+For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+interested in the clasp of a long "rope" of pearls, a loop of which she
+was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
+and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
+clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty,
+but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
+accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize
+the wrongness of the wearer.
+
+"I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,"
+repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+"I heard you." There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
+eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
+now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. "Starting any
+stronger than you did with Edith?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, keep the peace!" he said, crossly. "That's off, of course."
+
+"You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely," said
+Sibyl, looking at him steadily. "You've talked to her for--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake," he begged, "keep the peace!"
+
+"Well, what have you just been doing?"
+
+"SH!" he said. "Listen to your father-in-law."
+
+Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
+begun to play "The Rosary," to his vast content.
+
+"I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM," he roared, beating the measures
+with his fork. "EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's
+the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
+thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--"
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, "you
+don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways,
+and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
+something important."
+
+"I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!" the father
+threatened, more delighted with her than ever. "By gosh! if I was his
+age--or a widower right NOW--"
+
+"Oh, wait!" cried Mary. "If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
+Sheridan to hear."
+
+"She'd say the same," he shouted. "She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--"
+
+"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
+had grown red again. "He's going to tell us how, when he was your age,
+he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could
+see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"
+
+At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. "Look here, young
+lady!" he roared. "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or
+I'm goin' to kiss you!"
+
+Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but
+Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+
+"Both!" she cried. "Both! The one to make me forget the other!"
+
+"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+"Jim," he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
+you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!"
+
+And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
+little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew what his
+father's plans were now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Mrs. Vertrees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
+after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
+Landseers. Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for
+her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did
+the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a
+long vigil of it.
+
+She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her
+in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they
+had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
+the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her
+own room, which was directly over the "front hall." There, book in hand,
+she employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief
+that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+
+Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought
+her--and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward
+because she did not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward
+this troubled couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which
+neither of them could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they
+had talked it over, day after day, from the very hour when they heard
+Sheridan was to build his New House next door. For--so quickly does
+any ideal of human behavior become an antique--their youth was of the
+innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding" and "gentility," and no craft
+had been more straitly trained upon them than that of talking about
+things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital
+difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
+Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
+matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
+grocery while they were still dancing.
+
+It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"
+
+The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
+of cold and bracing air into her mother's room. "Yes," she said, before
+Mrs. Vertrees could speak, "he brought me home!"
+
+She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
+pat upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+
+"Mamma!" Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that
+she had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. "Why don't you ask
+me?"
+
+This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. "I don't--" she
+faltered. "Ask you what, Mary?"
+
+"How I got along and what he's like."
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary. "And I got along so fast--" She
+broke off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went at it,
+of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+plaintively.
+
+"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
+afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
+You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them while
+YOU pretend to run away!"
+
+"My dear, I don't know what to--"
+
+"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her. "So that's all
+right! Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and
+tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures,
+but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned
+and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could manage at least twice
+as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone
+would have lasted us a couple of months. There they were, before me, but
+I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em, and so--well, so I did what I could!"
+
+She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. "It
+seemed to be a success--what I could," she said, clasping her hands
+behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+accompaniment to her narrative. "The girl Edith and her sister-in-law,
+Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things on me.
+The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it. He's
+what he is. I like him." She paused reflectively, continuing, "Edith's
+'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not stupid, but
+I think he's--" She interrupted herself with a cheery outcry: "Oh! I
+mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make Edith like him, I
+ought to respect him as a colleague."
+
+"I don't understand a thing you're talking about," Mrs. Vertrees
+complained.
+
+"All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that
+know. He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those
+people you wondered about at the theater, the last time we went--dressed
+in ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She
+flatters the father, and so did I, for that matter--but not that way. I
+treated him outrageously!"
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of
+us follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the
+Palatine. He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em
+listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present of the
+house. What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples
+panorama in the hall. He made us look at all the plumbing--bath-rooms
+and everywhere else--and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples. He
+said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And
+he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken
+a prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed
+in mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful
+and nice--he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was
+modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
+after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street
+to her house with them--her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim
+Sheridan--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. "'Jim'!" she exclaimed. "Mary, PLEASE--"
+
+"Of course," said Mary. "I'll make it as easy for you as I can,
+mamma. Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe
+explained that 'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed
+that Mr. Lamhorn was the only one near death's door on that account.
+Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They
+were objectionably apologetic about it, and they seemed to think NOW we
+were going to have a 'good time' to make up for it. But I hadn't been
+bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and the 'good time' at Mrs.
+Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid."
+
+"But, Mary," her mother began, "is--is--" And she seemed unable to
+complete the question.
+
+"Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?
+I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise--Oh, what
+right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly
+my kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the
+Sheridan Building--"
+
+"Oh, no!" Mrs. Vertrees cried. "Surely not!"
+
+"Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what. But, after
+all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a palace
+in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver pieces
+had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I
+shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it picturesque and
+stately--I'd have been impressed. And what's the real difference? The
+icing is temporary, and that's much more modest, isn't it? And why is
+it vulgar to feel important more on account of something you've done
+yourself than because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides,
+if we go back a few generations, we've all got such hundreds of
+ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of
+ourselves about. Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to
+Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't see anything out of place
+in the Sheridan Building in sugar."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head
+gravely. "My dear, dear child," she said, "it seems to me--It looks--I'm
+afraid--"
+
+"Say as much of it as you can, mamma," said Mary, encouragingly. "I can
+get it, if you'll just give me one key-word."
+
+"Everything you say," Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, "seems to have the
+air of--it is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--"
+
+"Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+him."
+
+"Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant," said Mrs. Vertrees,
+speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. "But you said
+that--that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs.
+Sheridan's unentertaining--"
+
+"And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at
+dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I--"
+And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+
+"Well," she asked, gravely, "is there anything else I can do? You and
+papa don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is
+the only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress
+me. That's all there is about it, isn't it?"
+
+"But nothing MUST distress you!" the mother cried.
+
+"That's what I say!" said Mary, cheerfully. "And so it doesn't. It's all
+right." She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
+the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet.
+"Mother, you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter
+whom a girl marries."
+
+"No, no!" Mrs. Vertrees protested. "I never said such a--"
+
+"No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
+marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
+right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
+One man as well as another?"
+
+"Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mary, indulgently. "I don't mean you and papa. But
+isn't it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there
+must be something in it."
+
+"Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that." And Mrs. Vertrees
+lifted pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared. "It
+sounds--almost reckless!"
+
+Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. "Never fret,
+dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been
+too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our
+choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more
+than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house
+next door?"
+
+She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
+this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. "Oh,
+the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--"
+
+"Did he speak of it?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+
+"No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
+But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
+he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
+'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
+ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were
+in the Sheridan family"--she laughed a little ruefully--"he might be
+interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and
+bonds. I didn't see him after dinner."
+
+"There must be something wrong with him," said Mrs. Vertrees. "They'd
+have introduced him if there wasn't."
+
+"I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people
+like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke of
+sending him back to a machine-shop of some sort; I suppose he meant
+when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr.
+Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me;
+and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic
+change came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!"
+
+"You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling."
+
+"No," said Mary, thoughtfully, "I don't think he is; but he might be
+uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he
+once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy
+just then! I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--"
+
+"I wouldn't." Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there
+was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. "I'd keep my mind on
+pleasanter things, Mary."
+
+Mary laughed and nodded. "Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and
+probably, if all were known, too good--even for me!"
+
+And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Edith, glancing casually into the "ready-made" library, stopped
+abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the
+pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read
+it:
+
+                  FUGITIVE
+
+  I will forget the things that sting:
+    The lashing look, the barbed word.
+  I know the very hands that fling
+    The stones at me had never stirred
+  To anger but for their own scars.
+    They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars
+    Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like
+  These wounded ones I must not be,
+    For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free
+    Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+
+"Bibbs!" Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she
+came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful
+than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her
+coat.
+
+Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed
+by the poem. "Pretty young, isn't it?" he said. "There must have been
+something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe
+the poem did it."
+
+She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a
+low voice: "I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all,
+Bibbs. I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't
+want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about
+it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it
+aloud to the whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what
+other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more,
+and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought
+I'd die of shame!"
+
+"You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp," Bibbs suggested.
+
+"I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every
+time anybody speaks of the thing."
+
+Bibbs looked grieved. "The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
+only seventeen when you wrote it."
+
+"Oh, hush up!" she snapped. "I wish it had burnt my fingers the first
+time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where
+it was. I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--"
+
+"No, no," he said, comfortingly. "It was the very most flattering thing
+ever happened to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the
+machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--"
+
+"But I DON'T like it!" she exclaimed. "I don't even understand it--and
+papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The
+truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize."
+
+"Maybe they expected father to endow the school," Bibbs murmured.
+
+"Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!
+I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how
+I 'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of
+thing, the way he says it. I hate it!"
+
+"You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another
+name you might find--"
+
+"Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first
+chance I get." She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. "I'd like
+to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!"
+
+"Edith!" he called, as she went into the hall.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used
+to me?"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the
+threshold.
+
+"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
+impersonal way. "But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if
+I'd--"
+
+"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully. "This
+month you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change."
+
+"Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change."
+
+"You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw," said Edith, with supreme
+candor. "But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
+life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you
+mustn't judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say.
+But you're right about my not being able to look at you at first. You
+had a kind of whiteness that--Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose,
+but you've got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody
+could look at you now, Bibbs, and no--not get--"
+
+"Sick?"
+
+"Well--almost that!" she laughed. "And you're getting a better color
+every day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly."
+
+"I--I'm afraid so," he said, ruefully.
+
+"'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean
+father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.
+I heard him say something about it the night of the--" The jingle of
+a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. "Bobby
+Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the country.
+Afternoon, Bibbs!"
+
+When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf,
+his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted
+almost entirely of handsome "uniform editions": Irving, Poe, Cooper,
+Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon,
+Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert,
+Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves
+of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of "famous classics," of "Oriental
+masterpieces," of "masterpieces of oratory," and more shelves of
+"selected libraries" of "literature," of "the drama," and of "modern
+science." They made an effective decoration for the room, all these
+big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a
+reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace;
+but Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them
+considered them a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a
+burden of dust, and that nobody else considered them at all. Himself, he
+disturbed not one.
+
+There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house,
+and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.
+"Awready, Mist' Bibbs," he announced. "You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you'
+ride, an' she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at
+fo' 'clock. Aw ready, suh."
+
+He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in
+the manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the
+hall they passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket
+opened the door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the
+chauffeur in the car which stood waiting in the driveway.
+
+"It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I
+first came home, George," said Bibbs, thoughtfully. "What did you tell
+me?"
+
+"Yessuh!" George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. "You
+ast me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty
+near ev'y day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me
+twicet." He shook his head solemnly. "Look to me mus' be somep'm might
+lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!"
+
+"Mighty what?"
+
+"Mighty lamiDAL!" George, burst out laughing. "What DO 'at word mean,
+Mist' Bibbs?"
+
+"It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?"
+
+"I nev' DID hear it!" said George. "I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f
+an' she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so good,
+seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!"
+
+"Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes--"
+
+"Do she?" cried George. "WHAT she mean?"
+
+"It's exactly the word for the statue," said Bibbs, with conviction, as
+he climbed into the car. "It's a lamiDAL statue."
+
+"Hiyi!" George exulted. "Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!"
+
+"I expect she is!" said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from sight.
+
+George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in
+the hallway. "Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she is!'
+Ev'y day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways,
+las' thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git
+well, 'at young man go' be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh,
+right now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!"
+
+"Look out with all 'at money, George!" Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+"White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you. You the on'y man
+bettin' on 'im!"
+
+"I risk it!" cried George, merrily. "I put her all on now--ev'y cent!
+'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!"
+
+This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for
+the meaning of "lamiDAL," differed radically from another prediction
+concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some
+twenty minutes later.
+
+Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees
+beside him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon
+the highroad. The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the
+occupants of Jim's had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on
+the back seat--his white face startlingly white against cap and collar
+of black fur--but he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+
+Jim waved his left hand carelessly. "It's Bibbs, taking his
+constitutional," he explained.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Mary. "I bowed to him, too, though I've never met
+him. In fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice. I hope he won't think
+I'm very bold, bowing to him."
+
+"I doubt if he noticed it," said honest Jim.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried.
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them."
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Jim. "Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is
+funny."
+
+"Is he? How?" she asked. "He strikes me as anything but funny."
+
+"Well, I'm his brother," Jim said, deprecatingly, "but I don't know what
+he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS
+his brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half
+alive to me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we
+were too big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his
+own age. He'd rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself.
+Nobody could ever get him to DO anything; you can't get him to do
+anything now. He never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my
+brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever
+made! Father put him in the machine-shop over at the Pump Works--best
+thing in the world for him--and he was just plain no account. It made
+him sick! If he'd had the right kind of energy--the kind father's got,
+for instance, or Roscoe, either--why, it wouldn't have made him sick.
+And suppose it was either of them--yes, or me, either--do you think any
+of us would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it,
+but Bibbs Sheridan'll never amount to anything as long as he lives."
+
+Mary looked thoughtful. "Is there any particular reason why he should?"
+she asked.
+
+"Good gracious!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
+believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much
+money his father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be
+carried on by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've
+got and see other fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things
+already, isn't it every man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger?
+Isn't it his duty? Don't we always want to get bigger and bigger?"
+
+"Ye-es--I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He
+looked so lonely--and sick."
+
+"He's gettin' better every day," Jim said. "Dr. Gurney says so. There's
+nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous
+diseases, because they don't have time to imagine 'em."
+
+"You mean his trouble is really mental?"
+
+"Oh, he's not a lunatic," said Jim. "He's just queer. Sometimes he'll
+say something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off
+the subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance,
+the other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The
+darky asked him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody
+else in the world would have just said what time they DID want it, and
+that would have been all there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says,
+and I heard him with my own ears. 'What time do I want the car?' he
+says. 'Well, now, that depends--that depends,' he says. He talks slow
+like that, you know. 'I'll tell you what time I want the car, George,'
+he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think of this statue!' That's
+exactly his words! Asked the darky what he thought of that Arab Edith
+and mother bought for the hall!"
+
+Mary pondered upon this. "He might have been in fun, perhaps," she
+suggested.
+
+"Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work
+of art! Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just
+kind-hearted--and that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!" she laughed.
+
+"See here!" he cried. "Isn't there any way for us to get over this
+Mister and Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed
+to be with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you
+know how I feel by this time--"
+
+She looked panic-stricken immediately. "Oh, no," she protested, quickly.
+"No, I don't, and--"
+
+"Yes, you do," he said, and his voice shook a little. "You couldn't help
+knowing."
+
+"But I do!" she denied, hurriedly. "I do help knowing. I mean--Oh,
+wait!"
+
+"What for? You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly
+WANTED me to feel that way--or else pretended--"
+
+"Now, now!" she lamented. "You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!"
+
+"'Spoilin' it!'" He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+squarely. "See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--"
+
+"Stop! Stop the car a minute." And when he had complied she faced him as
+squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. "Listen. I don't want
+you to go on, to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You mean it's just a whim?"
+
+"I don't know," she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest,
+and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+
+"Will you tell me something?"
+
+"Almost anything."
+
+"Have you ever told any man you loved him?"
+
+And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. "No,"
+she said. "And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that--or ever
+know what it means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan."
+
+"Then you--you've just been flirting with me!" Poor Jim looked both
+furious and crestfallen.
+
+"Not one bit!" she cried. "Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant
+every single thing!"
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"Of course you don't!" she said. "Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start
+the car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I
+have not flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing
+more, and then I want you to take me straight home, talking about the
+weather all the way. I said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care'
+for any man, and that is true. I doubt the existence of the kind of
+'caring' we hear about in poems and plays and novels. I think it must be
+just a kind of emotional TALK--most of it. At all events, I don't feel
+it. Now, we can go faster, please."
+
+"Just where does that let me out?" he demanded. "How does that excuse
+you for--"
+
+"It isn't an excuse," she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+wholly desolate. "I haven't said I should never marry."
+
+"What?" Jim gasped.
+
+She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+unfathomably sorrowful.
+
+"I promise nothing," she said, faintly.
+
+"You needn't!" shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. "You needn't! By
+George! I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise
+whenever you're ready!"
+
+"Don't forget what I asked," she begged him.
+
+"Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!" cried the
+happy Jim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields
+and sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean
+air beneath a glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so
+maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible
+for men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+
+Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.
+How largely this apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his
+face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the
+result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal introduction than
+the circumstance of his having caught her looking into his window a
+month before. She had bowed definitely; she had bowed charmingly. And it
+seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to convey her forgiveness.
+
+There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
+his experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the
+impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her
+veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind--and that
+look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+
+By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed
+and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the
+smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon,
+that nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine
+shrouded in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very
+heart of it, for a commanded interview with his father, the distant
+cloud was like an implacable genius issuing thunderously in smoke from
+his enchanted bottle, and irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+
+They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of
+November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and
+here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray;
+the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there,
+nevertheless--impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke. And
+then, as the car drove on, the chimneys and stacks of factories came
+swimming up into view like miles of steamers advancing abreast, every
+funnel with its vast plume, savage and black, sweeping to the horizon,
+dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation over league on league already
+rich and vile with grime.
+
+The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar
+and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car
+passed two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways
+possible to make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and
+lurid the next with the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing
+blackened giants, half naked, in passionate action, struggling with
+formless things in the hot illumination. And big as these shops were,
+they were growing bigger, spreading over a third block, where two new
+structures were mushrooming to completion in some hasty cement process
+of a stability not over-reassuring. Bibbs pulled the rug closer about
+him, and not even the phantom of color was left upon his cheeks as he
+passed this place, for he knew it too well. Across the face of one of
+the buildings there was an enormous sign: "Sheridan Automatic Pump Co.,
+Inc."
+
+Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and
+adding their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses
+of a thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots
+and nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from
+one another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch
+some night when the right wind blew. They were only waiting for that
+wind and a cigarette, and then they would all be gone together--a pinch
+of incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+
+Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there
+a forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people
+said it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure
+that asphalt and "improving" the streets did it; but Bigness was in
+too Big a hurry to bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles
+and telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles by the
+thousand to take their places. So he let the trees die and put up his
+poles. They were hideous, but nobody minded that; and sometimes the
+wires fell and killed people--but not often enough to matter at all.
+
+Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the
+town where the few solid old houses not already demolished were in
+transition: some, with their fronts torn away, were being made into
+segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into
+trade, brazenly putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors,
+seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped
+humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one story
+erected in the old front yards. Altogether, the town here was like a
+boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old ingredients
+were discernible.
+
+This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached
+the roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing
+while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried
+before it. Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of
+feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them,
+rising higher; old buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings
+were coming down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men
+worked underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs
+like spiders in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to
+split the wind like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way
+round swarming corners; motor-cars of every kind and shape known to
+man babbled frightful warnings and frantic demands; hospital ambulances
+clamored wildly for passage; steam-whistles signaled the swinging of
+titanic tentacle and claw; riveters rattled like machine-guns; the
+ground shook to the thunder of gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate
+sound of it all was the sound of earthquake playing accompaniments for
+battle and sudden death. On one of the new steel buildings no work
+was being done that afternoon. The building had killed a man in the
+morning--and the steel-workers always stop for the day when that
+"happens."
+
+And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and
+the pagan women--there would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For
+the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the
+rush and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+
+Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be "to the minute" or his father
+would consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's
+office marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with
+his entrance five people who had been at work in the office, under
+Sheridan's direction, walked out. They departed upon no visible or
+audible suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to
+the new-comer. As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly
+stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that
+they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a
+disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been
+summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly
+what they understood.
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan.
+
+It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
+
+Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his
+big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They
+were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as might be
+still damp from a basin.
+
+"Well, Bibbs," he said at last, not altering his attitude, "do you know
+what I'm goin' to do with you?"
+
+Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon
+the ceiling. "I heard you tell Jim," he began, in his slow way. "You
+said you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to
+Miss Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But--"
+
+"But what?" said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+
+"Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?"
+
+That brought his father sharply round to face him. "You beat the devil!
+Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?"
+
+"Liver, maybe," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+"Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you
+organically. No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter,
+and that's ALL the matter. Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put
+through the big deals! No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just
+sets out on the back fence and thinks about how much trouble there must
+be in the world! That ain't the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs;
+it's the kind that borrows fifteen cents from his wife's uncle's
+brother-in-law to get ten cent's worth o' plug tobacco and a nickel's
+worth o' quinine!"
+
+He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned
+again to the window.
+
+"Look out there!" he bade his son. "Look out o' that window! Look at the
+life and energy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
+tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young
+men are doin' in this town!" He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk
+in the middle of the room. "Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look
+at what your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look
+at Jim! I made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last
+New-Year's, with charge of every inch o' ground and every brick and
+every shingle and stick o' wood we own; and it's an example to any young
+man--or ole man, either--the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found
+out we wanted two more big warehouses at the Pump Works--wanted 'em
+quick. Contractors said it couldn't be done; said nine or ten months
+at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What'd Jim do? Took the
+contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process;
+kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day
+himself--and, by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week! Four
+months and a half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o'
+these fellers that make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young
+man can be like Jim, because there's mighty few got his ability, but
+every young man can go in and do his share. This town is God's own
+country, and there's opportunity for anybody with a pound of energy and
+an ounce o' gumption. I tell you these young business men I watch just
+do my heart good! THEY don't set around on the back fence--no, sir! They
+take enough exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball
+game once or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice
+families, with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the
+work--because the work's got to go ON! They're puttin' their life-blood
+into it, I tell you, and that's why we're gettin' bigger every minute,
+and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin' to keep ON
+gettin' bigger!"
+
+He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing
+that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still
+fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan
+was impelled to groan. "Oh, Lord!" he said. "This is the way you always
+were. I don't believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You
+don't LOOK as if you did. By George! it's discouraging!"
+
+"I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger," said Bibbs,
+bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. "I don't see
+just why--"
+
+"WHAT?" Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+staring across it incredulously at his son.
+
+"I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?"
+
+"Great God!" shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+clenched fist. "A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the
+poorest day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question--"
+
+"I did once," Bibbs interrupted; "when I was in the machine-shop. I--"
+
+"Wha'd he say?"
+
+"He said, 'Oh, hell!'" answered Bibbs, mildly.
+
+"Yes, I reckon he would!" Sheridan swung away from the desk. "I reckon
+he certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now,
+myself!"
+
+"It's the same answer, then?" Bibbs's voice was serious, almost
+tremulous.
+
+"Damnation!" Sheridan roared. "Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,
+you ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the
+word PROGRESS?"
+
+He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,
+his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. "Now then," he said,
+huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, "what do you want to do?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What do you WANT to do, I said."
+
+Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. "What--what do--I--what--"
+
+"If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you
+do?"
+
+Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound
+shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his
+shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to
+the desk in school.
+
+"What would you do? Loaf?"
+
+"No, sir." Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it
+made was unquestionably a guilty sound. "I suppose I'd--I'd--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose I'd try to--to write."
+
+"Write what?"
+
+"Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I see," said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+putting upon himself. "That is, you want to write, but you don't want to
+write anything of any account."
+
+"You think--"
+
+Sheridan got up again. "I take my hat off to the man that can write
+a good ad," he said, emphatically. "The best writin' talent in this
+country is right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for
+good writin'--look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for
+that kind o' writin'. Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried
+it, and I can't do it. I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes
+people do the hardest thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to
+make 'em give up their MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell
+you when it comes to the actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to
+make things HAPPEN, R. T. Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in
+a minute than George Waldo Emerson ever knew in his whole life!"
+
+"You--you may be--" Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered in
+a cough.
+
+"Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up
+with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'!
+My Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper
+without havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane
+Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why,
+look at Edith! I expect that poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water
+mark for you, young man, and it's the only one she's ever managed to
+write in her whole LIFE! When I wanted her to go on and write some more
+she said it took too much time. Said it took months and months. And
+Edith's a smart girl; she's got more energy in her little finger than
+you ever give me a chance to see in your whole body, Bibbs. Now look
+at the facts: say she could turn out four or five poems a year and you
+could turn out maybe two. That medal she got was worth about fifteen
+dollars, so there's your income--thirty dollars a year! That's a fine
+success to make of your life! I'm not sayin' a word against poetry. I
+wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith's;
+and poetry's all right enough in its place--but you leave it to the
+girls. A man's got to do a man's work in this world!"
+
+He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+Bibbs confidentially on the knee. "This city's got the greatest future
+in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're
+goin' to have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty fair share. I love
+this town. It's God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every
+day right along, I don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own
+business, and I'd fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family.
+It's a beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any
+district you want to; look at the park system we're puttin' through,
+and the boulevards and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she
+grows!" He had become intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. "Now,
+Bibbs, I can't take any of it--nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor
+bonds--away with me in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave
+my share in it to my boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and
+a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before,
+whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built
+big, and I want the buildin' to go on. And when my last hour comes I
+want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're fit
+to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want
+to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to take hold of big things.
+Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made
+mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my
+boys."
+
+He leaned back, deeply moved. "There!" he said, huskily. "I've never
+spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you
+to understand--and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that
+way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs."
+
+"I see," said Bibbs. "At least I think I do. But--"
+
+"Wait a minute!" Sheridan raised his hand. "If you see the least bit
+in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set
+here and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you
+must understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have
+him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium
+because he couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs.
+I've had a whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time
+another, and I reckon I understand your case just about as well as he
+does, anyway! Now here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder
+than what I did the other boys, and that was for your own good, because
+I saw you needed to be shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of
+moody and mopish--and you needed work that'd keep you on the jump. Now,
+why did it make you sick instead of brace you up and make a man of you
+the way it ought of done? I pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look
+here, ain't it really because he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says,
+'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it, it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it,
+and that affects his nervous system. The more he tries it, the more he
+hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.' That
+ain't quite his words, but it's what he meant. And that's about the way
+it is."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "that's about the way it is."
+
+"Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to
+make you like it!"
+
+Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+ghostly. "I can't," he said, in a low voice. "I can't."
+
+"Can't go back to the shop?"
+
+"No. Can't like it. I can't."
+
+Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
+exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father
+should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious
+stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from
+childhood. "By George, you will!" he cried. "You'll go back there and
+you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like it, and he
+says it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks as if it
+was about up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work
+doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you, whether you hate
+it or not. I've never made a mistake in a serious matter in my life,
+and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And
+I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back there and vindicate my
+judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin'
+to learn the right one! He says in a couple more months this fool thing
+that's been the matter with you'll be disappeared completely and you'll
+be back in as good or better condition than you were before you ever
+went into the shop. And right then is when you begin over--right in that
+same shop! Nobody can call me a hard man or a mean father. I do the best
+I can for my chuldern, and I take full responsibility for bringin' my
+sons up to be men. Now, so far, I've failed with you. But I'm not goin'
+to keep ON failin'. I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and
+I'm not goin' to begin with my own son. I'm goin' to make a MAN of you.
+By God! I am!"
+
+Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. "You say you
+give me a couple of months?" he said.
+
+Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. "Gurney said two months more
+would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself
+in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!"
+
+"Good-by, sir," said Bibbs, meekly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the "lamidal"
+George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of
+temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception
+of himself as a permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the
+mantelpiece the two photographs that he owned: one, a "group" twenty
+years old--his father and mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys--and the
+other a "cabinet" of Edith at sixteen. And upon a table were the books
+he had taken from his trunk: Sartor Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque,
+Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles. There were some other books in the
+trunk--a large one, which remained unremoved at the foot of the bed,
+adding to the general impression of transiency. It contained nearly all
+the possessions as well as the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs
+sat beside it, the day after his interview with his father, raking over
+a small collection of manuscripts in the top tray. Some of these he
+glanced through dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but one made
+him smile. Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to
+read it. It was written on paper stamped "Hood Sanitarium," and bore the
+title, "Leisure."
+
+  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace--
+
+Having read so far as the word "peace," Bibbs suffered an interruption
+interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the
+hall just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel
+was in progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and
+continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+
+"Yes, you BETTER go home!" Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.
+"You better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!"
+
+"Edie, Edie!" he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+
+"You see here!" This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+tremulous. "Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother
+Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she
+thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good."
+
+"Yes, you did!" And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. "Yes, you
+did! YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it
+up between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--"
+
+"Edie, Edie! Now, now!"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what
+about his not going to HER house. How--"
+
+"I've explained that to Mother Sheridan." Sibyl's voice indicated that
+she was descending the stairs. "Married people are not the same. Some
+things that should be shielded from a young girl--"
+
+This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. "'Shielded from
+a young girl'!" she shrilled. "You seem pretty willing to be the shield!
+You look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!"
+
+Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+pacification were renewed. "Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,
+and you'd oughtn't to--"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa--"
+
+"Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--"
+
+"You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!" the girl cried, passionately.
+
+"Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll--"
+
+"No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!" And Edith,
+flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung
+round it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself,
+face down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no
+perception of Bibbs's presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a
+passion of tears, she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched
+fists. "Sneak!" she babbled aloud. "Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!"
+
+Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward
+the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some
+sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+
+"Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago."
+
+"Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry--"
+
+"Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?"
+
+"Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going
+out."
+
+"No; don't go." She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob,
+and repeated her request. "Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet,
+anyhow. Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at
+all, but I wish you'd sit down."
+
+"All right." And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. "Go ahead
+and cry all you want, Edith," he said. "No harm in that!"
+
+"Sibyl told mamma--OH!" she began, choking. "Mary Vertrees had mamma and
+Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had some
+women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid
+herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em
+ever since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn
+is so bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice
+people in town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it's
+a falsehood, and I don't believe a word of it; and in the second place
+I know the reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS I know it! I
+won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and all of you would think
+I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool he'd probably
+quit speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her; that's all I
+ask. Just you watch that woman. You'll see!"
+
+As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching "that woman." Glancing from
+the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old
+house next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked
+quickly up the path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention
+of calling. But he did not mention this to his sister, who, after
+delivering herself of a rather vague jeremiad upon the subject of her
+sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her own chamber, leaving him to
+his speculations. The chief of these concerned the social elasticities
+of women. Sibyl had just been a participant in a violent scene; she had
+suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to set her quivering
+with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to the presence
+of people whom she knew no more than "formally." Bibbs marveled. Surely,
+he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon Sibyl's face or in
+her manner; she could not have ironed it all quite out in the three or
+four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses' door.
+
+And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose
+that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may
+and does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex
+as well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is
+a type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought
+greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women
+and by its own "lack of perspective," for it is a type that never sees
+itself. Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question--it
+was like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not
+even the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make
+a certain impression she believed that she made it. She believed that
+she was believed.
+
+"My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,"
+Mary said, when they were seated.
+
+Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had
+been brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark
+addressed to her by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms.
+It was intended partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an
+impression of sweetness.
+
+"Just thought I'd fly in a minute," she said, continuing the cooing to
+relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. "I thought I'd just behave
+like REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far
+from down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted
+to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that
+afternoon. You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here
+before, I've had to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely, and
+I really've known scarcely anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed
+in business ever since he was a mere boy, why, of course--"
+
+She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+
+"Of course," said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+
+"Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+afternoon," Sibyl went on. "They're really delightful people. Indeed
+they are! Yes--"
+
+She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected
+with the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of
+cheerful ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of
+hands.
+
+"Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people
+here in town the other day," said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and
+protracting it. "They said something that took ME by surprise! We were
+talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--"
+
+Mary interrupted her promptly. "Do you mean 'mutual' to include my
+mother and me?" she asked.
+
+"Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean."
+
+"No," said Mary. "We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+ours."
+
+To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. "That's
+just the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!" she cried, with a vehemence that
+made Mary stare. "Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families
+here speak of him!"
+
+Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.
+"I had the impression he was a friend of yours," she said; adding,
+hastily, "and your husband's."
+
+"Oh yes," said the caller, absently. "He is, certainly. A man's
+reputation for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to
+married people, of course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN
+it may be very, very dangerous. There are a great many things safe and
+proper for married people that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young
+girl. Don't you agree, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"I don't know," returned the frank Mary. "Do you mean that you intend
+to remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's
+doing so?"
+
+"That's it exactly!" was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. "What
+I feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable
+for Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell
+you," she cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, "her father ought to
+put his foot down!"
+
+Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and
+then retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one
+might catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back
+into hiding under a bush.
+
+"Of course," said Sibyl, much more composedly, "I hardly need say that
+it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as
+fond of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting
+about it. It would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled."
+
+This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with
+pathos, but she flatted.
+
+And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the
+stress of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not
+uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect
+obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and
+the other flawed. In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect
+consciousness of Mary. The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely
+something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose--a Mary Vertrees who
+was incapable of penetrating that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing
+that she was projecting the image of herself that she desired to
+project, never dreaming that with every word, every look, and every
+gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to
+the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed
+woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but
+possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong--perhaps even violent.
+What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began to suspect.
+
+"And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled," Sibyl continued. "It would be a
+dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
+Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
+would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't
+tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent
+and hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too
+late. You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just
+what it's my duty to do."
+
+"I see," said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, "Does Miss Sheridan
+seem to--to care very much about him?"
+
+"He's deliberately fascinated her," returned the visitor, beginning to
+breathe quickly and heavily. "Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she
+wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that
+were, and she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start
+that made it easy for him--and he didn't need it. He could have done
+it, anyway!" Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice
+shook. "He went after her deliberately, the way he does everything; he's
+as cold-blooded as a fish. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and
+lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold of a piece of real
+money--and there was Edith! And he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can
+stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any money if she marries
+him, and the only person that could make him understand that is Father
+Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed, because Lamhorn is going to
+hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so last night. He said he was
+going to marry her the first minute he could persuade her to it--and
+little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!" Sibyl's eyes flashed green
+again. "And he swore he'd do it," she panted. "He swore he'd marry Edith
+Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!"
+
+And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
+unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she
+saw Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps--for
+Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants might have heard.
+She saw Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and
+Lamhorn--tired of her--first evasive, then brutally letting her have the
+truth; and at last, infuriated, "swearing" to marry her rival. If Sibyl
+had not babbled out the word "swore" it might have been less plain.
+
+The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+"You see," she said, more quietly, "whatever's going to be done ought to
+be done right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard
+about Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before
+Edith. I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because
+nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend
+would do. But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid
+to ever come right out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith
+can get anything she wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary
+indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel
+rock. If it's a question of his will against anybody else's he'd make
+his will rule if it killed 'em both! Now, he'd never in the world let
+Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew his reputation. So, you
+see, somebody's got to tell him. It isn't a very easy position for me,
+is it, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"No," said Mary, gravely.
+
+"Well, to be frank," said Sibyl, smiling, "that's why I've come to you."
+
+"To ME!" Mary frowned.
+
+Sibyl rippled and cooed again. "There isn't ANYBODY ever made such a hit
+with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL
+hope you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the
+family!" (This sally with another and louder effect of laughter). "And
+if it's MY duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+
+"Listen," said Sibyl. "Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this
+story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a
+good reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose
+(what's most likely) she loses her temper and says I invented it, then
+what am I going to do? Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and
+her daughter, and they're out of the question, anyway. But suppose I
+could say: 'All right, if you want proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came
+with me, and she's waiting in the next room right now, to--"
+
+"No, no," said Mary, quickly. "You mustn't--"
+
+"Listen just a minute more," Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
+ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. "You
+naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but
+if YOU take part in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what
+weight you carry over there, and no one would have the right to say you
+did it except out of the purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and
+his father would admire you all the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen!
+Don't you see we OUGHT to do it, you and I? Do you suppose Robert
+Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her? Do you suppose a man like
+him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for the money?" And again
+Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface. "I tell you he's after nothing on
+earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile, over there,
+next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to do it. Marry Edith?" she cried. "I tell
+you he'd marry their nigger cook for THAT!"
+
+She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too vehement,
+but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she had
+produced the effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was
+staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She
+became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+
+"After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+money-pile, over there, next door!" The voice was vulgar, the words were
+vulgar--and the plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary Vertrees's
+ears! The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly in the flawed
+one at last.
+
+Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her
+bargain. "Now don't you worry," she said, sunnily, "about this setting
+Edith against you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she
+tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in
+over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a
+house, and Jim likes to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that
+way; she's too crazy to have you take her around with the smart crowd,
+but if she DID, you needn't worry. And another thing--I guess you won't
+mind Jim's own sister-in-law speaking of it. Of course, I don't know
+just how matters stand between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about
+as much alike as two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up
+his mind; sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD. Now, what
+I mean is, sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like
+that. There's lots of little things can be said, and lots--"
+
+She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and
+now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or
+any other kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of
+the room.
+
+Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered
+something neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and
+that she would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of
+absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her guest
+was talking. And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think
+this unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first considered it.
+There might have been more excuse for it, she thought, had she been
+speaking of matters less important--offering to do the girl all the
+kindness in her power, too!
+
+Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of
+her shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory
+of the furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and
+engravings. Then she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window
+and stood looking out upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair
+she had abandoned, and sat again. There was no sound in the house.
+
+A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her
+face, and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears. She
+looked at her watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since she
+had looked at it before.
+
+She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let
+herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her
+own house.
+
+Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. "Saw you from the window,"
+he explained. "You must find a lot to say to that old lady."
+
+"What old lady?"
+
+"Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the
+daughter come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk
+on up the street. Don't stand out on the porch," he said, crossly.
+"Come in here. There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you
+about. Come in!"
+
+But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house
+and started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,
+staring fixedly. "Something's the matter over there," he muttered, and
+then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, "What's the
+matter over there?"
+
+Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed,
+and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity,
+and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had
+followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she
+was crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+
+"By George!" gasped Roscoe. "I believe somebody's dead!"
+
+And he started for the New House at a run.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon,
+and at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from
+foreign parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with
+Sheridan and his colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name,
+was a gentleman of Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and
+Sheridan took pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's finest
+city. They got into an open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan
+Building, and were driven first, slowly and momentously, through the
+wholesale district and the retail district; then more rapidly they
+inspected the packing-houses and the stock-yards; then skirmished over
+the "park system" and "boulevards"; and after that whizzed through the
+"residence section" on their way to the factories and foundries.
+
+"All cray," observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+
+"'Cray'?" echoed Sheridan. "I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?"
+
+"No white," said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the
+long rows of houses on both sides of the street. "No white lace
+window-curtains; all cray lace window-curtains."
+
+"Oh. I see!" Sheridan laughed indulgently. "You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
+ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones."
+
+Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. "There are NO white ones,"
+he said. "There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white
+window-curtains, no white house, no white peeble!" He pointed upward.
+"Smoke!" Then he sniffed the air and clasped his nose between forefinger
+and thumb. "Smoke! Smoke ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites." He tapped
+his chest. "Smoke in your lunks!"
+
+"Oh! SMOKE!" Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+patently finding it delicious. "You BET we got smoke!"
+
+"Exbensif!" said Herr Favre. "Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in
+summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it."
+
+Sheridan laughed uproariously. "They know it means new spring hats for
+'em!"
+
+"They must need many, too!" said the visitor. "New hats, new all things,
+but nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing
+peeble."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'"
+
+"Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip,
+and I tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty
+dirty and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin'
+right down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town
+than in Munich? I know you got more enterprise up there than the part of
+the old country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're
+associated with others like you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place,
+wouldn't you heap rather be here than over there?"
+
+"For me," said Herr Favre, "no. Here I should not think I was living. It
+would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else."
+
+"We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
+like it."
+
+"Oh yes." And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. "The first generation,
+they bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are
+Americans, like you." He tapped his host's big knee genially. "You are
+patriot; so are they."
+
+"Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+Farver!" Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. "You certainly stand up for your
+own town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would
+here. Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after you've seen
+our city! It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire
+you for it; every man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees
+the other fellow's got the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in
+your heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live right here than any place else
+in the world, if you had your choice. Man alive! this is God's country,
+Mr. Farver, and a blind man couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand
+where you do in a business way and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are.
+This is the big works, and I'll show you something now that'll make your
+eyes stick out!"
+
+They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+
+"Now I'll take you for a spin in the country," said Sheridan, when at
+last they came out to the car again. "We'll take a breezer." But, with
+his foot on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out
+of the office smiling a greeting. "Hello, young fellow!" Sheridan said,
+heartily. "On the job, are you, Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of
+it very often, I guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in
+the country sometimes with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside
+you!" He roared with laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder.
+"That's all right with me--if it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we
+goin' to move into your new warehouses? Monday?"
+
+"Sunday, if you want to," said Jim.
+
+"No!" cried his father, delighted. "Don't tell me you're goin' to keep
+your word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
+contractor yet didn't want more time."
+
+"They'll be all ready for you on the minute," said Jim. "I'm going over
+both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I
+guess they'll pass inspection, too!"
+
+"Well, then, when you get through with that," said his father, "you go
+and take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell
+her you stand high with ME!" He stepped into the car, waving a waggish
+farewell, and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his
+companion a broad face literally shining with pride. "That's my boy
+Jimmie!" he said.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," said Herr Favre.
+
+"I got two o' the finest boys," said Sheridan, "I got two o' the finest
+boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and
+I tell you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM
+in bed! My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's
+a wizard. You saw them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?
+Well, JIM built 'em. I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver." And he
+recited this history, describing the new process at length; in fact, he
+had such pride in Jim's achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it
+more than once.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an
+hour later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+
+"He is that!" said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: "I got a fine
+family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her
+and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.
+There's culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,
+and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it--her and my
+daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.
+I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and
+you'll see--and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been holdin'
+their own with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for much
+o' that kind o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern;
+and my daughter she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem
+she wrote when I get you up at the house. She wrote it in school and
+took the first prize for poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em
+any smarter'n that girl, Mr. Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're
+a pretty happy family; yes, sir. Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet,
+and I haven't ever spoke to him and his wife about it--it's kind of
+a delicate matter--but it's about time the wife and I saw some
+gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker for about
+four or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys, I
+hope, o' course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard
+me joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods
+here, and I guess it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER! She's one
+these girls that stand right up and look at you! And pretty? She's
+the prettiest thing you ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good
+sense. Jim'll be just right if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME
+to think o' the way that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder. Four
+months and a half! Yes, sir--"
+
+He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain
+the stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they
+reached the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan
+allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were
+shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+
+"Now, good night, Mr. Farver," said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+shake hands with his guest. "Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and
+take you up to--Go on away, boy!"
+
+A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, "Extry!
+Secon' Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!"
+
+"Get out!" laughed Sheridan. "Who wants to read about accidents? Get
+out!"
+
+The boy moved away philosophically. "Extry! Extry!" he shrilled. "Three
+men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
+Extry!"
+
+"Don't forget, Mr. Farver," Sheridan completed his interrupted
+farewells. "I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be
+here for you about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed
+the drive much as I have. Good night--good night!" He leaned back,
+speaking to the chauffer. "Now you can take me around to the Central
+City barber-shop, boy. I want to get a shave 'fore I go up home."
+
+"Extry! Extry!" screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+bats in the dusk. "Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!" It
+struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many "Extras"; they printed
+"Extras" for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake,
+he decided, critically. Crying "Wolf!" too often wouldn't sell the
+goods; it was bad business. The papers would "make more in the long
+run," he was sure, if they published an "Extra" only when something of
+real importance happened.
+
+"Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!" a boy squawked under his
+nose, as he descended from the car.
+
+"Go on away!" said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see
+the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+
+But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus
+cried his wares.
+
+"Say, Yallern," said this second, hoarse with awe, "'n't chew know who
+that IS?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It's SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Jeest!" cried the first, staring insanely.
+
+At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+and Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was
+their habit to give him a "reception," his entrance being always the
+signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses
+of briskness and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
+
+The shop was crowded. Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men
+waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. "Extras" lay upon
+vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+
+There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
+the door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
+of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
+turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing
+silence in the shop.
+
+The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
+left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section
+of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above
+it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's
+closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber
+remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or just after
+it--under which a man does not need to be shaved.
+
+He stepped forward, profoundly grave. "I be through with this man in the
+chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone. "Yessuh."
+And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, "You goin'
+RESIGN?" he demanded in a fierce undertone. "You goin' take Mist'
+Sheridan's coat?" He sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,
+taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of
+subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+
+"You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan," said the head barber, gently.
+"I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in."
+
+"Never mind," said Sheridan. "Go on get through with your man."
+
+"Yessuh." And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+
+Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know
+what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand
+for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been
+imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd
+look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+
+Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the
+shop, and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly
+shifted, furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after
+wondering if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the
+night before; but there was no vacancy in either line.
+
+The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of
+the "Extra" there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The
+first of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims--
+
+Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the
+print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,
+pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+
+"I've come for you, father," said Bibbs. "Here's the boy with your coat
+and hat. Put them on and come home."
+
+And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
+strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
+
+Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,
+but as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his
+son's sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood
+face to face.
+
+"What--what--" His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it, he
+was so frightened.
+
+"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face. "Young North Side
+millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!"
+
+"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
+
+Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+
+"And YOU come to tell me that?"
+
+Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
+first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered
+cry of accusation:
+
+"Why wasn't it you?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
+days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
+in his mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs
+wondered how many million times that had happened since men first made a
+word to name the sons of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his
+strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead
+son. He had nothing to help him meet the shock, neither definite
+religion nor "philosophy" definite or indefinite. He could only beat his
+forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed with an ax, while his wife
+was helpless except to entreat him not to "take on," herself adding a
+continuous lamentation. Edith, weeping, made truce with Sibyl and saw to
+it that the mourning garments were beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed,
+and he shirked, justifying himself curiously by saying he "never had
+any experience in such matters." So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who
+became, during this dreadful little time, the master of the house; for
+as strange a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He
+met the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time
+for the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and
+he selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other
+things. Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the
+rites with a picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs
+wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection--he
+divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely a
+consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So the Knights led the
+procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way to the
+cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines, plumed
+hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the carriages pass
+between.
+
+"Mighty fine-lookin' men," said Sheridan, brokenly. "They all--all liked
+him. He was--" His breath caught in a sob and choked him. "He was--a
+Grand Supreme Herald."
+
+Bibbs had divined aright.
+
+"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
+shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust." Bibbs stood
+passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a
+familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long
+time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation between
+himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very close, and if
+he had to go back it would probably bring him closer still; so close--as
+Dr. Gurney predicted--that no one would be able to tell the difference
+between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would
+be all the more determined to "make a man" of him, now that there was
+a man less in the family. To Bibbs's knowledge, no one and nothing had
+ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans, once he had
+determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing that any
+plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His nature
+unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence,
+and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would
+hold to that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who understood very well,
+in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
+make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
+
+He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The
+truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so
+thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that
+no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them,
+especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
+feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange
+to his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that
+Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would
+bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was
+to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the
+big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid
+hands upon Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering;
+Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her
+husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+
+It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and
+Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line
+of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the
+grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over
+the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the
+carriages filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs
+gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking
+back as he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not
+want to see. But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels
+or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had
+gone. A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
+
+The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about
+it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood
+looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming
+hillock beneath the darkening November sky. "It's too bad!" he half
+whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was
+too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was
+his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees
+standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.
+
+She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a
+slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the
+barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:
+urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and
+shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in
+unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such
+a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so
+long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
+undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
+box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without
+hope and without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque
+setting--she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a
+graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.
+
+She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and
+confused than Bibbs. In "Edith's" poem he had declared his intention of
+hiding his heart "among the stars"; and in his boyhood one day he had
+successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade
+of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were
+only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All
+his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker in
+the world. Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the
+unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her
+unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the
+little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive
+outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than
+those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started
+and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers
+fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, "I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
+you. I--" She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
+
+"Why--why--yes," Bibbs stammered. "I'll--I'll be de--Won't you get in?"
+
+In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then
+Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing
+the door.
+
+"You're very kind," she said, somewhat breathlessly. "I should have had
+to walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs. "It--it is beginning to get dark. I--I noticed that."
+
+"I ought to tell you--I--" Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat
+silent a moment, then spoke with composure. "It must seem odd, my--"
+
+"No, no!" Bibbs protested, earnestly. "Not in the--in the least."
+
+"It does, though," said Mary. "I had not intended to come to the
+cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came
+and whispered to me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your sister
+sent him. So I came. But when we reached here I--oh, I felt that perhaps
+I--"
+
+Bibbs nodded gravely. "Yes, yes," he murmured.
+
+"I got out on the opposite side of the carriage," she continued. "I mean
+opposite from--from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in
+the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time it takes.
+From where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at least I didn't
+notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here.
+I didn't know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course
+they didn't think to wait for me. That's why--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "I--" And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+
+Mary looked out through the dusty window. "I think we'd better be going
+home, if you please," she said.
+
+"Yes," Bibbs agreed, not moving. "It will be dark before we get there."
+
+She gave him a quick little glance. "I think you must be very tired,
+Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be," she said, gently. "If
+you'll let me, I'll--" And without explaining her purpose she opened the
+door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+
+Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+
+"Driver!" she called, in her clear voice, loudly. "Driver! We'd like to
+start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+please." The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs
+once more. "I noticed that he was asleep when we got in," she said. "I
+suppose they have a great deal of night work."
+
+Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.
+"I've never been able to apologize quickly," he said, with his
+accustomed slowness, "because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe
+whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil.
+It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I
+did."
+
+Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle
+voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state
+of their vehicle was an "accident." She had formed a casual impression
+of him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was
+unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she
+saw a picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy
+hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not
+that picture alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a
+glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new
+to her experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little;
+and then, with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat
+so long, after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had
+not started. What she did not realize, however, was that she had made
+no response to his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates,
+neither having spoken again.
+
+Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was
+silence. The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a
+rich presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the
+two could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither
+had any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling
+presently on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance,
+of the plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible,
+coughing asthmatically, or saying, "You, JOE!" with a spiritless flap of
+the whip upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps
+at street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and,
+thinning rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness.
+And yet neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral
+broke the silence.
+
+It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late. Abruptly she
+realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+companion and not talking to him. "Mr. Sheridan," she began, not knowing
+what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized
+the queerness of this drive--"Mr. Sheridan, I--"
+
+The coupe stopped. "You, JOE!" said the driver, reproachfully, and
+climbed down and opened the door.
+
+"What's the trouble?" Bibbs inquired.
+
+"Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir."
+
+Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+
+"What?" Bibbs demanded.
+
+"We're there, sir," said the driver, sympathetically. "Next house north
+of Mr. Sheridan's."
+
+Bibbs descended to the curb. "Why, yes," he said. "Yes, you seem to
+be right." And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front
+windows of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+
+"Let me help you," said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she
+was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+
+"Oh no," she murmured. "I think I can--" She meant that she could get
+out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already
+accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+
+"You, JOE!" cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he
+rumbled away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
+
+"Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, stiffly. She
+did not offer her hand. "Good night."
+
+"Good night," Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked
+beside her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran.
+Realization of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her,
+beginning to shock her; she stepped aside from the light that fell
+through the glass panels of the door and withheld her hand as it touched
+the old-fashioned bell-handle.
+
+"I'm quite safe, thank you," she said, with a little emphasis. "Good
+night."
+
+"Good night," said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the
+street he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+
+Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
+
+"Where are your eyes, Bibbs?" demanded Roscoe. "Sleep-walking, as
+usual?"
+
+But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. "Come over to our house for a
+little while, Bibbs," she urged. "I want to--"
+
+"No, I'd better--"
+
+"Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet
+over there--all worn out. Just come for a minute."
+
+He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with
+real feeling: "'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And
+I don't wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get
+down sick again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy."
+
+He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and
+was grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed
+Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted,
+she went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
+
+"Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you.
+How did you happen to be there?"
+
+"I had only been to the door," he said. "Good night, Sibyl."
+
+"Wait," she insisted. "We saw you coming out."
+
+"I wasn't," he explained, moving to depart. "I'd just brought Miss
+Vertrees home."
+
+"What?" she cried.
+
+"Yes," he said, and stepped out upon the porch, "that was it. Good
+night, Sibyl."
+
+"Wait!" she said, following him across the threshold. "How did that
+happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled
+the--the--" She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+
+"I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there," he said, reluctantly. "She
+had walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were
+leaving. When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one
+left."
+
+Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow
+breathlessness. "And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!"
+
+Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually
+over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the
+door shut behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.
+The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it
+seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and
+that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had
+she wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement?
+He found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he
+wished that he had not encountered her.
+
+At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering
+about the house, several mournfully admiring the "Bay of Naples," and
+others occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for
+trains. Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but
+Bibbs interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives
+summoned to the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon
+Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of
+him. He ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last
+by accident. Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard
+a murmurous sound, and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a
+quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
+
+"The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that;
+we got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin'
+along, and I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son the Lord
+give me, and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord
+takuth away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the
+Shuhite says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people,
+nor any remaining in his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite--"
+
+Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in
+his underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging
+backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard
+and gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but
+Uncle Gideon paid no attention.
+
+"Bildad the Shuhite spake and he says, 'If thy children have sinned
+against Him and He have cast them away--'"
+
+There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows
+rattled. The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but
+Uncle Gideon leaped from his chair. "My God!" he cried. "What's that?"
+
+There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon's grandson, a boy
+of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+"flash-lights" of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the
+Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded
+him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing
+the door of his father's room.
+
+He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing
+several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs;
+and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile
+was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.
+They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing
+to his own room.
+
+He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to
+the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where
+Mary Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small
+note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+
+  Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, "Darktown is Out To-night."  That
+  is natural--but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.
+
+  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady--
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
+
+Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
+period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
+and slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door.
+Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the
+evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was
+untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
+There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
+bed.
+
+In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little
+pause--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is
+a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person
+experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or
+sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation. It is the
+moment, as we say, before we "remember"; and for the first time in
+Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a vague happiness. He woke to a
+sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday.
+But when the next moment brought him his memory, he found nothing that
+could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under the circumstances
+it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief visitation
+and was gone before he had finished dressing. It left a little trail,
+the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained
+unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually
+the result of a drive home from a funeral. No wonder the sequence evaded
+Bibbs Sheridan!
+
+His father had gone when he came down-stairs. "Went on down to 's
+office, jes' same," Jackson informed him. "Came sat breakfas'-table, all
+by 'mself; eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat
+a thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I
+reckon putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do."
+
+It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
+passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried
+a little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be
+seen. Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved
+herself able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving
+calls in the earliest stages of "mourning." Lunch was as usual--for Jim
+and his father had always lunched down-town--and the afternoon was as
+usual. Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother went with him, as she
+sometimes did when the weather was pleasant. Altogether, the usualness
+of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
+
+During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.
+"But you wouldn't remember about that," she said, after narrating an
+episode. "You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that.
+And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon
+it'll just about kill your father to put somebody in his place as
+president of the Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe
+over; he told me last week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any
+one man could handle and not go crazy. Oh, it's a pity--" She stopped
+to wipe her eyes. "It's a pity you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and
+kind o' pick up his ways. Think what it'd meant to papa now! You never
+did run with either Roscoe or Jim any, even before you got sick. Of
+course, you were younger; but it always DID seem queer--and you three
+bein' brothers like that. I don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit
+down together for a good talk in my life."
+
+"Mother, I've been away so long," Bibbs returned, gently. "And since I
+came home I--"
+
+"Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs," she said. "Jim ain't been home
+much of an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin'
+and goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house for
+dinner. Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some
+miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'
+the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he
+told papa he would. I reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if
+there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you
+scarcely really knew him right well."
+
+"I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't
+much to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know
+much about them."
+
+"It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!" she moaned. "And you'll have to learn to
+know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it
+was all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will
+just kill him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this!
+You mustn't LET him, Bibbs--you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved
+over you, and now he can't stand any more--he just can't! Whatever he
+says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise
+me you will."
+
+"I would if I could," he said, sorrowfully.
+
+"No, no! Why can't you?" she cried, clutching his arm. "He wants you to
+go back to the machine-shop and--"
+
+"And--'like it'!" said Bibbs.
+
+"Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it wouldn't
+hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said that himself,
+Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for your father?
+You ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a beautiful house
+to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur coats and warm
+clothes; you been taken care of all your life. And you don't KNOW how
+he worked for the money to give all these things to you! You don't DREAM
+what he had to go through and what he risked when we were startin' out
+in life; and you never WILL know! And now this blow has fallen on him
+out of a clear sky, and you make it out to be a hardship to do like he
+wants you to! And all on earth he asks is for you to go back to the work
+in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you! That's all he asks. Look,
+Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we get there I want you
+to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to. Promise me!"
+
+In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see
+him better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her
+before he spoke.
+
+"I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother," he said.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, satisfied. "That's a good boy! That's all I
+wanted you to say."
+
+"Don't give me any credit," he said, ruefully. "There isn't anything
+else for me to do."
+
+"Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!"
+
+"No, no," he soothed her. "We'll have to begin to make the spirit a
+cheerful one. We may--" They were turning into their own driveway as
+he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was
+visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the
+door open behind her. She bowed gravely.
+
+"'We may'--what?" asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+"You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'."
+
+"Did I?" said Bibbs, blankly. "Well, what WERE we saying?"
+
+"Of all the queer boys!" she cried. "You always were. Always! You
+haven't forgot what you just promised me, have you?"
+
+"No," he answered, as the car stopped. "No, the spirit will be as
+cheerful as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like--"
+
+His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she
+failed to hear his final words.
+
+"Behave like who, Bibbs?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+But she was fretful in her grief. "You said it wouldn't do to behave
+like SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?"
+
+"It was just nonsense," he explained, turning to go in. "An obscure
+person I don't think much of lately."
+
+"Behave like WHO?" she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell
+Dr. Gurney about it.
+
+"Like Bildad the Shuhite!" was what Bibbs said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was
+Sheridan's custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the
+library, while his wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit)
+or allowed herself to be repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms
+of solitaire. To-night she did neither, but sat in her customary chair,
+gazing at the fire, while Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his
+lap, though now and then he lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall
+back upon his knees again. Bibbs came in noiselessly and sat in a
+corner, doing nothing; and from a "reception-room" across the hall an
+indistinct vocal murmur became just audible at intervals. Once, when
+this murmur grew louder, under stress of some irrepressible merriment,
+Edith's voice could be heard--"Bobby, aren't you awful!" and Sheridan
+glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+
+She rose at once and went into the "reception-room"; there was a flurry
+of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith and her
+suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned
+to her chair in the library.
+
+"They won't bother you any more, papa," she said, in a comforting voice.
+"She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening,
+and I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd
+already told him he could." She paused, then added, rather guiltily: "I
+got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used
+to. Maybe--maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa." And as Sheridan nodded
+solemnly, she concluded, in haste: "Don't say I said to. I might be
+wrong about it, anyway."
+
+He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+brought tears. "That Miss Vertrees was a good girl," she said. "SHE was
+all right."
+
+Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of
+thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+
+"Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?" she
+faltered. "Did you--"
+
+He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.
+"I fixed it," he said, in a husky voice. "I moved Cantwell up, and put
+Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the
+four men with salaries high enough to take it." He went to her, put
+his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath.
+"It's my bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up." He dropped the hand from her
+shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped
+and spoke again, without turning to look at her. "The Realty Company'll
+go right on just the same," he said. "It's like--it's like sand, mamma.
+It puts me in mind of chuldern playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks
+his finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of 'em'll pat the
+place with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill
+it up and settle against one another; and then, right away it's flat on
+top again, and you can't tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty
+Company'll go on all right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I
+reckon, that wouldn't go right on--just the same."
+
+And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread
+upon the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+"It's so forlone," she said, chokingly. "That's the first time he spoke
+since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to
+hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come,
+right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She
+just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what
+Sibyl said the other day, and--and you heard what--what--"
+
+"What Edith said to Sibyl?" Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+
+"We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!" she wailed. "Oh, it looks as
+if movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares
+me!" She put both her hands over her face. "Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you
+only wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son!
+I don't know what we're all comin' to!" And, weeping, she followed her
+husband.
+
+Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man
+who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called
+"the smoking-room"--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up in
+no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a
+less conspicuous adjacency.
+
+"Good evening," said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a
+leather easy-chair near them.
+
+"What is it?" asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+
+"Nothing," he returned, smiling.
+
+She frowned. "Did you want something?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't
+be going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left
+for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn."
+
+"'CHAT with'!" she echoed, incredulously.
+
+"I can talk about almost anything," said Bibbs with an air of
+genial politeness. "It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about
+business--if that's what you happened to be talking about. But you
+aren't in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn?"
+
+"Not now," returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+
+"I'm not, either," said Bibbs. "It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
+to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of
+which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he
+sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if
+implying that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with
+a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was
+obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in
+presenting the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had
+nothing in his mind at any time except "personalities"--he could talk
+about people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous,
+offered the weather.
+
+Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for
+the rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would
+move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+
+"I was just going," he said, rising.
+
+"Oh NO!" Edith cried, sharply.
+
+"Yes. Good night! I think I--"
+
+"Too bad," said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard
+Bibbs offering to "help" Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather
+curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed
+by the closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" she cried, furiously. "What do you MEAN?
+How did you dare come in there when you knew--"
+
+Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up,
+a few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+
+"Oh, Bibbs," she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't to
+distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the
+house. You'd ought to been more considerate."
+
+Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+naive shadow motionless across its threshold. "Yes," he said. "He
+doesn't appear to be much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of
+one."
+
+Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: "You call yourself one?"
+
+"No, no," he answered. "I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't
+claim--" But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+
+"There," he said, sighing. "That's almost the first time in my life I
+ever tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in
+what I tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!"
+
+"You hurt her feelin's," she groaned. "You must 'a' gone at it too
+rough, Bibbs."
+
+He looked upon her wanly. "That's my trouble, mother," he murmured. "I'm
+a plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man."
+
+For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. "Hush your
+nonsense!" she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+appearing. "You go to bed."
+
+He kissed her and obeyed.
+
+
+Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+
+"You mustn't do that under a misapprehension," he warned her, when they
+were alone in the dining-room.
+
+"Do what under a what?" she asked.
+
+"Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'" he
+told her, gravely. "I have a prejudice against that young man."
+
+She laughed. "I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+prejudices against!" In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+implores. "Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence
+with papa against him!" And she laughed louder.
+
+"Listen," he said, with peculiar earnestness. "I'll tell you now,
+because--because I've decided I'm one of the family." And then, as
+if the earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further, he
+continued, in his usual tone, "I'm drunk with power, Edith."
+
+"What do you want to tell me?" she demanded, brusquely.
+
+"Lamhorn made love to Sibyl," he said.
+
+Edith hooted. "SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat
+between us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and said
+something like that to you afterward--"
+
+"No," he said, gravely. "I KNOW."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+Lamhorn--"
+
+Edith screamed with laughter. "You were with ROSCOE--and you heard
+Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!"
+
+"No. I heard them quarreling."
+
+"You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!" she cried. "You say he made love to
+her because you heard them quarreling!"
+
+"That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by the
+way they quarrel."
+
+"You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?"
+
+"Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!--it's
+always certain--"
+
+Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. "You ought
+to know. You've had so much experience, yourself!"
+
+"I haven't any, Edith," he said. "My life has been about as exciting as
+an incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things."
+
+"Well, then," she said, "if you look out through the glass you must know
+what effect such stuff would have upon ME!" She rose, visibly agitated.
+"What if it WAS true?" she demanded, bitterly. "What if it was true a
+hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to
+giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about
+Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think
+it matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'?
+What if I understood WHY she--" She broke off with a violent gesture, a
+sweep of her arm extended at full length, as if she hurled something to
+the ground. "Do you think a girl that really cared for a man would pay
+any attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!"
+
+He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.
+She met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she
+had spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said. "I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm
+sorry, Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see
+until you see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of
+it--especially me!"
+
+"That's sensible," she responded, curtly. "You're most surprising of all
+when you're sensible, Bibbs."
+
+"Yes," he sighed. "I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith."
+
+Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and
+George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting
+there, he announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch
+upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+
+Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over
+fifty, in spite of Sheridan's habitual "ole Doc Gurney." He was gray,
+however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+
+"Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs," he said, not
+rising. "Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of
+me--between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you."
+
+"You mean you're too sleepy to move," returned Bibbs, complying. "I
+think you'll notice that I'm getting worse."
+
+"Taken on about twelve pounds," said Gurney. "Thirteen, maybe."
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"Well, it won't do." The doctor rubbed his eyelids. "You're so much
+better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
+where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down--all
+the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know."
+
+Bibbs nodded. "Machine-shop."
+
+"Still hate it?"
+
+Bibbs nodded again.
+
+"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted. "Yes, I expect it'll make a lump
+in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've
+got the old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?"
+
+"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. "My kind of writing!"
+
+"Yes," the doctor agreed. "I suppose if you broke away and lived on
+roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of
+editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred
+dollars a year by the time you're fifty."
+
+"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
+
+"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily. "You
+don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise and
+jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.' You'd
+like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask on a
+balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it and
+have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I
+can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another
+of his boys if you don't go to Sicily?"
+
+"I don't want to go to Sicily," said Bibbs. "I want to stay right here."
+
+The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his
+patient a sharp glance. "It's a risk," he said. "I think we'll find
+you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.
+Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as
+you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as
+it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs."
+
+He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. "Well, when we go over
+you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?"
+
+"Tell him I'm ready," said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+
+"Oh no," Gurney laughed. "Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll
+see. Don't forget I said to walk down."
+
+And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.
+"Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce," he said, gloomily, to
+his next patient when Bibbs had gone. "Doctor tells a man he's well, and
+that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!"
+
+Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon
+this point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any
+point, so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy
+afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to
+his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with
+the smell they could no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked
+hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than half aware
+of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under a vague yet
+constant strain. They were all lightly powdered, inside and out, with
+fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of
+that also. They did not even notice that they saw the smoke, though the
+thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new
+"Sheridan Apartments," now almost completed, he observed that the marble
+of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like his gloves, which
+were new.
+
+That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way
+from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which
+continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by
+a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his
+preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that,
+having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the
+north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's
+daughter emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the
+path to the old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the
+pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the
+gate and he was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she
+saw him she started visibly. And if this thing had happened to
+Robert Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of
+faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts. Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his
+thought. He would have said: "You jumped because you were thinking of
+me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand
+closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction
+Bibbs was walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they
+should walk together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had
+paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either
+spoke or moved--it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each
+to seem to say, by look and attitude, "Why, it's YOU!"
+
+Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's
+name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to
+a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began
+to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
+
+"I--I--hate a frozen fish myself," he said. "I think three miles was too
+long for you to put up with one."
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. "Mr. Sheridan, you're
+lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's
+turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know
+each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for
+me to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I
+decided I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the
+car-line. I never thought of it!"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, earnestly. "I didn't, either. I might have said
+something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must
+remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though
+it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I
+ever met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what
+it said. I--"
+
+She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one
+which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple
+would crawl five miles to hear." And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's
+father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. "I'll be any
+kind of idiot," he said, "if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be
+difficult for me."
+
+She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the
+first time. "Rather tragic and altogether impossible." It seemed to her
+now that she must have been blind.
+
+They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
+possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of one of
+them.
+
+"I'll keep on talking," Bibbs continued, cheerfully, "and you keep on
+laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
+making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
+bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes
+me bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what
+I'll think of myself later if I don't keep talking--talking now, I
+mean--and I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides
+these two things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as
+much as this more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always
+in me to do it, though, the first time I met any one who didn't know me
+well enough not to listen."
+
+"But you're not really talking to me," said Mary. "You're just thinking
+aloud."
+
+"No," he returned, gravely. "I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
+subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,
+but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't
+know how to manage it."
+
+"You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan," she said.
+"Not even if you really talked about yourself." She turned her
+face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was
+pathetically amazed by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look,
+warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was
+an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like
+that.
+
+"I--you--I--I'm--" he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks grew
+almost vivid.
+
+She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came
+into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how
+"queer" many people might think him; but he did not seem "queer" to Mary
+Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+
+He waited, and became coherent. "YOU say something now," he said. "I
+don't even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny
+man's solo! You--"
+
+"No," she interrupted. "I'd rather play your accompaniment."
+
+"I'll stop and listen to it, then."
+
+"Perhaps--" she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were
+approaching. "Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?"
+
+"I suppose I could," he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+"But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better
+say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason
+I don't want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where
+you're going, and where I'll be sent back."
+
+She shook her head in cheery negation. "Not unless you want to be. Would
+you like to come with me?"
+
+"Why--why--yes," he said. "Anywhere!" And again it was apparent that he
+spoke in simple truthfulness.
+
+"Then come--if you care for organ music. The organist is an old friend
+of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had
+a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up
+everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like
+Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a
+little. I hope so."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. "I think Beethoven
+would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people."
+
+"I haven't kept you?" Mary said to the organist.
+
+"No, no," he answered, heartily. "I would not mind so only you should
+shooer come!"
+
+"This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me."
+
+The organist looked bluntly surprised. "Iss that SO?" he exclaimed.
+"Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink.
+He iss musician himself, then, of course."
+
+"No," said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. "I--I played
+the--I tried to play--" Fortunately he checked himself; he had been
+about to offer the information that he had failed to master the
+jews'-harp in his boyhood. "No, I'm not a musician," he contented
+himself with saying.
+
+"What?" Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. "Young man, you are fortunate!
+I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You
+are the first one EVER!"
+
+They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees
+in a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though she stopped
+as he did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking away from
+them toward the front of the church, shaking his white Beethovian mane
+roguishly.
+
+"It's false pretenses on my part," Bibbs said. "You mean to be kind to
+the sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back
+to work in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't
+I?"
+
+"No," said Mary, beginning to walk forward. "Not unless you don't like
+great music."
+
+He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they
+covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,
+reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician
+ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain to overwhelm
+him.
+
+"This afternoon some Handel!" he turned to shout.
+
+Mary nodded. "Will you like that?" she asked Bibbs.
+
+"I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
+about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
+pretend, I would."
+
+"No," said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, "you wouldn't."
+
+She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;
+the huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with
+it. The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about them,
+while the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a
+tiny star of light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it
+rhythmically, or lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist
+thrusting, but he was magnificently the master of his giant, and it sang
+to his magic as he bade it.
+
+Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
+unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike
+the tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the
+enchanted cave, and that--for Bibbs--was what made its magic dazing. It
+seemed to him a long, long time since he had been walking home drearily
+from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him that he had set out upon a
+happy journey since then, and that he had reached another planet, where
+Mary Vertrees and he sat alone together listening to a vast choiring of
+invisible soldiers and holy angels. There were armies of voices about
+them singing praise and thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was
+incredible that the walls of the church were not the boundaries of
+the universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky
+street just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in evening papers
+from front steps and where children were taking their last spins on
+roller-skates before being haled indoors for dinner.
+
+He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew
+it could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,
+saying: "You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream
+that these sounds bring to me?" And it seemed to him as though she
+answered continually: "I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new
+one that you are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring
+to you. Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear--together!"
+
+And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except
+the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white
+head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting
+beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in
+the darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting
+of the organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be
+chorusing of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing
+for him the world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she
+was so kind to him. It all meant Mary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+walking slowly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it meant to me," she said, as he did not immediately
+reply. "Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all
+others to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+infinitesimal--it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+infinitesimal."
+
+"Yes," he said. "It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering
+every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town
+to-morrow. And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to.
+They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing
+the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss
+and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework
+has to be done, but the people who do it have been so overpaid that
+they're confused and worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet,
+poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of
+course, when the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that will be
+different."
+
+"Do you mean 'communism'?" she asked, and she made their slow pace a
+little slower--they had only three blocks to go.
+
+"Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for
+all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak
+ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something like even
+on the stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all
+cross the winning-line together? Who really enjoys beating anybody--if
+he sees the beaten man's face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead
+of other people nowadays is by forgetting what the other people feel.
+And that," he added, "is nothing of what the music meant to me. You see,
+if I keep talking about what it didn't mean I can keep from telling you
+what it did mean."
+
+"Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?" she asked. "Triumph and
+praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me."
+
+"Yes, they were all there," Bibbs said. "I don't know the name of what
+he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that
+makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the
+name he puts to it can't make much difference--except to himself and
+people very much like him, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that."
+
+"I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of
+the people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their
+own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician might
+compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail,
+and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some
+would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of
+himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding
+a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the
+music, he'd think of a circus."
+
+They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did
+not open it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her
+kindnesses--not to be prompt in leaving him.
+
+"After all," she said, "you didn't tell me whether you liked it."
+
+"No. I didn't need to."
+
+"No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you
+were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean."
+
+"I can't keep from telling it any longer," he said. "The music meant to
+me--it meant the kindness of--of you."
+
+"Kindness? How?"
+
+"You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--"
+
+"No," she said, decidedly. "I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr.
+Kraft play. And you did."
+
+"It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+playing."
+
+Mary laughed. "I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin--Grieg--Chaminade. You
+wouldn't listen!"
+
+Bibbs drew a deep breath. "I'm frightened again," he said, in an
+unsteady voice. "I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--" He paused,
+and the words sank to a murmur.
+
+"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said. "Yes, gladly. It will be
+merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
+thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
+listen, and if you--" She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
+and laughed ruefully. "But my piano won't be here after to-night. I--I'm
+sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to
+you you'd have to come this evening."
+
+"You'll let me?" he cried.
+
+"Certainly, if you care to."
+
+"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that old
+man in the church I could thank you."
+
+"Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
+but--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs. "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."
+
+It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
+and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
+especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
+was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. "You'll come after
+dinner, then?"
+
+"Yes," he said, not moving. "Would you mind if I stood here until time
+to come in?"
+
+She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
+dinner.
+
+That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.
+
+  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.
+
+  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it--and ought to be.
+
+  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the "Greek profile."  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a "Greek profile"; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.
+
+  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+
+  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be "sent away."  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  "Sent away" is a euphuism for "sent to prison."  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos "sent away"--and where?
+
+  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing--ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.
+
+  Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
+
+  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+That "mystery about pianos" which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to
+Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs
+scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon
+Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until
+after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found
+not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and
+with every phase of everything that they discussed--no extraordinary
+state of affairs in a family which has always "held up its head,"
+only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on
+helplessly at the processes of its own financial dissolution. For that
+was the point which this despairing couple had reached--they could do
+nothing except look on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and
+they knew it.
+
+"She needn't to have done that about her piano," vapored Mr. Vertrees.
+"We could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
+consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with
+the--the dealer."
+
+"She thought that it might be--annoying for you," Mrs. Vertrees
+explained. "Really, she planned for you not to know about it until
+they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to
+mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this
+morning. She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--"
+
+"Well?" he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+
+"Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided, of
+course--it was about her furs."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed, quickly. "I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
+rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her."
+
+"I'll try not," his wife promised. "Of course, they're very handsome."
+
+"All the more reason for her to keep them!" he returned, irritably.
+"We're not THAT far gone, I think!"
+
+"Perhaps not yet," Mrs. Vertrees said. "She seems to be troubled about
+the--the coal matter and--about Tilly. Of course the piano will take
+care of some things like those for a while and--"
+
+"I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to--"
+
+"You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way," she said, comfortingly.
+"She arranged with the--with the purchaser that the men will come for it
+about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
+really quite winter."
+
+"Oh, yes," he agreed, moodily. "So far as that goes people have a
+right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I
+suppose, even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much
+attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early
+the morning after the funeral."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. "I don't believe
+that was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only
+because he felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed
+wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about
+most. He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a
+great deal about his--his actual money--though there was something about
+blades of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something
+about his energy--but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be
+not so much a personal vainglory as about his family and the greatness
+of this city."
+
+"'Greatness of this city'!" Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+"It's nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who
+has the luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any
+YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows
+that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else
+gets the habit. But you have a different point of view if it's the
+city that got what it wanted out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's
+'great'."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. "I believe," she
+began, timidly, "he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he has never
+seemed so interested in the--the other one."
+
+Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon
+it; he looked more haggard than before. "'The other one'," he repeated,
+averting his eyes. "You mean--you mean the third son--the one that was
+here this evening?"
+
+"Yes, the--the youngest," she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+almost a whisper.
+
+And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either
+look at the other during that silence.
+
+At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly.
+"What--ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she
+came in this afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but
+she answered in such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch it."
+
+"She--she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she had
+enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful creature
+I've ever known.'"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he doesn't
+seem quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window when
+she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about him
+I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face."
+
+"If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, of course," she said, hurriedly. "Nothing definite, that
+is. Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we
+thought at first. It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their attitude
+about him. I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him--perhaps
+a little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself to anything--or
+perhaps does odd things. But, after all, of course, we only have an
+impression about it. We don't know--that is, positively. I--" She
+paused, then went on: "I didn't know just how to ask--that is--I didn't
+mention it to Mary. I didn't--I--" The poor lady floundered pitifully,
+concluding with a mumble. "So soon after--after the--the shock."
+
+"I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him," said Mr.
+Vertrees. "I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of
+him is--" He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. "I
+can't imagine her--oh, NO!" he gasped. And he began to pace the floor.
+"A half-witted epileptic!"
+
+"No, no!" she cried. "He may be all right. We--"
+
+"Oh, it's horrible! I can't--" He threw himself back into his chair
+again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply
+at his sides.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. "You mustn't give way so," she said,
+inspired for once almost to direct discourse. "Whatever Mary might think
+of doing, it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if
+WE should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It
+isn't because we think of ourselves."
+
+"Oh God, no!" he groaned. "Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but
+Mary can't be a stenographer!"
+
+Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. "Of course," she
+murmured, "it all seems very premature, speculating about such things,
+but I had a queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in
+this--" She had almost said "in this one," but checked herself. "In this
+young man. It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and well,
+and he is--he seems to be, that is--rather appealing to the--the
+sympathies."
+
+"Yes!" he agreed, bitterly. "Precisely. The sympathies!"
+
+"Perhaps," she faltered, "perhaps you might feel easier if I could have
+a little talk with some one?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to
+be talking with somebody that knew the family--and then I might find
+a chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much,
+and--Something of that kind perhaps?"
+
+"You don't know anybody that knows the family."
+
+"Yes. That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced little
+woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is interested
+about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more intimate with
+Mary, naturally. She's always looking over here from her house; she
+was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I
+noticed--though I don't think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't think
+it out of place to--to be frank about matters. She called the other day,
+and Mary must rather like her--she said that evening that the call had
+done her good. Don't you think it might be wise?"
+
+"Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible."
+
+"Yes, so do I," she returned, promptly. "It isn't really a thing we
+should be considering seriously, of course. Still--"
+
+"I should say not! But possibly--"
+
+Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the
+lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between
+them that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain
+definite information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and
+physical status of Bibbs. And if he were subject to attacks of lunacy,
+the unhappy pair decided to prevent the sacrifice they supposed their
+daughter intended to make of herself. Altogether, if there were spiteful
+ghosts in the old house that night, eavesdropping upon the woeful
+comedy, they must have died anew of laughter!
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness
+had fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano
+down the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway
+behind them, preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation;
+and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the
+light of the doorway.
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried. "It did give me a fright!"
+
+"It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?" Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+"Won't you come in?"
+
+"No. Oh no, thank you!" Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side.
+"You don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but
+your piano!" She laughed shrilly. "You know, since our tragedy coming
+so suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been--almost
+hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago,
+and saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,
+carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the
+way it looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in,
+next door, only such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your
+daughter start for a drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three
+o'clock--and-- They aren't back yet, are they?"
+
+"No. Good heavens!"
+
+"And the only thing I could think of was that something must have
+happened to them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!"
+She broke into laughter again. "I suppose you're just sending it
+somewhere to be repaired, aren't you?"
+
+"It's--it's being taken down-town," said Mrs. Vertrees. "Won't you come
+in and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I
+was--ah--" She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her invitation.
+"Won't you come in? I'd really--"
+
+"Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home
+about this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there."
+
+"That's very sweet." Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward
+the street with Sibyl. "It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't
+it? Almost like a May evening."
+
+"I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano," said Sibyl, watching
+the instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. "She plays
+wonderfully, Mrs. Kittersby tells me."
+
+"Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her
+yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him."
+
+"You mean Bibbs?" asked Sibyl.
+
+"The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?"
+
+"I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether
+he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your
+daughter expect the piano back soon?"
+
+"I--I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear
+her play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was to be
+removed this afternoon. He seems almost well again."
+
+"Yes." Sibyl nodded. "His father's going to try to start him to work."
+
+"He seems very delicate," said Mrs. Vertrees. "I shouldn't think he
+would be able to stand a great deal, either physically or--" She paused
+and then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness--"or
+mentally."
+
+"Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right," said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+
+"Entirely?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+
+"Yes, entirely."
+
+"But has he ALWAYS been?" This question came with the same anxious
+eagerness.
+
+"Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it."
+
+"And you think--"
+
+"Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor--" Sibyl choked, and pressed
+her handkerchief to her mouth. "Good night, Mrs. Vertrees," she said,
+hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where
+the two ladies were standing.
+
+"Won't you come in?" urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound
+of a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare.
+"Do! There's Mary now, and she--"
+
+But Sibyl was half-way across the street. "No, thanks," she called.
+"I hope she won't miss her piano!" And she ran into her own house
+and plunged headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her
+handkerchief over her mouth.
+
+The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the
+quiet house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of
+a decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the
+hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,
+holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+
+"What's your excitement?" he demanded. "What do you find to go into
+hysterics over? Another death in the family?"
+
+"Oh, it's funny!" she gasped. "Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
+THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!" Lying prone, she elevated her feet
+in the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+
+"Come through, come through!" said her husband, crossly. "What you been
+up to?"
+
+"Me?" she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+"Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!" She wiped her eyes. "They've had
+to sell their piano!"
+
+"Well, what of it?"
+
+"That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago," said Sibyl.
+"They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as
+last winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and
+patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook
+had HERS! And the night of the house-warming I kind of got suspicious,
+myself. She didn't have one single piece of any kind of real jewelry,
+and you could see her dress was an old one done over. Men can't tell
+those things, and you all made a big fuss over her, but I thought she
+looked a sight, myself! Of course, EDITH was crazy to have her, and--"
+
+"Well, well?" he urged, impatiently.
+
+"Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING!
+Just absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn! The
+family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very
+distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's
+been wondering what WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to
+marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the
+men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and married other girls.
+Gracious! they were lucky! Marry HER? The man that found himself tied up
+to THAT girl--"
+
+"Terrible funny, terrible funny!" said Roscoe, with sarcasm. "It's so
+funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--"
+
+"Wait!" she begged. "You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little
+while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men
+go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute
+I got the idea they were moving out--the house has been foreclosed on,
+Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was
+out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over--and
+it was their PIANO! They'd sold it and were trying to sneak it out after
+dark, so nobody'd catch on!" Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but
+resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. "Wait a
+minute, can't you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all
+away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell
+all kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they
+can't. She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they'd sold it;
+and I hope they'll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last
+week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees.
+Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN
+she'd seen any money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that
+girl in your LIFE?"
+
+"What girl? Their cook?"
+
+"That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into
+this neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and
+out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll
+the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a
+Sheridan--she's GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she
+tries it on first with YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she
+was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married one,
+and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his feet.
+Oh, Jim was landed--there's no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky;
+he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for him!" Sibyl's
+mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity. "Well, she
+couldn't get you, because you were married, and she couldn't get Jim,
+because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what she
+did? Do you know what she's DOING?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Roscoe, gruffly.
+
+Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity.
+"BIBBS! She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S
+FUNERAL! Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!"
+
+She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. "Bibbs!" she shrieked.
+"Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!"
+
+He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that.
+"And yesterday," she continued, between paroxysms--"yesterday she came
+out of the house--just as he was passing. She must have been looking
+out--waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window!
+And she got him there last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave
+that away! And to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the
+cream of it is that they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or
+not--they thought maybe he was, but she went after him just the same!
+The old lady set herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord!
+BIBBS!"
+
+But Roscoe looked grim. "So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
+pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too."
+
+"Oh, it might," she returned, sobering. "It might, if those people
+weren't such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to
+come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny,
+but to see 'em sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating
+dirt--well, I think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen
+Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until
+they get near enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old
+patched shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all right!--and then she powders up
+and goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Look here," said Roscoe, heavily; "I don't care about that one way or
+another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about.
+I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim."
+
+At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. "What
+is it?"
+
+"Well," he began, frowning, "what I was going to say then--" He broke
+off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
+his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. "I never expected I'd have
+to say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask
+you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn."
+
+Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. "Well?"
+
+"I felt the time had come for me to know about it," he went on. "You
+never told me anything--"
+
+"You never asked," she interposed, curtly.
+
+"Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much," said Roscoe. "It looks to
+me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
+many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down
+to work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed
+soon as I'd got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show
+in town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or
+so, I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it."
+
+"Wrong?" she said. "What like?"
+
+"You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and
+excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then,
+Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long
+ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got
+to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see
+you'd been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here."
+
+"Do you object to that?" asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+
+"Yes--when it injures my wife's health!" he returned, with a quick lift
+of his eyes to hers. "You began to run down just about the time you
+began falling out with him." He stepped close to her. "See here, Sibyl,
+I'm going to know what it means."
+
+"Oh, you ARE?" she snapped.
+
+"You're trembling," he said, gravely.
+
+"Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!"
+
+"That was all I was going to say the other day," he said. "I was going
+to ask you--"
+
+"Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
+have you to say to-night?"
+
+"To-night," he replied, with grim swiftness, "I want to know why you
+keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here."
+
+She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, "And what
+else did Edith want you to ask me?"
+
+"I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn," he said,
+fiercely.
+
+"Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in
+there on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you
+then what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?"
+
+"No, she didn't!" he vociferated, his voice growing louder. "She said,
+'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see
+her, because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want
+to know what it means. I intend--"
+
+A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. "Dinner is ready," she
+said, and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the
+dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+
+"I intend to know exactly what has been going on," he declared. "I mean
+to know just what--"
+
+Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+
+"Oh, you DO!" she cried, shrilly. "You mean to know just what's what, do
+you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your
+wife, and then you come home making a scene before the servants and
+humiliating me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't
+hear every word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go
+on! Go and eat your dinner alone--because I won't eat with you!"
+
+And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon
+her, and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room
+slam overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A
+window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his
+note-book on the sill--and the sheets were loose. The door was open, and
+when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two sheets
+had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting and
+put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George
+or Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them
+down-town with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and,
+having a little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them
+out, and glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were
+not epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a "private letter" that
+came into his possession in that way, though in a "matter of business"
+he might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity
+afforded in any manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's
+scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred
+to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be
+justified in reading them.
+
+  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then--days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator--she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  "WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?"  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  --you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.
+
+  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.
+
+  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The "business man" feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.
+
+  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.
+
+  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.
+
+  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion--
+
+The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more.
+He crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a
+waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of
+Names, which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a
+volume now first put to use for the location of "Midas." Having read the
+legend, Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office, exhaling
+the breath of contempt. "Dam' fool!" he mumbled. But this was no new
+thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's notes a surpise to him; and
+presently he dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long
+time he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a
+club luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went to a small
+restaurant near the Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes
+in the consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came
+for his father every day, at five minutes after twelve, and Sheridan
+was again in his office at five minutes before one. But now that Jim no
+longer came, Sheridan remained alone in his office; he had not gone out
+to lunch since Jim's death, nor did he have anything sent to him--he
+fasted until evening.
+
+It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes
+and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things
+were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far
+deeper. Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was
+a great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily
+perceived his own likeness. Jim was the one who would have been surest
+to keep the great property growing greater, year by year. Sheridan had
+fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what the growth would be
+under Jim. He had believed that Jim was absolutely certain to be one of
+the biggest men in the country. Well, it was all up to Roscoe now!
+
+That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
+question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe about
+it. However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for several
+days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no
+opportunity.
+
+He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower
+floor. He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer
+room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would
+find his son busy with others, and that his question would have to
+be postponed, but when he entered the door marked "R. C. Sheridan.
+Private," Roscoe was there alone.
+
+He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and
+he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+
+"Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy," said
+Sheridan. "What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+
+"Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself!
+I just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll keep, if you're
+workin' something out in your mind!"
+
+Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused
+with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in
+the chair. Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the
+office. "You're all right, ain't you?" said Sheridan. "Not sick, are
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. "I
+wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn," he said. "I guess your
+mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him
+longer'n any of us, so--"
+
+"I won't," said Roscoe, thickly--"I won't say a dam' thing about him!"
+
+Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position
+near the window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were
+bloodshot and vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted,
+and he was deathly pale. The father stood aghast.
+
+"By George!" he muttered. "ROSCOE!"
+
+"My name," said Roscoe. "Can' help that."
+
+"ROSCOE!" Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
+nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe--the
+steady old wheel-horse--in this condition. "How'd you GET this way?" he
+demanded. "You caught cold and took too much for it?"
+
+For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. "Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
+lately. Firs' you notice it?"
+
+"By George!" cried Sheridan. "I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.
+Boh! To see you like a common hog!"
+
+Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+"Hog!" he repeated, chuckling.
+
+"Yes, a hog!" said Sheridan, angrily. "In business hours! I don't object
+to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor,
+if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one
+to baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe.
+It ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way
+on a grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them
+men out there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think
+you can come to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder
+how often this has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look
+over your books to-morrow, and I'll--"
+
+Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the
+heavy chair in which he had been sitting.
+
+"Hoo--hoorah!" he cried. "'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you
+want to--outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere
+business hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink! Die!
+L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!"
+
+Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling
+his own office, overhead. "Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's
+suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in
+room two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows
+on the Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over
+with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two.
+You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be
+disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a
+closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at
+Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"
+
+Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. "Drunk in
+business hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk,
+mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours! All right any
+other time. Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business
+hours! Fine! Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your
+trouble 't home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business!
+Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere business! Don' let your wife
+innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness,
+an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die,
+go on die 't home--don' die round th' office! Might innerfere business!"
+
+Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his
+back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his
+father's significant posture.
+
+"You know wh' I think?" he went on. "I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly
+any 'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked,
+an' he got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at
+me, I ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to
+me! Fine!" He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable
+gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair
+and caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several
+minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to
+the newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+
+Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up
+by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having
+progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less
+volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+
+"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+"Yes, you did. What--what was it?"
+
+"Nothin'. You better sit down."
+
+"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
+won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"
+
+The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and
+said, "Right down." Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and
+brought them to his son. "Get into this coat," he said. "You're goin'
+home."
+
+"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+
+They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the
+outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and
+told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached
+the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the
+automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his
+own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a
+word in the interval.
+
+Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room
+without meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he
+heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant
+fragments of song:
+
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound.
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-yay!
+
+It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected
+any musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him
+whistle--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool
+should be merry to-day.
+
+To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he
+did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked
+the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
+came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
+manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
+lunch had "disagreed" with him a little.
+
+Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had
+become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+white-jacket's salver. "Here's another difference between Midas and
+chicken," Sheridan remarked, grimly. "Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
+can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
+had the advantage there."
+
+Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
+his plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."
+
+Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for
+he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
+pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
+jargon to her. "Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
+has!" she exclaimed. "I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right
+handsome!"
+
+"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.
+
+"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+anybody was up," said Sheridan. "I reckon if people lose things in this
+house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do."
+
+"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.
+
+"He knows!" her father returned. "Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
+home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
+important, belongin' to a busy man like him." He affected to search
+his pockets. "What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
+remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket."
+
+"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.
+
+Sheridan gave him a grin. "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
+early enough to find things before I do!"
+
+It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
+
+"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the
+melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
+That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
+day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
+upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence
+of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
+
+"Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
+any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my
+face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
+Hard labor for life, I think."
+
+Mary shook her head. "I don't think so. He's too kind."
+
+"You think my father's KIND?" And Bibbs stared at her.
+
+"Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
+only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand
+any other way."
+
+"Ah yes," said Bibbs. "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"
+
+She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. "It's
+going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling. "This has been just the last
+flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
+There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he
+could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I
+have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
+
+"What is it like--exactly?"
+
+"I get up at six," he said. "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
+which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
+buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
+and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and
+work again from one till five."
+
+"But the work itself?"
+
+"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a
+heavier job because I wasn't good enough."
+
+"But what will you do? I want to know."
+
+"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there a
+'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
+what I'll be sent back to."
+
+"But what is it?" she insisted.
+
+Bibbs explained. "It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
+zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
+circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at
+a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."
+
+He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
+known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+
+"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
+incredible!" she exclaimed. "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
+nine hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then, after a keen
+glance at his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
+hand at it'!"
+
+He laughed ruefully. "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
+say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
+
+"How often is that?"
+
+"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
+than one a second."
+
+"And you're close to it?"
+
+"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more
+gaily. "The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
+have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and
+duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I
+was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
+back. They used to laugh at me all day long."
+
+Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
+on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She
+was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+
+"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in a
+low voice. "No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
+leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
+published for you--"
+
+"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
+his voice. "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
+imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
+posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a
+Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the use? I've
+never written anything worth printing, and I never shall."
+
+"You could!" she said.
+
+"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
+do."
+
+"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!"
+
+"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly. "I never could--but you're the kindest
+lady in this world, Miss Vertrees."
+
+She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+"That sounds wrong," she said, impulsively. "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
+I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't
+you rather call me 'Mary'?"
+
+Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+
+"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed. "You're such an honest person,
+it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety." She
+became grave again immediately. "I hear myself laughing as if it were
+some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity."
+She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall,
+facing him. "You've GOT to go back to that place?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And the other time you did it--"
+
+"Just over it," said Bibbs. "Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of
+a repetition so much as--"
+
+"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.
+
+Bibbs looked up at her shyly. "I want to say it, but--but I come to a
+dead balk when I try. I--"
+
+"Go on. Say it, whatever it is," she bade him. "You wouldn't know how to
+say anything I shouldn't like."
+
+"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he
+returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he
+seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. "You see, all my life--until I met
+you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying
+things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to
+feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been
+of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself,
+except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--I'm still
+of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful,
+but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy
+experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've lived
+it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have,
+this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"
+
+He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had
+to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not
+speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had
+gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room
+was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and
+loud.
+
+And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. "If you
+think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make
+it last."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.
+
+"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes," he gulped.
+
+"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."
+
+He tried to evade her. "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--"
+
+"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. "You said what you did
+because you think the shop's going to kill you."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Yes, you do think that!" She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+before him. "Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm
+a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said--and you
+did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.
+The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!"
+
+And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall,
+splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+
+"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you! Go
+back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
+machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
+that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!"
+
+He stumbled to his feet. "You say--" he gasped.
+
+"Every evening, dear Bibbs!"
+
+He could only stare, bewildered.
+
+"EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!" And she held
+out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. "If
+I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,"
+she said. "But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
+remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is
+done--won't the night make up for the day?"
+
+Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance
+of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, "To think you're
+there--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--"
+
+And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what
+it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
+father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before
+him. "I'm cured, father," he said. "When do I go back to the shop? I'm
+ready."
+
+The desolate and grim old man did not relax. "I was sittin' up to give
+you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time!
+I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take
+you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you
+just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to
+the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the
+month. Think you can get up in time?"
+
+"Six o'clock," Bibbs responded, briskly. "And I want to tell you--I'm
+going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!"
+
+"That's YOUR lookout!" his father grunted. "They'll put you back on the
+clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week."
+
+"More than I'm worth, too," said Bibbs, cheerily. "That reminds me, I
+didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--"
+
+"Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!"
+
+"I just wanted you to know. Good night, father."
+
+"G'night!"
+
+The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat
+staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could
+be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique
+expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who,
+after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for
+burglars.
+
+"Papa!" she exclaimed, drowsily. "Why'n't you go to bed? It must be
+goin' on 'leven o'clock!"
+
+She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
+the fire. "What's the matter?" she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+sluggishly with each other in her voice. "I knew you were worried all
+dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
+taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?"
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+She jeered feebly. "N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
+you?"
+
+"He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning," said Sheridan.
+
+"Just the same as he did before?"
+
+"Just pre-CISELY!"
+
+"How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Until he KNOWS something!" The unhappy man struck his palms together,
+then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
+talked. "He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
+in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
+it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to
+learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went
+there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine we got--and he stuck
+there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole
+business if he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there
+to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's
+whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against
+everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be
+worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what
+it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles,
+the man that can manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.
+Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE
+set himself to balk on the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's
+lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with
+him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything,
+anyhow!"
+
+"I knew there was something else," said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
+a yawn. "You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less
+you'll tell me?"
+
+"Suppose something happened to Roscoe," he said. "THEN what'd I have to
+look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
+lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
+groove!"
+
+"Roscoe?" she yawned. "You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
+strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
+he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better
+go up to bed, papa."
+
+"Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
+means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let
+alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
+away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves
+come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off
+for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night
+and day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen
+a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--there wasn't even
+a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again.
+My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like
+I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
+have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
+to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's
+got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd
+make you think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll
+hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
+'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
+goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose,
+but it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been
+fillin' up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and
+the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it
+used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the
+bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's
+an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin'
+to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
+bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
+loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and
+the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And
+the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto:
+'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's
+built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and made good things
+grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide
+in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what's
+the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin'
+to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
+business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in
+the ground?"
+
+He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
+the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
+thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is
+a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never
+was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard
+is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
+eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till
+he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
+soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
+Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--and you got to go out and
+live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a dead
+man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son Bibbs
+has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out and
+do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe--"
+
+"Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense," Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. "There isn't anything
+goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
+nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?"
+
+Sheridan halted. "All right, mamma," he said, with a vast sigh. "Let's
+go up." And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy
+glow of the fire.
+
+"Did you speak to Roscoe?" she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+drowsiness. "Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?"
+
+"No. I will to-morrow."
+
+
+But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the
+fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine
+in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+
+"They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me."
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan, rising.
+
+Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and
+then walked away, smiling bitterly. "Boh!" he exclaimed. "Still at it!"
+
+"Yes," said Roscoe. "I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What
+about it?"
+
+"I reckon I better adopt some decent young man," his father returned.
+"I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I
+would!"
+
+"Better do it," Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+
+"When'd you begin this thing?"
+
+"I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is."
+
+"Leave that talk out! You know what I mean."
+
+"Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the
+other day."
+
+Sheridan began cutting. "It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
+office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him,
+and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You
+been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three
+weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't
+done any work, to count, in a month."
+
+"All right," said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. "It's all true."
+
+"What you goin' to do about it?"
+
+Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. "I can't stand very much
+talk about it, father," he said, pleadingly.
+
+"No!" Sheridan cried. "Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?"
+He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. "I can't stand to
+talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
+what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!"
+
+Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+
+"You can't straighten me out."
+
+"See here!" said Sheridan. "Can you go back to your office and stay
+sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple
+o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand
+if they see you tryin' to take it?"
+
+"You needn't worry about that," said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+resentment. "I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst."
+
+"Well, what have you got?"
+
+"Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you."
+
+"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly. "Now I can't fool with
+you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
+office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last
+Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the
+women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober
+till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie
+down to your office every little while, and he'll let me know."
+
+Roscoe paused at the door. "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
+
+"TOLD him!" And Sheridan laughed hideously. "Do you suppose there's an
+elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
+
+Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  "WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!"
+
+So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that
+the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the
+afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the
+swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling
+improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash
+with vocal imitations:
+
+  Fearless and bold,
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound,
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
+      NIGHT'S on the way
+      EACH time I say,
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+
+The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the
+air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually;
+everything was implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the
+dizzied eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become
+dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea
+to faintness. But he felt neither now. "ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY
+THOUGHTS TO YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS
+BESIDE YOU." He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place
+became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop;
+he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
+
+      Away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!
+    Wild are his eyes,
+    Fiercely he dies!
+      Hi-YAH!
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!
+    Ready to fling
+    Our gloves in the ring--
+
+He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded
+to those nearest him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of
+them--but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily,
+never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical
+programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+
+"Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if
+you don't try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's
+right--YOU'LL never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a
+nice, shiny one."
+
+The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: "Talkin' to himself! By George!"
+
+Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+
+Bibbs returned to song:
+
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+    Fearless and bo--
+
+His father grasped him by the arm. "Here!" he shouted. "Let ME show you
+how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n
+you used to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way and let me
+show you once."
+
+"Better be careful," Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+
+"Careful? Boh!" Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. "What
+you talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so
+abused you're goin' wrong in the head?"
+
+"'Abused'? No!" shouted Bibbs. "I was SINGING--because I 'like it'! I
+told you I'd come back and 'like it.'"
+
+Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply,
+but began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it
+awkwardly--and with bad results.
+
+"Here!" he shouted. "This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin'
+to it, if you put your mind on it." By his own showing then his mind was
+not upon it. He continued to talk. "All you got to look out for is to
+keep it pressed over to--"
+
+"Don't run your hand up with it," Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+
+"Run nothin'! You GOT to--"
+
+"Look out!" shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and
+the zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers.
+He swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops
+over himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+
+"Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch
+my bag. It's in my machine, outside."
+
+And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor
+still grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin.
+Sheridan had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at
+his son as the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+
+"You go on back to your work," he said. "I've had worse snips than that
+from a pencil-sharpener."
+
+"Oh no, you haven't!" said Gurney.
+
+"I have, too!" Sheridan retorted, angrily. "Bibbs, you go on back to
+your work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc
+Gurney tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs
+a little court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back
+on your job."
+
+"All right," said Bibbs.
+
+"HERE!" Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door.
+"You watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I
+slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get your
+whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!"
+
+"Yes, sir." And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+
+Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+outside, where conversation was possible. "I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
+have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you
+for a drive and leave you at home."
+
+"Can't," said Bibbs. "Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows."
+
+"No, you don't," the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. "He wants me to
+take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much
+harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks
+have got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your
+house! But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half
+shut--"
+
+"Yes," Bibbs interrupted, "that's what they are."
+
+"I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's
+made the difference?"
+
+"I like the machine," said Bibbs. "I've made a friend of it. I serenade
+it and talk to it, and then it talks back to me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed? What does it say?"
+
+"What I want to hear."
+
+"Well, well!" The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+repeatedly. "Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take
+the time off that he allowed for the examination, and--"
+
+"Not at all," said Bibbs. "I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till
+five o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!"
+
+"Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write."
+
+"I don't know about that," Bibbs said, thoughtfully; "but the zinc-eater
+doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being
+in business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be
+content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days."
+
+"You do beat the devil!" exclaimed Gurney. "Your father's right when he
+tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing
+when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm
+off. Go on back to your murdering old machine." He climbed into his car,
+which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately
+in motion. "Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him
+not to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he
+didn't pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show
+you how to do something you were already doing a great deal better
+than he could. You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the
+dressing to-morrow morning. Good-by."
+
+But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than
+change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of
+its kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was
+rebellious and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability
+only by means of horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he
+appeared at the dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which
+he seemed to regard as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon
+the subject evidently struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan,
+having been unable to contain her solicitude several times during the
+day, and having been checked each time in a manner that blanched her
+cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to
+omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the sling
+if they possibly could.
+
+The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
+arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour;
+and the members of the family were all seated at the table within two
+minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+
+It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
+awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression,
+as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was
+that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent.
+Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and
+explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and there was a
+strange brightness, like a light, upon his face. It was curious to see
+anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.
+
+Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never
+once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance,
+heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like
+Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself
+with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting
+it to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father
+gazed heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and
+between Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed
+continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing
+during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?" his mother asked, in the
+effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+
+"What did you say, mother?"
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning?"
+
+"I think so," he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+
+"You THINK so! Don't you know?"
+
+"Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Just down the street. It's brick."
+
+"What was the sermon about?"
+
+"What, mother?"
+
+"Can't you hear me?" she cried. "I asked you what the sermon was about?"
+
+He roused himself. "I think it was about--" He frowned, seeming to
+concentrate his will to recollect. "I think it was about something in
+the Bible."
+
+White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and
+lean upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. "He don't know they
+WAS any suhmon!" he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue.
+"All he know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!" George was right.
+
+"Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?" Sibyl asked.
+
+"No," he answered. "No, I didn't go alone."
+
+"Oh?" Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry,
+and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. "OH!"
+
+Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that
+completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+
+Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to
+other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the
+library, but was not well received.
+
+"YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks," Sheridan
+commanded.
+
+Bibbs retreated. "Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!" he
+said.
+
+However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her
+feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room,
+examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs.
+Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively
+of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that
+she thought it "right pretty," and followed it with one of the former
+and the same remark.
+
+As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead,
+he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left
+the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then
+disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy.
+He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions
+and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the
+letter.
+
+Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+
+"What's that?" she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+
+"Here's another right pretty record," said Mrs. Sheridan,
+affecting--with patent nervousness--not to hear. And she unloosed the
+music.
+
+Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a
+little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold
+chair, with his eyes closed.
+
+"Where did Edith go?" she asked, curiously.
+
+"Edith?" he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. "Is she gone?"
+
+Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing,
+still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was
+suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp
+excitement. She listened intently.
+
+When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+husky: "I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well
+let me alone!"
+
+But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started
+another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of
+Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+
+Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
+instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+
+But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so
+white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences
+became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and
+contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+
+"Sit just as you were--both of you!" she said. And then to Edith: "Did
+you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?"
+
+"You march out of here!" said Edith, fiercely. "March straight out of
+here!"
+
+Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+
+"Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?"
+
+"Oh, good God!" Lamhorn said. "Hush!"
+
+"You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?" she cried. "You knew
+that!"
+
+"HUSH!" he begged, panic-stricken.
+
+"That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
+come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say!
+You were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand times
+before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!" she stormed. "You wouldn't
+even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And SHE
+told my husband! You're a MAN!"
+
+Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way
+to her feelings. "Get out of this house!" she shrieked. "This is my
+father's house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!"
+
+"No! No! I mustn't SPEAK--"
+
+"Don't you DARE!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled
+and rose and cracked--they screeched. They could be heard over the noise
+of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could
+be heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could
+have been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
+
+"You told my husband!" screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+Edith's. "You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike
+me with! HE did!"
+
+"I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's
+TIME your husband--"
+
+They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. "Do you want the neighbors
+in?" Sheridan thundered.
+
+There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his
+mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved
+slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the
+hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily,
+his eyes on the ground.
+
+"NOW THEN!" said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+
+The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the
+vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the
+direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of
+George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs.
+Sheridan. They fled lightly.
+
+"Papa, papa!" wailed Mrs. Sheridan. "Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't
+to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!"
+
+There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips
+of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. "Now then!"
+he repeated. "You goin' to leave my house?"
+
+"He will NOT!" sobbed Edith. "Don't you DARE order him out!"
+
+"Don't you bother, dear," said Lamhorn, quietly. "He doesn't understand.
+YOU mustn't be troubled." Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very
+handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught
+eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his
+heels--the rabble being enacted by her father.
+
+"Don't come back, either!" said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+impersonation. "Keep off the premises!" he called savagely into the
+hall. "This family's through with you!"
+
+"It is NOT!" Edith cried, breaking from her mother. "You'll SEE about
+that! You'll find out! You'll find out what'll happen! What's HE done?
+I guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's
+HE done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you
+s'pose he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there,
+and he flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it
+was before he met ME! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything,
+anyway--he never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be
+serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long
+ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and--"
+
+"Yes," said Sheridan, sternly; "that's HIS side of it! That'll do! He
+doesn't come in this house again!"
+
+"You look out!" Edith cried.
+
+"Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on
+the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie
+look up this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count
+on earth! He's no good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was
+George Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!"
+
+"But, papa," Mrs. Sheridan began, "if Edie says it was all Sibyl's
+fault, makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--"
+
+"'S enough!" he roared. "He keeps off these premises! And if any of you
+so much as ever speak his name to me again--"
+
+But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her
+mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined
+her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw
+her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+
+"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully.
+"She wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room."
+
+"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it. She
+never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her
+to-morrow--Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say
+it's my orders. No, you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself."
+
+"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+His father glared at him.
+
+"It's no good," said Bibbs. "Mother, when you were in love with
+father--"
+
+"My goodness!" she cried. "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+that--"
+
+"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs. "And
+if YOUR father had told you--"
+
+"I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.
+
+"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan.
+"What is it?"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants."
+
+"You're a--" Sheridan gave it up. "I don't know what to call you!"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants," Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. "You're
+up against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling
+you'd have a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your
+determination, father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll
+beat you. You can't keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about
+him the way she does now. You can't make her think less of him, either.
+Nobody can. Your only chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if
+you give her time and go easy she probably will. Marriage would do it
+for her quickest, but that's just what you don't want, and as you DON'T
+want it, you'd better--"
+
+"I can't stand any more!" Sheridan burst out. "If it's come to BIBBS
+advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that
+nigger George? Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family.
+Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'!
+Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's--"
+
+"Bibbs," said Mrs. Sheridan, "if you haven't got anything to do, you
+might step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall. I
+don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now."
+
+"All right." And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and
+delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only,
+"Forgot these," and, "Good night, Roscoe," cordially and cheerfully, and
+returned to the New House. His mother and father were still talking in
+the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his
+own room, and there he proceeded to write in his note-book.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love--nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?
+
+   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!
+
+   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.
+
+   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.
+
+   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.
+
+   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.
+
+   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning "Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted."  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting--always there--for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?
+
+   Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+
+Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own
+(and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to
+sleep soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+
+His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of
+affairs of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote,
+"Who would wake from such a dream as this?" Bibbs was a sympathetic
+person, easily touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all
+things outside of it were veiled and remote--for that is the way of
+youth in a dream. And Bibbs, who had never before been of any age,
+either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
+
+He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of
+soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile
+at the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr.
+Gurney's, but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist. And when
+he was once more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater he whistled
+and sang to it, as other workmen did to their own machines sometimes,
+when things went well. His comrades in the shop glanced at him amusedly
+now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at noon with a group
+of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked of electing him to
+their association.
+
+The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles
+blew. When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested
+himself of his overalls--his single divergence from the routine of his
+fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water copiously. This
+was his transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail
+young working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the
+pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the
+point of elegance.
+
+The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and
+boys and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many
+hurried and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one
+another, and Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+
+Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught
+sight of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost
+passed her, for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not
+recognize her, though his shoulder actually touched hers. He would have
+gone by, but she laughed delightedly; and he stopped short, startled.
+Two boys, one chasing the other, swept between them, and Bibbs stood
+still, peering about him in deep perplexity. She leaned toward him.
+
+"I knew YOU!" she said.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Bibbs. "I thought it was your voice coming out of
+a star!"
+
+"There's only smoke overhead," said Mary, and laughed again. "There
+aren't any stars."
+
+"Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!"
+
+She took his arm, and they went on. "I've come to walk home with you,
+Bibbs. I wanted to."
+
+"But were you here in the--"
+
+"In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!"
+
+Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold
+her.
+
+"But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have--you ought
+to know better. What did--"
+
+"I only waited about twelve seconds," she laughed. "I'd just got here."
+
+"But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--"
+
+"I was in this part of town already," she said. "At least, I was only
+seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd
+have had to go home alone--and I preferred going home with you."
+
+"It's pretty beautiful for me," said Bibbs, with a deep breath. "You'll
+never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then
+to--to see you standing there! Oh, it was like--it was like--how can I
+TELL you what it was like?" They had passed beyond the crowd now, and
+a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that again she
+was without her furs. Here was a puzzle. Why did that adorable little
+vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK? But of course she
+had gone out long before dark. For undefinable reasons this explanation
+was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing it to stand, his
+solicitude for her took another turn. "I think you ought to have a car,"
+he said, "especially when you want to be out after dark. You need one in
+winter, anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?"
+
+"No," said Mary. "I don't think I'd care for one particularly."
+
+"I wish you would." Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. "I think in
+winter you--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, lightly. "I don't need--"
+
+"But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon
+for me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--"
+
+"A girl likes to walk, too," said Mary. "Let me tell you where I've been
+this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you take me
+home. I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke.
+He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his
+mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy.
+I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see
+more of them, so he showed them to me. He has almost everthing he ever
+painted; I don't suppose he's sold more than four or five pictures in
+his life. He gives drawing-lessons to keep alive."
+
+"How do you mean he paints the smoke?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the
+street--anywhere. He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful."
+
+"The smoke?"
+
+"Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs
+of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and
+smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow
+columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing
+with the hazy light in the distance; and he has others with the broken
+sky-line of down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of
+vapor that have colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take
+you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs."
+
+"You're showing me the town," he said. "I didn't know what was in it at
+all."
+
+"There are workers in beauty here," she told him, gently. "There are
+other painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of
+things."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of
+it that shows."
+
+"The beauty-workers seem buried very deep," said Bibbs. "And I imagine
+that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest
+of all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one
+of your friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't
+get one of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he
+could use it for an advertisement."
+
+"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. "And really he's the town. They ARE
+buried pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs."
+
+"And yet it's all wonderful," he said. "It's wonderful to me."
+
+"You mean the town is wonderful to you?"
+
+"Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city
+is only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than
+the horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater
+all day long, helping me. Mary--" He stopped with a gasp. "That's the
+first time I've called you 'Mary'!"
+
+"Yes." She laughed, a little tremuously. "Though I wanted you to!"
+
+"I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk
+home with me. That must be it."
+
+"Women like to have things said," Mary informed him, her tremulous
+laughter continuing. "Were you glad I came for you?"
+
+"No--not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+and up--over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way
+most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person
+I was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at
+all. It seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly--somebody
+else--somebody I don't understand now, a coward afraid of
+shadows--afraid of things that didn't exist--afraid of my old
+zinc-eater! And now I'm only afraid of what might change anything."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, "You're happy, Bibbs?" she asked.
+
+"Ah, don't you see?" he cried. "I want it to last for a thousand,
+thousand years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I
+wouldn't have one thing different--nothing, nothing!"
+
+"Dear Bibbs!" she said, and laughed happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
+after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
+decided that he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared to have
+relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he
+was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days
+in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he
+seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly
+aware that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
+imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
+Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the
+sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer
+wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again
+unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith
+and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+
+Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
+not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
+days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
+frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or
+no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
+information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
+Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and
+why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as
+of yore.
+
+Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
+shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of
+that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling
+mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
+hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
+end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+
+"You ought to let me die!" she wailed. "It's cruel not to let me die!
+What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
+Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and
+look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this
+town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't
+even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!
+I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted to have a good
+time--and how could I? Where's any good time among these Sheridans? They
+never even had wine on the table! I thought I was marrying into a rich
+family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and
+go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did
+the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every
+woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were
+just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen
+crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
+have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was
+getting him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with
+money can do that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what
+could I do? What can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but
+try to stand it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that
+Vertrees girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't
+have hurt her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT
+little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take
+the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!"
+
+Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
+whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half
+upright, and the nurse restrained her. "I'd get up out of this bed to
+show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and
+she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after
+Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground, and she thinks she's
+landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able
+to walk across the street again I'll show her how to treat a woman in
+trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't have hurt her any--it
+wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what she told
+Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I
+bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done
+it! He needn't--needn't--" Her voice grew fainter, for that while,
+with exhaustion, though she would go over it all again as soon as her
+strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing
+disheveled in the doorway, "Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured. "I
+don't want to see you." And as he turned away she added, "I'm kind of
+sorry for you, Roscoe."
+
+Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
+and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the
+disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
+husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to
+telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into
+a momentary distraction over a counter.
+
+Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
+whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
+the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan,
+like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly
+fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool,
+and thus set her on fire.
+
+Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
+father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence
+had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing
+fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she
+went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not
+think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.
+She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in
+apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring
+peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and
+she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and
+having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have
+kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure
+had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that
+evening, to find her gone. "I suppose they'll be maried there," he said,
+casually.
+
+Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+fuming. "Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted. "I
+don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
+are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept
+away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.
+For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!"
+
+Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
+sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
+excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
+wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
+had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had
+the habit of gesture; he could not "take time to remember," he said,
+that he must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his
+hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
+
+The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
+the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before
+the appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an
+anteroom--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's
+office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
+latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
+
+"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick!
+You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his
+hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what
+if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to
+keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide
+your nickels in a crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a
+little skeery! You listen to every street-corner croaker and then
+come and set here and try to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on
+this--understand? I tell you there never WAS better times. These are
+good times and big times, and I won't stand for any other kind o' talk.
+This country's on its feet as it never was before, and this city's on
+its feet and goin' to stay there!" And Gurney heard a series of whacks
+and thumps upon the desk. "'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with
+accompanying thumps. "Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!
+We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all,
+gentlemen. The loan goes!"
+
+The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
+in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his
+right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage
+as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of
+Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile
+reception. But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic
+command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the
+New House.
+
+"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as he
+came in.
+
+"Yes." Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
+which had become his habit. "Yes, she is."
+
+"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.
+
+"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!" There was a bitter gibe in the father's
+voice, and he added: "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
+stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
+least of all!"
+
+"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe. "You won't do any
+good."
+
+"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?" Sheridan used a
+brisker, kinder tone. "Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
+When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
+foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a
+lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself
+out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone."
+
+"It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
+you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!"
+
+"Wait a minute before you talk that way!" Sheridan began his sentry-go
+up and down the room. "I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good
+men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin'
+right again, down in your office?"
+
+"They must be good men." Roscoe nodded indifferently. "I thought I was
+doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
+it."
+
+"Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty
+men drive harder'n I do, and--"
+
+"Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with
+'em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
+the rest of their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
+domestic difficulties'!"
+
+"You set there and tell me you give up?" Sheridan's voice shook, and
+so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
+despondent figure. "Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
+down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
+more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
+you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
+fastened on you yet. Don't say--"
+
+"It's no use on earth," Roscoe mumbled. "No use on earth."
+
+"Look here! If you want another month's vacation--"
+
+"I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?"
+
+"Gurney!" Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. "It's Gurney, Gurney,
+Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
+doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get
+its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
+blattin'--'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
+NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
+emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
+chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's
+the matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and
+Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her."
+
+"Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?"
+
+"Shut up!" Sheridan bellowed. "I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel
+like shootin' anybody that says it to me!" He fumed and chafed, swearing
+indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. "Look here; do you
+think you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?"
+
+"I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not."
+
+"It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at
+your age?"
+
+"No. But it's mine, and it's enough."
+
+"My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
+there! I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket,
+and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right
+here, you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and
+what would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from
+now? Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd
+either get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be
+split up and--" He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room,
+and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly: "Listen. If you go
+out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth
+to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is. I've depended on
+you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor,
+and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that
+certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
+a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
+you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and
+a little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into
+MOVING businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
+won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if
+you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were." He cleared
+his throat and finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take a month's
+vacation and come back and go to it?"
+
+"No," said Roscoe, listlessly. "I'm through."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
+table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
+"Good-by."
+
+Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
+"Best I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. "I
+figure it out a good deal like this," he said. "I didn't KNOW my job
+was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what
+I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and
+the--the trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I
+am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on
+whiskey--and that put the finish to me! I--I'm not hitting it as hard as
+I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a
+little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I don't know. I'm all
+in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a
+few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know
+it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
+I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your
+daughter-in-law and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything
+wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had
+done--encouraging that fellow to hang around her after he began trying
+to flirt with her, and losing her head over him the way she did. I don't
+deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll
+never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's
+nature." Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.
+"A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive people, and
+traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can give her
+the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or
+New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman has to have
+something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I was. I
+never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I
+believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's
+all. I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was
+so busy with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her,
+I was so busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us
+to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do
+when anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me
+dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had
+to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the
+floor, deathly sick. You talk about a 'month's vacation'--and I get just
+as sick. I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't make
+any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
+I can--and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we--"
+
+His father rustled the paper. "I said good-by, Roscoe."
+
+"Good-by," said Roscoe, listlessly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then
+he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
+
+"Has Bibbs got home from work?"
+
+"Mist' Bibbs? No, suh."
+
+"Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes."
+
+"Yessuh."
+
+Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon
+the newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond
+their explanatory rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to
+concentrate his attention:
+
+  "Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides."
+  "Burglars Make Big Haul."
+  "Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension."
+  "Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured."
+  "Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court."
+  "Plan New Eighteen-story Structure."
+  "School-girl Meets Death under Automobile."
+  "Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead."
+  "Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes
+    Action by Coroner."
+  "Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to
+    Governor in Church Rioting Case."
+  "Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug."
+  "Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work."
+  "Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No
+    European City Holds Candle." (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
+
+Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+"Well, father, did you want me?"
+
+"Yes. Sit down." Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire,
+holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+
+"I came within seven of the shop record to-day," he said. "I handled
+more strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest
+to me is sixteen behind."
+
+"There!" exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. "What'd I tell you?
+I'd like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you
+there--I would just like to hear him! And you--ain't you ashamed of
+makin' such a fuss about it? Ain't you?"
+
+"I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time," Bibbs said,
+smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. "I didn't
+know the difference it meant to like a thing."
+
+"Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
+HAVE! I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
+hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+Ain't that so?"
+
+"Looks like it!" Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+
+"Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead
+o' hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically. You're a good
+inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am
+if you'd get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little.
+Physically, it's started you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole
+family. Now, then, mentally--that's different. I don't say it unkindly,
+Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like
+what's begun physically. And I'm goin' to help you."
+
+Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his
+son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. "I got
+plans for you, Bibbs," he said.
+
+Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. "I--I'm all
+right now, father."
+
+"Listen." Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone
+of a reasonable man reasoning. "Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow
+to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been
+expectin' it some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll
+be frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever
+called you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of
+your life. Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to
+use it. You got will-power, I'll say that for you. I never knew boy or
+man that could be stubborner--never one in my life! Now, then, you've
+showed you could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop,
+in no time at all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other
+things. I don't deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't deny
+that, at all. Well, that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as
+it looks. You're all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't
+as poor material as I thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within
+seven strips of the shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin'
+information brought in at just about the right time. Now, then, I'm
+goin' to give you a raise. I wanted to send you straight on up through
+the shops--a year or two, maybe--but I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now
+I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's laid down on me. If he ever comes back
+at all, he'll be a long time pickin' up the strings, and, anyway, he
+ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count on him. I got to have
+SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to this: you're my last
+chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got and see if
+we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin' to put my time
+in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I won't be
+hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin' to do the
+big thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the big
+thing for me, in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the
+shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over
+ahead of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal
+to your ambition that'll make you dizzy!" He tapped his son on the knee
+again. "Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm goin' to
+make you a director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to make you
+vice-president of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust
+Company!"
+
+Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. "Oh no!" he cried.
+
+Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. "Yes,
+sir! And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop--oh, I know
+you did!--but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so right
+now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you to,
+I deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger and
+bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand I deal
+you. I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!"
+
+"But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!" Bibbs stammered.
+
+"What'd you say?" Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+
+"I don't want it, father. I thank you--I do thank you--"
+
+Sheridan looked perplexed. "What's the matter with you? Didn't you
+understand what I was tellin' you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered--"
+
+"I know, I know! But I can't take it."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+"Your head feel funny?"
+
+"I've never been quite so sane in my life," said Bibbs, "as I have
+lately. And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right
+life. I'm earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages
+are enough. I don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any--"
+
+"Damnation!" Sheridan sprang up. "You've turned Socialist! You been
+listening to those fellows down there, and you--"
+
+"No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't
+it."
+
+Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+"Then what is it? What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," his son returned, nervously. "Nothing--except that I'm
+content. I don't want to change anything."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. "I'll tell you,
+father, if I can. I know it may be hard to understand--"
+
+"Yes, I think it may be," said Sheridan, grimly. "What you say usually
+is a LITTLE that way. Go on!"
+
+Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at
+every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a
+rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and
+made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his
+eyes lowered. "You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is,
+in one way you weren't, father." He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan
+stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.
+"That's difficult to explain," Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again,
+to follow the tracings of his finger. "I--I believe the shop might have
+done for me this time if I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh,
+not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it.
+I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I don't
+want, I don't want to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn
+into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM living. I have the
+healthful toil--and I can think. In business as important as yours I
+couldn't think anything but business. I don't--I don't think making
+money is worth while."
+
+"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+
+"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs. "You
+think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being
+rich and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools
+because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they
+used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought
+the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been reading
+the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught anything
+except what would help them to make money. You said it was wasting the
+taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live. When I
+was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's the
+use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has
+meant really going ahead--it's just been getting bigger and dirtier and
+noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it
+was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an
+utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics
+just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman
+that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily
+and dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over
+it? And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all
+the time, and was always having additions built to her house when she
+couldn't keep clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she
+made the house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--"
+
+"Just one minute!" Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy,
+"If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?"
+
+"I don't quite--"
+
+"I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
+whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon
+any subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you
+mention one single time when you were proved to be right?"
+
+He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only,
+"If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm
+right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due
+to bring up my average."
+
+"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
+probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been
+balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do,
+you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't
+seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I
+said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of
+this country. Go on!"
+
+"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.
+"I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went
+down there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money
+enough to--"
+
+"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. "You've never had
+to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me
+remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty
+fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these
+noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own
+housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?"
+
+"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, sturdily. "It's enough. I
+shouldn't mind at all."
+
+"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"
+
+"My work!" Bibbs answered. "And I've done so well on that
+clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty
+a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months,
+I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should,
+infinitely!"
+
+"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!" But Sheridan
+struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+controlling it. "You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go to
+plumbing!"
+
+"All right," said Bibbs, gently. "I can get along."
+
+Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. "O God," he said,
+"this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a
+week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for
+him?" Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture
+of dismissal. "Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a
+whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated
+the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick
+for over two years--and now, when I offer to take you out of it and give
+you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy! You're
+cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit, and
+one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had
+a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First
+morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass
+window out into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!'
+That's what you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look
+at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you
+bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you
+are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn
+you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out
+of you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while
+I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
+at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't
+let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked
+up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"
+
+Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it,
+for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his
+father's last word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this
+storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place
+in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the
+presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading
+Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of
+the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose
+through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for
+Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights
+as these, all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve
+to break the spell.
+
+Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking;
+and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers,
+appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at
+him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that
+while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the
+time.
+
+When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+said: "There's something I want to read over. This:"
+
+   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....
+
+He stopped and looked at her.
+
+"You boy!" said Mary, not very clearly.
+
+"Oh yes," he returned. "But it's true--especially my knees!"
+
+"You boy!" she murmured again, blushing charmingly. "You might read
+another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were
+looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it--I can give
+it to you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'"
+
+"I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one,
+unless I have to decide to study plumbing."
+
+"No." She shook her head. "You love and want what's beautiful and
+delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and
+have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful
+person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful for."
+
+Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or
+two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. "Why, no," he said; "I
+wanted something else more than that. I wanted you."
+
+"And here I am!" she laughed, completely understanding. "I think we're
+like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough
+Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and
+told everybody that the devil was dead."
+
+"He isn't, though," said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room
+began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. "He gets
+into the clock whenever I'm with you." And, sighing deeply he rose to
+go.
+
+"You're always very prompt about leaving me."
+
+"I--I try to be," he said. "It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you
+look tired--"
+
+"Have you ever?"
+
+"Not yet. You always look--you always look--"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about
+something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into
+people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that
+look--and I'd never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety
+might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite
+understand why it should be, either." He smiled quizzically, looking
+down upon her. "Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have you?"
+
+For answer she only laughed.
+
+"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think
+that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in
+your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to
+happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours
+when I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel
+dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house, there's
+a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily
+dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really
+beginning another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But
+now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and so--good night." And
+he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, "I hate
+it!"
+
+"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
+motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+
+"Mary! Your eyes are so--" He stopped.
+
+"Yes?" But she looked quickly away.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "I thought just then--"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+understand--and didn't."
+
+She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. "My eyes are
+pleased," she said. "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go."
+
+"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he
+said.
+
+She inclined her head. "Yes. I'll--'let it'!"
+
+"Going to church," said Bibbs. "It IS going to church when I go with
+you!"
+
+She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
+formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever
+speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the
+doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and
+looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to
+the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway,
+but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to
+tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that
+friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were open for him to come
+back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came
+between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the
+beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol of
+herself and of her ineffable kindness.
+
+And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was
+strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that
+she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the
+storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she
+went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had
+spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he
+was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she
+caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two
+houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before,
+she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street.
+They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the
+front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper
+windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the
+shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night
+she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after
+Bibbs had gone.
+
+But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for
+his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
+already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
+lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.
+
+A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
+library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
+rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
+detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then
+Gurney, sharply imperious, "Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand
+in that sling, I say!"
+
+"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
+tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which
+he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the
+eyes of Bibbs. "Look at 'at lamidal statue!"
+
+Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly
+Byzantine--painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso,
+appallingly human; and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn
+among ruinous palms like the spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had
+been a massacre in the oasis--the Moor had been hurled headlong from his
+pedestal.
+
+"He hit 'at ole lamidal statue," said George. "POW!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's
+I kin telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't
+takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago.
+You done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what
+he was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!" He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a
+crumpled telegraph form. "Here what come," he said. "I pick 'er up when
+he done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn
+'er ovuh to you soon's you come in."
+
+Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to
+Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
+                                                     Edith Lamhorn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors
+of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just
+then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For
+that reason he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade
+room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan
+vociferously demanding his presence.
+
+"Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him
+in. Now you'll SEE!" And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into
+the hall, beckoned to her son.
+
+Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
+striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that
+he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot;
+his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken
+loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+
+"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared. "THERE'S the
+hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.
+
+Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. "For God's sake,
+sing another tune!" he cried. "You said you 'came as a doctor but stay
+as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize
+ME--"
+
+"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. "What do
+you want Bibbs to say?"
+
+"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,'
+oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'!
+You sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many
+another man you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!" He
+swung toward the quiet figure waiting in the doorway. "Bibbs, will you
+come down-town with me Monday morning and let me start you with two
+vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you."
+
+"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+
+"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+instead of takin' up my offer?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're
+too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my
+shop?"
+
+"Find other work," said Bibbs.
+
+"There! You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried. "You hear what--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him."
+
+Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+broke, piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to
+be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he
+wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!"
+
+He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+"There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance
+to live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
+throat. "That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway
+yonder!"
+
+Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
+and tossed it into the open bag. "What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
+chance to live?" he said, coolly. "I would if I were you. You've had TWO
+that went into business."
+
+Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. "Joe Gurney,"
+he said, when he could command himself so far, "are you accusin' me of
+the responsibility for the death of my son James?"
+
+"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor. "But just once I'd like
+to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
+too." He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
+his back and smiling. "Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable," he
+said. "You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
+and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at
+the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And
+he did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't
+you let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he
+couldn't do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some
+message--something to say that might make the world just a little
+bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be
+denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you,
+and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is
+likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the
+shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But
+I tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill
+something that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his
+physical body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so
+why not let it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old
+fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
+chance?"
+
+Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. "What 'fighting?'"
+
+"Yours--with nature." Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
+antagonist equably. "You don't seem to understand that you've been
+struggling against actual law."
+
+"What law?"
+
+"Natural law," said Gurney. "What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
+Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
+powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
+against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
+grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken
+Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
+wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
+could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
+Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want
+him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
+twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together."
+
+"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+
+"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has
+the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
+anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain
+asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life
+you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT
+to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's
+obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
+knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell
+you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
+thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than
+your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
+very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim
+from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very
+self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
+The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
+the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to
+wield it and twist it--"
+
+The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. "Yes! And by
+God, I will!"
+
+"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.
+
+"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+"That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
+tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half
+a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the
+lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A
+man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!"
+
+"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney. "Will you be a really big man now
+and--"
+
+"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!" Sheridan began to walk to and
+fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
+his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but
+the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
+
+"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan
+went on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
+don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
+mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"
+
+"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.
+
+There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand
+in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table
+and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
+Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+
+"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping, she
+obeyed. "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the
+sudden hush he put upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's
+wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you
+remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
+messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
+built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there
+from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he
+died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used
+to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't
+stingy--he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or
+automobiles--he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty
+near bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole
+man used to pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants
+cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak
+to him? God! he wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him
+clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin'
+in FRONT the bank he'd 'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy
+was doin' every day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!
+Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and
+his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.
+It was every bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in
+harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for
+that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T
+EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
+him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his
+old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy bank
+any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a cigarette
+son-in-law!"
+
+Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+
+"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on. "That's
+good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be
+there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear
+it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got
+me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't
+give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's
+got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before
+this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette
+behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there
+ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there
+ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein',
+nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll
+be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that
+cigarette, but--"
+
+"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
+Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?"
+
+Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed
+and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his
+wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively,
+sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away,
+tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
+
+"Fool!" he panted, choking. "If he's shown gumption enough to guess
+right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
+him on!" And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
+thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. "My name
+ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he screamed, hoarsely. "You give in, you
+stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my way
+with you now!"
+
+Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+"splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage
+in a struggle, so that he would "never give up."
+
+"No. You can't have your way," he said. And then, obeying a significant
+motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
+husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
+darkened chamber. At the "old" house they had shared a room, but the
+architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had not known
+how to formulate an objection, although to both of them something seemed
+vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.
+
+Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
+aperture when he spoke.
+
+"Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."
+
+She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she
+explained. "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
+be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
+so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
+goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."
+
+"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.
+
+"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she continued.
+"He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
+say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
+right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
+time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
+company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
+look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold
+o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all--and the rest
+of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do in
+that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold, and everything went off
+all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's
+got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right considerable
+of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such a large
+practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what
+he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
+amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You
+heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what
+Jim and Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't
+that exactly what he says?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
+"Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
+true--what of it?"
+
+"Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.
+You know where he goes all the time--"
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!" Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. "You
+better go back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute she'll let
+him, I suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it."
+
+"WHY ain't there?" she urged. "I know better--there is, too! You wait
+and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest
+young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he
+is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it
+into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and
+chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll
+see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you--moony, no-'count young
+men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or something;
+and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings 'em right
+down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is
+Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister
+exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I know
+this is goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say
+that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be
+talkin' that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for
+him to live on. But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you
+want to hand him out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll
+want all the salary and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to
+keep gettin' more. That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes
+crazy to give things to! She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look
+nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the
+next. And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll
+be pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at
+the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their
+cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one. He
+says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now
+they're doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that
+unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o'
+stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice anything
+like that for himself. They've never asked him to a meal in the house,
+but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of innocent. Now I was
+thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly mentioned the girl's
+name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe if--"
+
+Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+"You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!"
+
+"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly. "Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?"
+
+"Because you are. There's nothin' in it."
+
+"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church with
+her this morning. What you want to bet?"
+
+"Go back to bed," he commanded. "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+nothin' in it, I tell you."
+
+She shook her head perplexedly. "You think because--because Jim was
+runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?"
+
+"No. Nothin' to do with it."
+
+"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"
+
+"Yes, I do," he grunted. "Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
+ain't had any yet!"
+
+"Well--" She went to the door, her expression downcast. "I thought
+maybe--but--" She coughed prefatorily. "Oh, papa, something else I
+wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night
+when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants
+to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants to
+say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to
+sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened.
+They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to
+feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's
+what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't
+disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all
+along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that
+foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought
+was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a
+good deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.
+You'll--you'll be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?"
+
+He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had
+pulled over his head.
+
+"What?" she said, timidly. "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl
+all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?"
+
+He threw the coverlet off furiously. "I presume so!" he roared.
+
+She departed guiltily.
+
+But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to
+church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.
+Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's
+house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and
+they had no other. They meant to go to church.
+
+But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation
+as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and
+Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with
+Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other
+at this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled
+among groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this
+somewhat prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it,
+and they had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before
+they discovered their error. However, feeling that they might be
+embarrassingly late if they returned, they decided that a walk would
+make them as good. It was a windless winter morning, with an inch of
+crisp snow over the ground. So they walked, and for the most part they
+were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned back at noon,
+they began to be talkative again.
+
+"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"
+
+She laughed a little, then looked grave. "Does your father say you are?"
+
+"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He
+has quite a list."
+
+"You mustn't mind," she said, gently. "He's been getting some pretty
+severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.
+I've always been sure he's very big."
+
+"Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any
+consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow
+stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing."
+
+"Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and
+his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see
+it--so great none of us could see it."
+
+"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--"
+
+"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she finished
+for him, cheerily.
+
+"Into the smoke," said Bibbs. "Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the
+little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of
+soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well
+have thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have
+taken his chance of my whipping him for it if I could."
+
+"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+rhetorically? IS there?"
+
+"Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each. One
+landed since I mentioned the first."
+
+She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
+entirely matter-of-course about it.
+
+An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary
+for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the
+soot. "There!" said the elderly wife. "You're always wrong when
+you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't
+honeymooners at all--they've been married for years. A blind man could
+see that."
+
+
+"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up
+at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. "They arrest children for
+throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but--"
+
+"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in
+the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make.
+I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year.
+Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have
+money to pay or none."
+
+"Who is it gets the pay?" said Bibbs.
+
+"Not I!" she laughed.
+
+"Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some
+of the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to
+get."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling to him, and nodding. "And you don't want it,
+and you don't need it."
+
+"But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?" He had told her of his
+father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+picturesqueness of their setting forth. "You think I'm right?"
+
+"A thousand times!" she cried. "There aren't so many happy people in
+this world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy. If
+it's a dream--keep it!"
+
+"The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as
+I never hated the shop!" he said. "I hate it! And the city itself, the
+city that the money shuffle has made--just look at it! Look at it in
+winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the
+ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting
+dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the
+unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise
+aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and
+noise MEAN--that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but
+they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind embryo of a spirit, not
+yet a soul--oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense! Oughtn't it
+all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I could--I'd
+want to help the other fellow to keep up with me."
+
+"I read something the other day and remembered it for you," said Mary.
+"It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint:
+'In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of
+a great city, full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers
+walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths of
+a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide open,
+letting in a space of green field and cornfield in harvest; and all
+round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from a
+little walled graveyard."
+
+"And if I painted," Bibbs returned, "I'd paint a lady walking in the
+street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile
+life--children being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying
+to get richer, and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows
+clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and
+slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a
+great rain of swirling soot--" He paused, adding, thoughtfully: "And yet
+I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were
+your brother--the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for
+you. Still, Edith never--"
+
+"Didn't she?" said Mary, as he paused again.
+
+"No. And I--" He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were
+passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. "Mary, our walk's
+almost over."
+
+She looked as blank. "So it is, Bibbs."
+
+They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly
+to a stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with
+Sibyl, who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her
+illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not
+taking his arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary
+and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary
+gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+
+"Mary," he said, "you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?"
+
+"No, Bibbs." And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him
+instantly unreasonably happy.
+
+"I know you want to go in--" he began.
+
+"No. I don't want to."
+
+"I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I
+just wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning,
+grumbling about soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think
+it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.
+And--I don't know just why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd
+always remember. And you," he added, falteringly, "you look so--so
+beautiful to-day!"
+
+"It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs."
+
+"Mary, will you tell me something?" he asked.
+
+"I think I will."
+
+"It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them
+ever just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much
+colder, you don't--you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?"
+
+Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
+"Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+questions?"
+
+"Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?"
+
+"Because I found I'd be warmer without them!" She caught his hand
+quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into
+the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative
+warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual
+"living-room" of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed.
+Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers,
+business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon
+bric-a-brac or crocheting--when he was at home, and not abed or eating,
+he was in the library.
+
+He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the
+far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he
+exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest,
+as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his
+Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp,
+was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations
+was his keeping his hand in his sling.
+
+Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking
+at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were
+nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.
+There was a deadly silence.
+
+But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she
+was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil
+them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something
+committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for
+that.
+
+"Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to
+me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the
+way I acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that
+night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it
+will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson;
+and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a
+daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask
+you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings
+toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life.
+I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return
+for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a
+good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not
+to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur
+again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to
+excuse it this time."
+
+He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
+agitation of her hands within the muff.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
+heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+
+"Thank you," she said. "There's something else--about something
+different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it,
+too."
+
+"She's up-stairs in her room," said Sheridan. "Roscoe--"
+
+Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and
+begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived
+the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+
+"No, let me go," she said. "I want to speak to her a minute first,
+anyway."
+
+And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
+Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
+room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for
+bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed
+her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with
+the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her own
+experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by words
+they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl
+intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not
+hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
+in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
+say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
+girl who had affronted her.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's
+mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of
+emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) "have
+a fit right there." She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting
+a touch to her hair before a mirror.
+
+"I was just coming down," she said, as the door opened.
+
+"Yes, he wants you to," said Sibyl. "It's all right, mother Sheridan.
+He's forgiven me."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
+daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+
+"And I hope Edith will be happy," Sibyl added, inciting more
+applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured the good woman. "We mustn't make the worst of
+things."
+
+"Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear
+it, too," said Sibyl. "We better go down, mother Sheridan."
+
+She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came
+to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. "I want to tell you
+about it first," she said, abruptly. "It isn't a secret, of course, in
+any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the
+whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT
+for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.
+But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help
+me to see I got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it
+except the good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the
+other, of course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I
+did that night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help
+the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way.
+Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from
+being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of
+and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than
+so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as
+Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
+you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way."
+
+Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
+wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
+write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun
+the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to
+fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
+to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the
+beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
+dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor. For he had
+his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he
+could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to
+the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of
+home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
+His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced
+the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He
+could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when
+he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and
+on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least
+he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate
+vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself,
+but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could
+think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on,
+he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+
+"I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan," she said, "but
+this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
+all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
+little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
+been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he
+could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about
+it, mother Sheridan?"
+
+"Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while
+back," said Mrs. Sheridan. "And now they're doin' the cookin', too."
+
+Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. "I hope they find
+something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!"
+
+Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy--of
+all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
+would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
+happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
+heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to
+him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically--and that
+something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent,
+but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
+
+"What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this," said
+Sibyl, sharply. "Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!
+They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and
+Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took
+the daughter out auto-riding!" She paused a moment, looking at Mrs.
+Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the
+room.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+"It's the truth," Sibyl declared, loudly. "Oh, of course we were all
+crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up
+here, and we thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read
+her! Her family were down and out when it came to money--and they had to
+go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
+she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around
+to Jim--and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
+if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as
+I stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well--when Jim was
+left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
+Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
+but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
+him."
+
+The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
+in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
+with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+
+"What I feel about it is," she said, "it oughtn't to be allowed to go
+on. It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made
+such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of!
+I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd
+have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall
+in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he
+WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like
+men with some GO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever
+looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd
+tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got
+desperate that she--"
+
+Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door.
+He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
+screamed.
+
+"Oh, good heavens!" cried Sibyl. "Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--"
+She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. "Come
+on, mother Sheridan!" she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
+obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: "Good gracious! Oh,
+I wouldn't--too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
+feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But,
+good heavens--"
+
+She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of
+the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+following; he had gone back into his room.
+
+"He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!" stammered Mrs. Sheridan. "I--I
+wish--"
+
+"Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it," said Sibyl. "I
+shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
+Come on!"
+
+And completing their descent to the library, the two made their
+appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and
+truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks,
+and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had
+overheard them.
+
+"But as I told mother Sheridan," she said, in conclusion, "it might turn
+out for the very best that he did hear--just that way. Don't you think
+so, father Sheridan?"
+
+He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top
+of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no
+sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
+character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom
+she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
+
+"I'm sure it was all for the best," she said. "It's over now, and
+he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just
+hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I
+haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the
+family."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
+the stairway. "I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin'," she said. "He
+did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him
+that was--I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did.
+He looked--so queer. It was like you'd--" She called down the hall,
+"George!"
+
+"Yes'm?"
+
+"Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?"
+
+"Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil'
+him nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm." He departed.
+
+"What do you expect he wants a fire for?" she asked, turning toward her
+husband. "The house is warm as can be, I do wish I--"
+
+"Oh, quit frettin'!" said Sheridan.
+
+"Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
+meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
+harm if--"
+
+"Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
+family? Why, she--"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," the troubled woman quavered. "If he liked
+her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't
+ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there
+was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If
+she wants to marry him--"
+
+Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. "She don't!" he said.
+"You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a
+girl."
+
+"But, father Sheridan, didn't she--"
+
+He cut her short. "That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
+wrong. So do you, mamma."
+
+Sibyl cried out, "Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--"
+
+"She did not," he said, curtly. "She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
+down cold."
+
+"But that's impossi--"
+
+"It's not. I KNOW she did."
+
+Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+
+"And YOU needn't worry," he said, turning to his wife. "This won't have
+any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
+D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take
+JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
+but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
+think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at
+me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
+on. There's nothin' in it--and I've got the same old fight with him on
+my hands I've had all his life--and the Lord knows what he won't do
+to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
+stubborn, but--"
+
+"SH!" Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. "That's his
+step--he's comin' down-stairs." She shrank away from the door as if
+she feared to have Bibbs see her. "I--I wonder--" she said, almost in a
+whisper--"I wonder what he's goin'--to do."
+
+Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose,
+frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved
+toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as
+the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+
+Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
+slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
+father. Then he came and stood before him.
+
+"I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me," he said, gently. "You
+won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me."
+
+Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs
+had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he
+went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went
+nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had
+gone from the house.
+
+Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her
+mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been
+done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
+room.
+
+The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
+large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
+note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given
+up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and that he had
+given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have
+done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a
+little before she went down-stairs.
+
+So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of
+passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face;
+a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual
+anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a
+perambulator containing the third--and all three were newly cleaned,
+Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
+
+"How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?" the husband
+whispered. "He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now."
+
+The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. "Well, I don't know," she returned.
+"He looks to me like he had his own troubles."
+
+"I expect he has, like anybody else," said the young husband, "but I
+guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money."
+
+"Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed
+as the Sheridans. You can't tell." She glanced back at Bibbs, who had
+turned north. "He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like."
+
+"So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess," said the young
+husband, with bitter admiration.
+
+Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at
+the door.
+
+"Bibbs!" she cried. "What is the matter? I saw something was terribly
+wrong when I--You look--" She paused, and he came in, not lifting his
+eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with
+his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. "Ah, poor boy!" she said,
+with a gesture of understanding and pity. "I know what it is!"
+
+He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a
+chair.
+
+"You needn't tell me," she said. "They've made you give up. Your
+father's won--you're going to do what he wants. You've given up."
+
+Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+
+She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. "Bibbs,"
+she said. "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be
+glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come
+because you were happy." She did not speak again for a little while;
+then she said: "Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about it? Do you want
+to?"
+
+Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her
+a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood
+his words.
+
+"Mary," he said, "could you marry me?"
+
+"What did you say, Bibbs?" she asked, quietly.
+
+His tone and attitude did not change. "Will you marry me?"
+
+Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
+She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
+in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with
+strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each other.
+At last she said:
+
+"What made you say that?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Bibbs, look at me!" Her voice was loud and clear. "What made you say
+that? Look at me!"
+
+He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+
+"What was it that made you?" she said. "I want you to tell me."
+
+She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+intensity of wonder. "You've given up--to your father," she said,
+slowly, "and then you came to ask me--" She broke off. "Bibbs, do you
+want me to marry you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, just audibly.
+
+"No!" she cried. "You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it
+that's happened?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Wait," she said. "Let me think. It's something that happened since our
+walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened
+that--" She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and
+dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New
+House.
+
+Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want you
+to--marry me, if--if--you could."
+
+She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. "Bibbs, do you--" Her
+voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. "Do you think
+I'm--in love with you?"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it
+did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it.
+"Why?"
+
+"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they weren't
+like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me." He smiled faintly,
+though still he did not look at Mary. "And when I first came home Edith
+told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She
+meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed
+either of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as
+particularly captivating!"
+
+Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. "Those two!" she
+exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: "Lamhorn!
+That's like them!" She turned away, went to the bare little black
+mantel, and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: "WHEN did Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+Mary drew a deep breath. "I think I'm beginning to understand--a
+little." She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and
+in her voice. "Answer me once more," she said. "Bibbs, do you know now
+why I stopped wearing my furs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?"
+
+"I--I heard her say--"
+
+"I think I know what happened, now." Mary's breath came fast and her
+voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. "You 'heard her say' more than that.
+You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I
+tried first to marry your brother--and then--" But now she faltered, and
+it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. "And
+then--that I tried to marry--you! You 'heard her say' that--and you
+believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for
+you--but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you--
+And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you--except
+for my 'extremity'--you took your father's offer and then came to ask
+me--to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you--"
+
+Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon
+the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+
+"Mary, Mary!" he cried, helplessly. "Oh NO--you--you don't understand."
+
+"I do, though!" she sobbed. "I do!"
+
+He came and stood beside her. "You kill me!" he said. "I can't make it
+plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
+always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent--I did nothing
+but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my
+idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful
+being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You
+seemed to lean down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never
+dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need
+anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that
+you--"
+
+"You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money," she
+sobbed. "And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I
+had--"
+
+"No!" he said, quickly. "I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing
+for me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except
+generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!" he cried,
+despairingly.
+
+"Wait!" She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously,
+like a child. "Help me up, Bibbs." Then, when she was once more upon her
+feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but
+reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had
+not meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so
+faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered
+them no more.
+
+"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said. "You can't,
+because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me
+and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You
+didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--"
+
+"Never! Never for an instant!"
+
+"You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--"
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+"I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I
+cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
+But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you
+because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--"
+
+"Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--"
+
+"Were desperately poor," she said. "You can't even say that! Bibbs, it
+was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!" And she sank
+down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
+
+"Mary," he groaned, "I didn't know you COULD cry!"
+
+"Listen," she said. "Listen till I get through--I want you to
+understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had
+been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was
+plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the
+town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well, just about the time
+your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything.
+People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in
+comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't
+anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything.
+You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder
+myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the
+daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a
+wave of the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be
+either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not
+to marry. The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all
+there--and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how
+to be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and
+I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been
+raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I
+did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your
+brother I had meant to fascinate him and that I was not in love with
+him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I
+did mean to marry him. I had never cared for anybody, and I thought
+it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited
+fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to
+marry him I never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage
+is--it's sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop
+me; it was your sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was
+horrible, and she put what I was doing into such horrible words--and
+they were the truth--oh! I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable
+compact with me--and I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with
+her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I
+WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a
+quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I
+said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it.
+That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know
+what I did--and you know--ME!" She pressed her clenched hands tightly
+against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
+
+Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. "Couldn't
+you--Isn't there--Won't you--" he stammered. "Mary, I'm going with
+father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without--"
+
+She gave a choked little laugh.
+
+"You gave me something to live for," he said. "You kept me alive, I
+think--and I've hurt you like this!"
+
+"Not you--oh no!"
+
+"You could forgive me, Mary?"
+
+"Oh, a thousand times!" Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture,
+and just touched his own for an instant. "But there's nothing to
+forgive."
+
+"And you can't--you can't--"
+
+"Can't what, Bibbs?"
+
+"You couldn't--"
+
+"Marry you?" she said for him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No, no, no!" She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she
+did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a
+little. "I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?"
+
+"Mary--"
+
+"No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--"
+
+"MARY--"
+
+"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears. "You mustn't
+come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!"
+
+Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
+got himself to the door and out of the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to
+the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but
+so that the others might hear.
+
+"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would
+be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right," he said. "I
+thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me.
+It proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
+refused."
+
+And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
+had entered it.
+
+"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped. "Who on earth would thought of
+his doin' THAT?"
+
+"I told you," said her husband, grimly.
+
+"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"
+
+"I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+didn't I?"
+
+Sibyl was altogether taken aback. "Do you supose it's true? Do you
+suppose she WOULDN'T?"
+
+"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed
+up fine with his girl," said Sheridan. "Not to me, he didn't!"
+
+"But why would--"
+
+"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of a girl!
+If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with,
+though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about
+my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him,
+and it was a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he
+never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt."
+
+"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon," said
+Roscoe. "Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I was waiting
+for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was
+just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
+and called me."
+
+Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down,
+for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they
+were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after
+some further fragmentary discourse--visibly elated. After all, the
+guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the
+less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a
+contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe
+crossed the street.
+
+When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
+she said, uneasily, "Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
+about that letter?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, walking moodily to the window. "I been
+thinkin' about it." He came to a decision. "I reckon I will." And he
+went up to Bibbs's room.
+
+"Well, you goin' back on what you said?" he inquired, brusquely, as he
+opened the door. "You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?"
+
+"No," said Bibbs.
+
+"Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't
+know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the
+Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!" Sheridan
+was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
+unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
+abuse went on in spite of him. "I can't say I expect much of you--not
+from the way you always been, up to now--unless you turn over a new
+leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do
+THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the
+whole office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any,
+you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow."
+
+"Yes--I'll try."
+
+"You better, if it's in you!" Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
+always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
+bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
+angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
+like a drudge-driver. "You better come down there with your mind made
+up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you,
+or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get
+ahead--and you better set it down in your books--the way to get ahead is
+to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But
+you don't know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand
+around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home
+and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty
+different proposition now, and if you're worth your salt--and you never
+showed any signs of it yet--not any signs that stuck out enough to bang
+somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice--well, I want
+to say, right here and now--and you better listen, because I want to say
+just what I DO say. I say--"
+
+He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a
+hopeless blank.
+
+Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look. "Yes, father; I'm
+listening."
+
+"That's all," said Sheridan, frowning heavily. "That's all I came to
+say, and you better see't you remember it!"
+
+He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him
+with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure.
+He stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more.
+Then abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead
+liberally covered with perspiration.
+
+"Look here," he said, crossly. "That girl over yonder wrote Jim a
+letter--"
+
+"I know," said Bibbs. "She told me."
+
+"Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--" The door
+closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence
+was nevertheless audible--"if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either."
+
+And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin'
+and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to
+inquire what Bibbs "said," but after a second thought she decided not
+to speak at all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal
+communication was given over between them for the rest of that
+afternoon.
+
+Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next
+morning, and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she
+worried about what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She
+felt that everything depended on how Bibbs "took hold," and upon her
+husband's return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity
+to ask him how things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody
+tell by the first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right
+at the start and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair
+the first day or so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as
+it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe
+had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position
+in the Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
+
+But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed
+remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small
+restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and
+she took this to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon
+as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative after
+reading his paper.
+
+She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of
+business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and
+only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.
+Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on the
+first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an opinion
+which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
+
+"I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+father," he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. "Abercrombie
+agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him."
+
+"You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen," Sheridan returned, "but
+you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof
+fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather
+conditions. I want that building put just the way Jim planned it."
+
+"You can't have it," said Bibbs. "You can't, because Jim planned for the
+building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one--the one that
+didn't fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage.
+It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both buildings
+down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and cheapest
+in the long run for that type."
+
+Sheridan looked sarcastic. "Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?"
+
+"Rent," Bibbs returned, promptly. "We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter
+your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount of
+stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until
+we could patch up those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on
+it for us this morning."
+
+Sheridan's expression was queer. "Look here!" he said, sharply. "Did you
+go and do that without consulting me?"
+
+"It didn't cost anything," said Bibbs. "It's only until to-morrow
+afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then."
+
+"Oh, you did?" Sheridan's tone was sardonic. "Well, just suppose you
+couldn't convince me."
+
+"I can, though--and I intend to," said Bibbs, quietly. "I don't think
+you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up."
+
+"Now, see here," said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; "suppose I had my
+mind set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was--well,
+kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right."
+
+Bibbs looked at him compassionately. "I'm sorry if you have a sentiment
+about it, father," he said. "But whether you have or not can't make a
+difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and
+that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want
+one that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend
+sentiment in this particular kind of affair."
+
+"Oh, you don't?"
+
+"No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. "Why are you 'sorry'?" he asked,
+curiously.
+
+"Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon," said Bibbs,
+"and I had him condemn both those buildings."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid you'd
+see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them--they've got to come
+down now."
+
+Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+Finally he said, "How long did they give you on that option to convince
+me?"
+
+"Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan, not relaxing. "I'm convinced."
+
+Bibbs jumped up. "I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch
+agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle
+it this evening."
+
+Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that
+startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything
+resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound--although it was grim and
+dry--bore that resemblance.
+
+She brightened eagerly. "Looks like he was startin' right well don't it,
+papa?"
+
+"Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I
+wanted--that's why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat
+before we even started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't
+reasonably defend SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option
+for Us'! 'Stuff piled up on Us'!"
+
+There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. "I don't just like the way
+he looks, though, papa."
+
+"Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you
+start to frettin' about IT!"
+
+"No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--"
+
+"I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then," said
+Sheridan. "You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I
+expect."
+
+"Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And
+he'd begun to fill out some, but--"
+
+Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
+her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
+still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. "That's the
+way it is with you, mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you
+don't another!"
+
+"No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he
+begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some
+way."
+
+"Yes, he may 'a' lost something," said Sheridan. "I expect he's lost a
+whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
+poetry and--"
+
+"No," his wife persisted. "I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
+when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
+readin'."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?"
+
+"He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+believe."
+
+"Look, here!" said Sheridan. "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there
+the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did
+one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had
+to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over
+there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty
+fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get
+over worries like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin'
+to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me,
+mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a
+year from now I'll bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as
+poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could
+'think'! What he meant was, think about something useless. Well, I guess
+he's keepin' his mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes,
+sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but
+it certainly did the business." He patted his wife's shoulder again, and
+then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+
+"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But
+no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness,
+and the changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The
+priests wore that "settish" look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning
+to develop about his mouth and eyes--a wary look which she could not
+define, but it comes with service at the temple; and it was the more
+marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to the necessities of that
+service.
+
+He did as little "useless" thinking as possible, giving himself no time
+for it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work
+when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his
+work. But he did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people
+were not allowed to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of
+hideous uproar--they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the
+thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they
+could walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or
+screeching, as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with
+business; though street musicians were not tolerated, being considered
+a nuisance and an interference. A man or woman who went singing for
+pleasure through the streets--like a crazy Neopolitan--would have been
+stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen
+is allowed to do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The
+streets were dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing!
+and the Motor Federation issued public warnings declaring that the
+pedestrian's life was in his own hands, and giving directions how to
+proceed with the least peril. However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to
+sing in the streets, or anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy
+that, for the start, at least, was bitter, and there was no song left in
+him.
+
+He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among
+them he found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period
+of neighborliness, "pioneer stock," usually; and there were
+men--particularly among the merchants and manufacturers--"so honest they
+leaned backward"; reputations sometimes attested by stories of heroic
+sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some instances of generosity
+even nobler. Here and there, too, were book-men, in their little
+leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men. And these, with the others,
+worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake and
+for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the
+beneficence and glory of their god.
+
+To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in
+life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the
+dangerous illness of a wife or child. In the way of "relaxation" some of
+the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took "shows"--a mixture
+of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some took
+an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards; and some took
+nothing. The high priests were vigilant to watch that no "relaxation"
+should affect the service. When a man attended to anything outside his
+business, eyes were upon him; his credit was in danger--that is, his
+life was in danger. And the old priests were as ardent as the young
+ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as the thousand; seventy was
+as busy as seventeen. They strove mightily against one another, and
+the old priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the most
+dangerous. Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these--he must wear
+a thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+
+And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves
+and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but
+these were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had
+a good guide to point them out to him. They were useful sometimes,
+he learned, and many of them served as go-betweens in matters where
+business must touch politics. He learned also how breweries and
+"traction" companies and banks and other institutions fought one another
+for the political control of the city. The newspapers, he discovered,
+had lost their ancient political influence, especially with the knowing,
+who looked upon them with a skeptical humor, believing the journals
+either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else striving to
+forward the personal ambitions of their owners. The control of the city
+lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of
+negroes gin-money, and by other largesses. The revenues of the people
+were then distributed as fairly as possible among a great number of men
+who had assisted the winning side. Names and titles of offices went with
+many of the prizes, and most of these title-holders were expected to
+present a busy appearance at times; and, indeed, some among them did
+work honestly and faithfully.
+
+Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known
+and customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment
+of forgetting that he was done with writing--he thought that if he had
+known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation
+of them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and
+sincere patriotism. On every side he heard it--it was a permeation; the
+newest school-child caught it, though just from Hungary and learning to
+stammer a few words of the local language. Everywhere the people shouted
+of the power, the size, the riches, and the growth of their city. Not
+only that, they said that the people of their city were the greatest,
+the "finest," the strongest, the Biggest people on earth. They cited no
+authorities, and felt the need of none, being themselves the people thus
+celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that
+there might be one small virtue in which they were not perfect and
+supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the
+critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him,
+for they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with
+them, harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them.
+For the voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+
+
+Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs,
+and the door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had
+established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was
+alone, Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his
+hand.
+
+"Bibbs," he said, "I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when
+I do I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have you been
+buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?"
+
+Bibbs leaned back from his desk. "For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+dollars. That's all it cost."
+
+"Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to
+know that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader'n Adam's cat!"
+
+"It might be worth something--some day."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It mightn't be so dead--not if we went into it," said Bibbs, coolly.
+
+"Oh!" Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, "Who'd you buy it
+from?"
+
+"A broker--Fansmith."
+
+"Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?"
+
+"It belonged to Mr. Vertrees," said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to
+his desk.
+
+"So!" Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. "Excuse me," he said.
+"Your business." And he went back to his own room. But presently he
+looked in again.
+
+"I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day"--he was shuffling
+himself into his overcoat--"because I just thought I'd go up to the
+house and get THIS over with mamma." He glanced apologetically toward
+his right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The
+bandages had been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three
+fingers--the forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated.
+"She's bound to make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than
+her dinner. I'll be back about two."
+
+But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately
+that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from
+the lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his
+overcoat in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+
+"What's the matter, papa?" she asked, quickly. "Has anything gone wrong?
+You ain't sick?"
+
+"Me!" He laughed loudly. "Me SICK?"
+
+"You had lunch?"
+
+"Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffee, though."
+
+She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn
+she said querulously, "I just know there's something wrong."
+
+"Nothin' in the world," he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the
+head of the table. "I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you,
+that's all. It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's,
+anyhow."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--"
+
+"To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?"
+
+"Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. "I guess it's time you had him,
+too. I KNEW Bibbs--"
+
+"Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances
+with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole
+Gurney had a talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on
+me what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then
+I thought he must want to get something out o' me, he got so
+flattering--for a minute! 'Bibbs couldn't help havin' business brains,'
+he says, 'bein' YOUR son. Don't be surprised,' he says--'don't be
+surprised at his makin' a success,' he says. 'He couldn't get over his
+heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business success--once you got him
+into it. It's in his blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH
+brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but
+it does need a special KIND o' brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire.
+I mean,' he says, 'when a man's given a start. If nobody gives him a
+start, why, course he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains.
+The only miracle about Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind
+o' brains--the brains you made him quit usin' and throw away.'"
+
+"But what'd he say about his health?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded,
+impatiently, as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband.
+Sheridan helped himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+
+"I'm comin' to that," he returned, placidly. "See how easy I manage this
+cup with my left hand, mamma?"
+
+"You been doin' that all winter. What did--"
+
+"It's wonderful," he interrupted, admiringly, "what a fellow can do with
+his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could
+with my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I
+believe I RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write,
+anyway--just the signature. Rest's all dictatin'." He blew across the
+top of the cup unctuously. "Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole
+Gurney says he believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o'
+mind he was in about the machine-shop--that is, if he could some way get
+to feelin' about business the way he felt about the shop--not the poetry
+and writin' part, but--" He paused, supplementing his remarks with a
+motion of his head toward the old house next door. "He says Bibbs
+is older and harder'n what he was when he broke down that time, and
+besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was then--and I should
+say he AIN'T! I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age that's any wider
+awake! But he says Bibbs's health never need bother us again if--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. "I don't see any help THAT way. You know
+yourself she wouldn't have Jim."
+
+"Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him
+LOOK at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that
+she won't let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy,
+and some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the
+Bible, but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o' thinkin' that if
+she'd let him come back and set around with her an evening or two
+sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I just thought I'd see
+what YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk about it to Bibbs
+himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but I thought maybe you
+could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a
+little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land
+lays, and ask her--"
+
+"ME!" Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. "No." She shook
+her head decidedly. "It wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You won't try it?"
+
+"I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
+believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T--and,
+what's more, it'd only make things worse. If people find out you're
+runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as
+much for you as if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and
+I couldn't do it if it was."
+
+He sighed with resignation. "All right, mamma. That's all." Then, in a
+livelier tone, he said: "Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more."
+
+"Why, that's splendid, papa!" she cried, beaming. "I was afraid--Let's
+see."
+
+She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket.
+"Wait a minute," he said, smiling. "Now it may give you just a teeny bit
+of a shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl
+came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'--it was the day
+after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's telegram came--"
+
+"Let me see your hand!" she cried.
+
+"Now wait!" he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+"The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning,
+when you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd told
+me to, you see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything." And he held
+out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. "You see, these days when
+it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple o'--"
+
+He had to jump for her--she went over backward. For the second time in
+her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own
+room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat
+that the "fuss" she was making irked him far more than his physical
+loss. He permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his
+office, but when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in
+attendance to await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he
+himself proceeded on foot.
+
+Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as
+manna in the wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did
+not particularly question. The broker informed him that "parties were
+interested in getting hold of the stock," and that later there might
+be a possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his
+client. It might go "quite a ways up" within a year or so, he said, and
+he advised "sitting tight" with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.
+
+He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and
+his wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her
+piano, and as for furs--spring was on the way, she said. But they paid
+the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook
+once more. It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and
+presently assured him that Miss Vertrees would "be down."
+
+He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed
+and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the
+cook. She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second,
+but it vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes
+by a soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+
+"Don't be surprised," he said. "Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+business I looked in here. It'll only take a minute, I expect."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Mary. "I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors."
+
+He chuckled. "Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so--lately."
+
+"You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?"
+
+"I guess I could manage that much." And they sat down, facing each other
+and not far apart.
+
+"Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly," he said, more
+gravely. "Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed
+to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it
+myself and explain how I happened to have it. It's this--this letter you
+wrote my boy." He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left hand,
+and she took it gently from him. "It was in his mail, after he was hurt.
+You knew he never got it, I expect."
+
+"Yes," she said, in a low voice.
+
+He sighed. "I'm glad he didn't. Not," he added, quickly--"not but what
+you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other way
+when it came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you--you
+were above-board all through."
+
+Mary said, "Thank you," almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed
+low.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all
+his mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it
+all--once I got started."
+
+"I'm glad you did."
+
+"Well"--he leaned forward as if to rise--"I guess that's about all. I
+just thought you ought to have it."
+
+"Thank you for bringing it."
+
+He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might
+have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this
+glance, and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+
+"Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office," he said, rising
+desperately. "I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock,
+and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind
+time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days--with
+THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!"
+
+Mary rose with him. "I've always heard YOU were the hard driver."
+
+He guffawed derisively. "Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
+couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end
+o' the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some
+day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is--once he
+goes AT a thing!"
+
+"No," she smiled. "I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard--"
+
+He laughed, looking away from her. "It's just my way o' speakin' o' that
+boy o' mine, Bibbs."
+
+He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, "How
+IS Bibbs?" but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the
+silence became embarrassing.
+
+"Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there," he said, at last. "He
+might worry."
+
+"Good-by--and thank you," said Mary.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the letter."
+
+"Oh," he said, blankly. "You're welcome. Good-by."
+
+Mary put out her hand. "Good-by."
+
+"You'll have to excuse my left hand," he said. "I had a little accident
+to the other one."
+
+She gave a pitying cry as she saw. "Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+"Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow." He laughed
+jovially. "Did anybody tell you how it happened?"
+
+"I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how."
+
+"It was this way," he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down
+again. "You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the
+youngest o' my boys--the one that used to come to see you sometimes,
+after Jim--that is, I mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my partner;
+and the truth is that's what it's just about goin' to amount to, one o'
+these days--if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I expect, I
+had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd kind o'
+sneak in there and see how he was gettin' along. Take a doctor with me
+sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole Doc
+Gurney--I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook
+to show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I
+wouldn't listen, and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand
+hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and
+I didn't. Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS
+hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical
+measures with me. He's a right good doctor, too. Don't you think so,
+Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes, he is so!" Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and
+gossip with all day on his hands. "Take him on Bibbs's case. I was
+talkin' about Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to
+hear the way ole Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a
+friend as he is doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if
+he was in the family. He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and
+he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if--well, this is
+what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees--honest it
+would!" He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing
+straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and--visibly--she
+was breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing
+furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went
+on, determined now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his
+voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still
+maintained a tone which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only
+a joke he shared with her. "Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed!
+Why, that ole man thinks YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to
+blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel like startin' out
+to whip somebody! He's actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to
+gettin' better while he worked over there at the shop because you kept
+him cheered up and feelin' good. And he says if you could manage to
+just stand him hangin' around a little--maybe not much, but just
+SOMEtimes--again, he believed it'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good.
+'Course, that's only what the doctor said. Me, I don't know anything
+about that; but I can say this much--I never saw any such a MENTAL
+improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect
+you'd find him a good deal more entertaining than what he used to
+be--and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing to suggest after the
+way he piled in over here that day to ask you to stand up before the
+preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc GURNEY, he's got you on his
+brain so bad--"
+
+Mary jumped. "Mr. Sheridan!" she exclaimed.
+
+He sighed profoundly. "There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I
+didn't--"
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried. "But I don't understand--and I think you don't.
+What is it you want me to do?"
+
+He sighed again, but this time with relief. "Well, well!" he said.
+"You're right. It'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could
+with you, all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you
+sometimes, once more. Could you?"
+
+"You don't understand." She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+gesture. "Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make
+your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and
+asked me to marry him--because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him
+any more," she cried in distress. "I CAN'T!"
+
+Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. "You mean because he thought
+that about you?"
+
+"No, no! What he thought was TRUE!"
+
+"Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of you--"
+The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue; he seemed
+to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he
+bravely repeated them. "You mean he thought so much of you that you just
+couldn't stand him around?"
+
+"NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+respected me--too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and
+he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he
+knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan," she said. "But the cheap,
+bad things one has done seem always to come back--they wait, and pull
+you down when you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he
+wasn't 'in love' with me at all."
+
+"He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to
+do--it was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just
+threw it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never
+would--just for you. And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that
+must think quite a heap o' the girl he does it for! You say it was only
+because he was sorry, but let me tell you there's only ONE girl he could
+feel THAT sorry for! Yes, sir!"
+
+"No, no," she said. "Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything
+for anybody."
+
+Sheridan grinned. "Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays," he
+said. "For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in
+'sentiment in business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he
+wanted was, just plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was
+afraid his thinkin' so much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him--the
+way it does sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that
+ain't the trouble." He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. "Now
+here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell you--because you see things
+easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to
+make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for the sake o'
+my business and on his own account, too--and I expect you got some idea
+how it hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in
+half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way! But there isn't anything
+in it to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead
+with dust in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's
+got nothin' to work FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your
+friendship, and I believe--honest--that's what hurt him the worst. Now
+you said we'd talk plain. Why can't you let him come back?"
+
+She covered her face desperately with her hands. "I can't!"
+
+He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+
+"Well, I mustn't press you," he said, gently.
+
+At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face.
+"Ah! He was only sorry for me!"
+
+He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty,
+and it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear
+that even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a
+change came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
+
+"Don't! Don't" she cried. "You mustn't--"
+
+"I won't tell him," said Sheridan, from the doorway. "I won't tell
+anybody anything!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
+sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
+liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon
+their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was
+visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke
+than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more
+noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker in spite of that. The
+traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent--they
+retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross
+the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more
+frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
+motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
+nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves
+were killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main
+trouble was that they could not make the citizens realize that it was
+actually and mortally perilous to go about their city. It was strange,
+for there were probably no citizens of any length of residence who had
+not personally known either some one who had been killed or injured in
+an accident, or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others.
+And yet, perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of
+the faces--the people had something on their minds; they could not stop
+to bother about dirt and danger.
+
+Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
+with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
+department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
+Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
+some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
+into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy
+and repellent; it had nothing but strength and size--but in that
+consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty.
+Sheridan had made some of the things he said emphatic enough to remain
+with her. She went over and over them--and they began to seem true:
+"Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!" "Gurney says he's got you
+on his brain so bad--" The man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.
+The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+
+She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the
+passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from
+the crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore
+black; one was tall and broad and thick, and the other was taller, but
+noticeably slender. And Mary caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and
+his father. They did not see her, and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's
+mellow voice, which had taken a crisper ring: "Sixty-eight thousand
+dollars? Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!" It startled her queerly,
+and as there was a glimpse of his profile she saw for the first time a
+resemblance to his father.
+
+She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead
+of his father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of
+a truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country
+women who were in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs,
+and shoved backward upon him violently. To extricate himself from them
+he stepped back, directly in front of a moving trolley-car--no place for
+absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still absorbed in thoughts concerned
+with what he had been saying to his father. There were shrieks and
+yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and then Mary saw the heavy figure
+of Sheridan plunge straight forward in front of the car. With
+absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like a
+football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed
+that they both went down together. But that was all she could
+see--automobiles, trucks, and wagons closed in between. She made out
+that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and she saw a policeman breaking
+his way through the instantly condensing crowd, while the traffic came
+to a standstill, and people stood up in automobiles or climbed upon
+the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a chance of seeing anything
+horrible.
+
+Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to
+help the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again.
+The crowd became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon the
+ground, and no ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by
+the clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+
+"What IS the matter, lady?"
+
+"Where are they?" Mary cried.
+
+"Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!"
+
+"His SON--"
+
+"Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him--oh, he's not bad
+off, I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The
+fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook
+up. They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse
+me, lady."
+
+Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+ascending. "Whisk-broom up in the office," Sheridan was saying. "You got
+to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got
+any call to blow, though--because I tried to cross after you did. That's
+how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out
+after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand
+flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather
+take it that way, and I don't know but--"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; "he won't get
+it. Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you
+in five minutes." He followed his father into the office anteroom--and
+convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color,
+Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.
+
+He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his
+side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he
+wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again.
+He knew that his father had not "happened" to run into him; he knew that
+Sheridan had instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own
+life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir. Bibbs
+had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan,
+just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside--as of no importance,
+since all was well--reverting immediately to business.
+
+Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he
+had never perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and
+indomitable--and lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's
+very self; laughing at the lightning and at wounds and mutilation;
+conquering, irresistible--and blindly noble. For the first time in his
+life Bibbs began to understand the meaning of being truly this man's
+son.
+
+He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said,
+Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He
+had given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary
+Vertrees in her need. And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking
+how he had gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him--with his
+head on his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had
+not known her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his
+real awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein
+he dreamily celebrated the superiority of "friendship"! The sleep-walker
+had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a
+failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the
+sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for
+him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in
+that, though it was indeed no more than "dust in his mouth." If there
+had been anything "to work for--"
+
+He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast,
+foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly
+against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam,
+while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings
+would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
+
+But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here,
+where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and
+how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had
+begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them
+that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity
+might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well,
+their posterity was here--and there was only turmoil. Where was the
+promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it
+had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the
+very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and
+sacrificing in turn--for what?
+
+The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in
+it--a broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like
+a titanic voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of
+the god, Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its
+servants.
+
+"Come and work!" it seemed to yell. "Come and work for Me, all men! By
+your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I
+summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By
+your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By
+your hope of children I summon you!
+
+"You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your
+Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.
+You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and
+worship of my ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your
+children shall perish knowing no other god!"
+
+And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's
+voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but
+the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed
+hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of
+Bigness to some visitor from out-of-town.
+
+And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But
+with the old, old thought again, "What for?" Bibbs caught a glimmer of
+far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled
+and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably
+conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served
+blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not
+he who had been in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired
+before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble
+in a day.
+
+Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
+some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. "Ugly I am," it
+seemed to say to him, "but never forget that I AM a god!" And the voice
+grew in sonorousness and in dignity. "The highest should serve, but so
+long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man
+who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him,
+I should be beautiful!"
+
+Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
+the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
+figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
+disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
+with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still a
+little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that up
+over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his hands
+in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--
+
+It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
+
+He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
+inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
+violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
+been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
+kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.
+
+"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
+
+"Mary."
+
+He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: "IS IT?"
+
+There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"
+
+"Yes--Mary?"
+
+"I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs.
+They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for
+myself."
+
+"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer it.
+He saved me."
+
+"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until
+you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW."
+
+"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.
+
+There was a long interval before she answered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs?"
+
+"I don't know what to say," he cried. "It's so wonderful to hear your
+voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything
+except that I AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs!"
+
+"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
+I--since then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like a man
+chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary. Mary, won't
+you--let me see you again--near? I think I could make you really forgive
+me--you'd have to--"
+
+"I DID--then."
+
+"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
+more."
+
+"That wasn't the reason." The voice was very low.
+
+"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you
+COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--care?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Mary?" he called, huskily. "If you mean THAT--you'd let me see
+you--wouldn't you?"
+
+And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but
+if it did, the words were, "Yes, Bibbs--dear."
+
+But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so light,
+so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came from the
+air.
+
+Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining
+eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.
+
+Mary stood upon the threshold.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURMOIL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1098.txt or 1098.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/1098/
+
+Produced by Lois Heiser
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/1098.zip b/old/1098.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5693bf4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1098.zip
diff --git a/old/old/turmo10.txt b/old/old/turmo10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0886aa1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/turmo10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9806 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+The Turmoil, A Novel
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+December, 1997  [Etext #1098]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+*****This file should be named turmo10.txt or turmo10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, turmo11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, turmo10a.txt.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
+in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Lois Heiser, Bloomington, Indiana.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 100 billion Etexts given away.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+The Turmoil.  A novel by Booth Tarkington
+1915.
+
+To Laurel.
+
+
+
+There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
+wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke.  The stranger
+must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon him
+instantly.  It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe it, and
+he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better loved than
+cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently tended streets
+incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked and grimy citizens. At
+a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of dust, and if he should decline
+at any time to inhale the smoke he has the meager alternative of suicide.
+
+The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more riches.
+He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling prodigiously.  He
+has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained to one tune:  "Wealth!
+I will get Wealth I will make Wealth!  I will sell Wealth for more Wealth! My
+house shall be dirty, my garment shall be dirty, and I will foul my neighbor
+so that he cannot be clean--but I will get Wealth!  There shall be no clean
+thing about me:  my wife shall be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I
+will get Wealth!"  And yet it is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the
+giant really wants is hasty riches.  To get these he squanders wealth upon the
+four winds, for wealth is in the smoke.
+
+Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no heaving,
+grimy city;  there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly people who had
+understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much of the same type.  It
+was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike," it was called--and when the
+visitor had been taken through the State Asylum for the Insane and made to
+appreciate the view of the cemetery from a little hill, his host's duty as
+Baedeker was done.  The good burghers were given to jogging comfortably about
+in phaetons or in surreys for a family drive on Sunday.  No one was very rich;
+few were very poor; the air was clean, and there was time to live.
+
+But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil and
+labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the mountains, and
+emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good American hearts--
+Bigness.  And that god wrought the panting giant.
+
+In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound longing for
+size.  Year by year the longing increased until it became an accumulated
+force:  We must Grow!  We must be Big!  We must be Bigger!  Bigness means
+Money!  And the thing began to happen;  their longing became a mighty Will. We
+must be Bigger!  Bigger!  Bigger!  Get people here!  Coax them here! Bribe
+them!  Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get them!  Shout them into
+coming!  Deafen them into coming!  Any kind of people; all kinds of people!
+We must be Bigger!  Blow!  Boost!  Brag!  Kill the fault-finder! Scream and
+bellow to the Most High:  Bigness is patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and
+life and happiness!  Bigness is Money!  We want Bigness!
+
+They got it.  From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
+slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick years
+went by.  White people came, and black people and brown people and yellow
+people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and thousands,
+multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than they could die. From
+the four quarters of the earth the people came, the broken and the unbroken,
+the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish, Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh,
+English, French, Swiss, Swedes, Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews,
+Dalmatians, Armenians, Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese,
+Chinese, Turks, and every hybrid that these could propagate.  And if there
+were no Eskimos nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might
+furnish failed to swim and bubble in this crucible?
+
+With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to roar
+and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the tread of
+hurrying multitudes.  The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost
+in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to emerge
+discernibly--a cynical young mongrel, barbaric of feature, muscular and
+cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned apparently in imitation of the
+sketches drawn by newspaper comedians.  The female of his kind came with him
+--a pale girl, shoddy and a little rouged; and they communicated in a nasal
+argot, mainly insolences and elisions.  Nay, the common speech of the people
+showed change:  in place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean,
+and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to
+be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by the public
+journals.
+
+The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus, and
+spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its vitals, like
+benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body of a man, missions
+and refuges offered what resistance they might to the saloons and all the
+hells that cities house and shelter.  Temptation and ruin were ready
+commodities on the market for purchase by the venturesome; highwaymen walked
+the streets at night and sometimes killed; snatching thieves were busy
+everywhere in the dusk; while house-breakers were a common apprehension and
+frequent reality.  Life itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction
+than it was in medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer
+was more like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath the wheels
+lay in ambush at every crossing.
+
+The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did not matter
+much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians. Law-making was a
+pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.  Singular fermentation of
+their humor, they even had laws forbidding dangerous speed. More marvelous
+still, they had a law forbidding smoke!  They forbade chimneys to smoke and
+they forbade cigarettes to smoke.  They made laws for all things and forgot
+them immediately; though sometimes they would remember after a while, and
+hurry to make new laws that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget
+both new and old.  Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes --or
+wherever it was too much to bother--it became a joke.  Influence was the law.
+
+So the place grew.  And it grew strong.  Straightway when he came, each man
+fell to the same worship:
+
+        Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
+        Power to get more power!
+        Riches to get more riches!
+        Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
+        Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
+        O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory!
+        And there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+
+The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust Company
+was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the biggest builder
+and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke.  He had come from a
+country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and he had gone up and
+down in the booms and relapses of that period; but each time he went down he
+rebounded a little higher, until finally, after a year of overwork and
+anxiety--the latter not decreased by a chance, remote but possible, of
+recuperation from the former in the penitentiary--he found himself on top,
+with solid substance under his feet; and thereafter "played it safe."  But his
+hunger to get was unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew
+fiercer.
+
+He was the city incarnate.  He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
+called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish.  And when
+soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. "It's good! It's
+good!" he said, and smacked his lips in gusto.  "Good, clean soot; it's our
+life-blood, God bless it!"  The smoke was one of his great enthusiasms; he
+laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who called to beg his aid
+against it.  "Smoke's what brings your husbands' money home on Saturday night,
+"he told them, jovially.  "Smoke may hurt your little shrubberies in the front
+yard some, but it's the catarrhal climate and the adenoids that starts your
+chuldern coughing.  Smoke makes the climate better.  Smoke means good health:
+it makes the people wash more.  They have to wash so much they wash off the
+microbes.  You go home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets
+out o' the pay-roll--and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out
+more smoke instead o' chokin' it off!"
+
+It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection in
+it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and unquenchably
+optimistic.  From the deepest of his inside all the way out he believed it was
+the finest city in the world.  "Finest" was his word.  He thought of it as his
+city as he thought of his family as his family; and just as profoundly
+believed his city to be the finest city in the world, so did he believe his
+family to be--in spite of his son Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a
+matter of fact, he knew nothing worth knowing about either.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered the
+failure--the "odd one"--of the family.  Born during that most dangerous and
+anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and the father took his
+chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and grew meagerly, only lengthwise,
+through a feeble childhood.  At his christening he was committed for life to
+"Bibbs" mainly through lack of imagination on his mother's part, for though it
+was her maiden name, she had no strong affection for it; but it was "her turn"
+to name the baby, and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of anything
+else she liked AT ALL!"  She offered this explanation one day when the sickly
+boy was nine and after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for his
+name's being Bibbs.  He requested then with unwonted vehemence to be allowed
+to exchange names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with
+the oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being refused went down into the
+cellar and remained there the rest of that day.  And the cook, descending
+toward dusk, reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he was
+in the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing. Removed by force and
+carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to utter a
+syllable of explanation, even under the lash.  This obvious thing was wholly a
+mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to trace and
+connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and mysterious fool, an
+impression not effaced as the years went by.
+
+At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding of a
+man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked, long-faced,
+rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with
+a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at first sight of Bibbs Sheridan
+a stranger might well be solicitous, for he seemed upon the point of tears.
+But to a slightly longer gaze, not grief, but mirth, was revealed as his
+emotion; while a more searching scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he
+seemed about to burst out crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other,
+inevitably, but it was impossible to decide which.  And Bibbs never, on any
+occassion of his life, either laughed aloud or wept.
+
+He was a "disappointment" to his father.  At least that was the parent's word
+--a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to make a "business
+man" of the boy.  He sent Bibbs to "begin at the bottom and learn from the
+ground up" in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic Pump Works, and at
+the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom
+and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.
+
+"You needn't worry, mamma," Sheridan told his wife. "There's nothin' the
+matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick.  I put him
+in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well as the
+next man.  Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists.  Does he
+think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood?  He makes me
+tired!"
+
+Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease was
+incomprehensible to Sheridan.  He had a genuine conviction that lack of
+physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some subtle
+weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or slyness.  He
+understood typhoid fever, pheumonia, and appendicitis--one had them, and
+either died or got over them and went back to work--but when the word
+"nervous" appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly suspicious: he had the
+feeling that there was something contemptible about it, that there was a
+nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
+
+"Look at me," he said.  "Look at what I did at his age!  Why, when I was
+twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin' wood--
+yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a country grocery
+store?  And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it
+makes me tired!  If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick."
+
+He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions--in his
+nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his bedded
+spouse.  "My Lord!" he said.  "If a little, teeny bit o' work like this is too
+much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything!  It's nine-tenths imagination,
+and the rest of it--well, I won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to
+know just how much of it's put on!"
+
+"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan.  "It was when he was here
+to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.  Honey, you
+better come to bed."
+
+"Eat!" he snorted.  "Eat! It's work that makes men eat!  And it's imagination
+that keeps people from eatin'.  Busy men don't get time for that kind of
+imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice about good health, if
+you'll take the trouble to look around you, Mrs. Sheridan: busy men haven't
+got time to be sick and they don't GET sick.  You just think it over and
+you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the sick people you know are either
+women or loafers.  Yes, ma'am!"
+
+"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."
+
+"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her.  "Look at Jim and Roscoe. Look
+at how THEY work!  There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies.  Work never
+made Jim or Roscoe sick.  Jim takes half the load off my shoulders already.
+Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter business man in this city
+than Jim.  I've pushed him, but he give me something to push AGAINST.  You
+can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'!  And look at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that
+boy's done for himself, and barely twenty-seven years old-- married, got a
+fine wife, and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I put up
+the New House for you and Edie."
+
+"Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet," she murmured.  "You better come
+to bed."
+
+"And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl," he continued, emphatically, "as I
+am of Jim and Roscoe for boys.  She'll make some man a mighty good wife when
+the time comes.  She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in the United
+States!  Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school and took the prize
+with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and she'd never even tried to
+write one before.  It's the finest thing I ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so,
+too; and I guess he's a good enough literary judge for me-- turns out more
+advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city.  I tell you she's smart!
+Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise the New House--and I guess
+you had your finger in that, too, mamma!  This old shack's good enough for me,
+but you and little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and
+push her the same as I will Jim and Roscoe.  I tell you I'm mighty proud o'
+them three chuldern!  But Bibbs--"  He paused, shaking his head.  "Honest,
+mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth their
+salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow.  "You did the best
+you could, papa," she said, impatiently, "so come to bed and quit reproachin'
+youself for it."
+
+He glared at her indignantly.  "Reproachin' myself!" he snorted.  "I ain't
+doin' anything of the kind!  What in the name o' goodness would I want to
+reproach myself for?  And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either.  It was the
+best ANYBODY could!  I was givin' him a chance to show what was in him and
+make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia' on me!"
+
+He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and muttered
+his way morosely into bed.
+
+"What?" said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+
+"More like hook-worm, I said," he explained, speaking louder.  "I don't know
+what to do with him!"
+
+
+Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long course
+for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the basis of
+instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was considered
+near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and a cane.  These
+and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and the completion of
+the New House; and it was to that abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when
+the cane, without the nurse, was found sufficient to his support.
+
+Edith met him at the station.  "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he came
+slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train.  She
+gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick glance at
+him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street.  "Do you think they
+ought to 've let you come?  You certainly don't look well!"
+
+"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as his gait;
+a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly he
+stammered.  "Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me.  They had
+to get me in a line between 'em!"
+
+Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first quick
+glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint, troubled
+distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some obligation of business
+to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital.  She was nineteen, fair and slim, with
+small, unequal features, but a prettiness of color and a brilliancy of eyes
+that created a total impression close upon beauty.  Her movements were eager
+and restless: there was something about her, as kind old ladies say, that was
+very sweet; and there was something that was hurried and breathless.  This was
+new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he
+bent upon her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting
+for an automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
+
+"That's the new car," she said.  "Everything's new.  We've got four now,
+besides Jim's.  Roscoe's got two."
+
+"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
+
+"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his tone
+had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
+
+"You look--"  He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
+brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown and
+green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad mode--
+all suited to the October day.
+
+"How do I look?" she insisted.
+
+"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch of
+platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!"  That was a
+substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and preoccupation,
+manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance away from him, did
+not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive intimacies.
+
+"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his glance.
+"Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening thing, for
+the theater--by my day wrist-watch is out of gear.  Bobby Lamhorn broke it
+yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes.  Do you want Claus to help you in?"
+
+"Oh no," said Bibbs.  "I'm alive."  And after a fit of panting subsequent to
+his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course, I have to TELL
+people!"
+
+"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to move
+rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.  "Mother
+said she'd hardly expected you this month."
+
+"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he explained,
+gently.  "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep me any longer,
+because so many really sick people wanted to get in.  They told me to go home
+--and I didn't have any place else to go.  It 'll be all right, Edith; I'll
+sit in the woodshed until after dark every day."
+
+"Pshaw!"  She laughed nervously.  "Of course we're all of us glad to have you
+back."
+
+"Yes?" he said.  "Father?"
+
+"Of course!  Didn't he write and tell you to come home?"  She did not turn to
+him with the question.  All the while she rode with her face directly forward.
+
+"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
+
+She flushed a little.  "I expect I ought to 've written sometime, or one of
+the boys--"
+
+"Oh no; that was all right."
+
+"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs.  I often planned to
+write--and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up.  And I'm
+sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe.  Of course we knew mamma
+was writing often and--"
+
+"Of course!" he said, readily.  "There's a chunk of coal fallen on your glove,
+Edith.  Better flick it off before it smears.  My word! I'd almost forgotten
+how sooty it is here."
+
+"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us."  She blew the
+flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+
+He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a cold
+tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a decoration.  "Yes,"
+said Bibbs.  "It's very gay."  A few moments later, as they passed a corner,
+"Aren't we going home?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes!"  Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
+
+"No.  Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
+
+"No.  This is right.  We're going straight home."
+
+"But we've passed the corner.  We always turned--"
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried.  "Didn't you know we'd moved?  Didn't you know we
+were in the New House?"
+
+"Why, no!" said Bibbs.  "Are you?"
+
+"We've been there a month!  Good gracious!  Didn't you know--"  She broke off,
+flushing again, and then went on hastily:  "Of course, mamma's never been so
+busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but keep on the hop.
+Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day.  Papa's got some of his
+business friends and people from around the OLD-house neighborhood coming
+to-night for a big dinner and 'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but
+mamma's got it all on her hands.  She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she
+did, papa would have her up again before--"
+
+"Of course," said Bibbs.  "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
+
+"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the finest
+house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me!  Papa bought one thing
+I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's perfectly beautiful; it's
+the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and it's eleven feet
+long.  But he would have that old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street
+house hung up in the new dining-room.  You remember it--a table and a
+watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny
+lemons, with two dead prairie-chickens on a chair?  He bought it at a
+furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than
+any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe.  But it's
+horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby
+Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then
+told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he
+did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it.  She makes me tired!
+Sibyl!"
+
+Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to awkwardness,
+vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full gaze always to the
+front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation of her sister-in-law.
+
+"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed to strike
+fire on her lips.  "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have married somebody
+from HERE that would have done us some good!  He could have got in with Bobby
+Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and Bobby 'd have introduced him to the
+nicest girls in town, but instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl
+Rink!  I met some awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at
+Atlantic City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even
+HEARD of 'em!"
+
+"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.
+
+"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
+vehemence.  "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan lately --"
+
+"It's only lately?"
+
+"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly.  "Of course, I always did
+see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about ROSCOE!"
+
+"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
+
+The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous laughter,
+and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively:   "Why, she'd have married YOU!"
+
+"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
+
+"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed.  "I only meant--I didn't mean--"
+
+"Never mind, Edith," he consoled her.  "You see, she couldn't have married me,
+because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as mercenary as all that
+she'd have been too clever.  The head doctor even had to lend me the money for
+my ticket home."
+
+"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled.  "I only meant I
+thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to marry somebody
+she'd have married anybody that asked her."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight."  And, perceiving that his
+sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters
+prefectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+
+"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later.  "Too
+lovely!  If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a MAN,
+I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!"
+
+"'Behave'?"
+
+"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically evasive
+when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and in this not
+unique of her sex.
+
+Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture.  "Business is crawling
+up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating a vasty
+structure in course of erection.  "The boarding-houses come first and then
+the--"
+
+"That isn't for shops," she informed him.  "That's a new investment of papa's
+--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
+
+"Well, well," he murmured.  "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
+known here already."
+
+"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently.  "I guess there
+isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't know who we
+are.  But we aren't in with the right people."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed.  "Who's all that?"
+
+"Who's all what?"
+
+"The 'right' people.'"
+
+"You know what I mean:  the best people, the old families--the people that
+have the real social position in this town and that know they've got it."
+
+Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused.  "I
+thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it didn't
+know it," he said.  "I've always understood that it was very unsatisfactory,
+because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and if you had it you
+didn't know it."
+
+"That's just bosh," she retorted.  "They know it in this town, all right!  I
+found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out in
+this direction.  The right people in this town aren't always the
+society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't all
+belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their clubs--but
+they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling and they're just
+as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about anywhere in the world.
+Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and the grandfathers of the girls
+of my age knew each other, and--"
+
+"I see," Bibbs interrupted, gravely.  "Their ancestors fled together from many
+a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins.  I always
+understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of Vertrees
+who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to these parts
+because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him."
+
+Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm.  "You mustn't repeat that story,
+Bibbs, even if it's true.  The Vertreeses are THE best family, and of course
+the very oldest here;  they were an old family even before Mary Vertrees's
+great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement.  He came from
+Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there YET--some of the best
+people in Lynn!"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+
+"And there are other old families like the Vertreeses," she went on, not
+heeding him; "the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths--"
+
+"Strange names to me," he interrupted.  "Poor things!  None of them have my
+acquaintance."
+
+"No, that's just it!" she cried.  "And papa had never even heard the name of
+Vertrees!  Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him, and
+he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages from the
+pay-roll on Saturday night!  HE told us about it, and I thought I just
+couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed!  Mr. Vertrees has always
+lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of course.  They're the
+stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town.  And to crown it all, papa
+went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion--it's in the
+very heart of the best new residence district now, and that's where the New
+House is, right next door to them--and I must say it makes their place look
+rather shabby!  I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers,
+but she never did any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break
+I doubt if she'll do that!  They haven't called."
+
+"And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing Dan'l
+Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--"
+
+"Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees.  I made him understand
+that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees
+and be nice to him.  It's just this way: if we don't know THEM, it's
+practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we DO know them
+and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people.  They can do the
+whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother
+to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done
+it; and if Mrs.  Vertrees decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs. Lamhorn
+'ll never come.  That's ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage!  She SAID Bobby offered
+to bring his mother--"
+
+"You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Oh, he's a friend of the whole family," she returned, with a petulance which
+she made an effort to disguise.  "Roscoe and he got acquainted somewhere, and
+they take him to the theater about every other night.  Sibyl has him to lunch,
+too, and keeps--"  She broke off with an angry little jerk of the head. "We
+can see the New House from the second corner ahead.  Roscoe has built straight
+across the street from us, you know.  Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a
+snake, sometimes--the way she pulls the wool over people's eyes!  She honeys
+up to papa and gets anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes
+fun of him behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it!  She
+got him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it
+was--"
+
+"Good heavens!" said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and the
+car swung to the right, following a bend in the street.  "Is that the New
+House?"
+
+"Yes.  What do you think of it?"
+
+"Well," he drawled, "I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
+bigger; I can't be certain till I measure."
+
+And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:  "But
+it's beautiful!"
+
+
+It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate.  An architect who
+loved the milder "Gothic motives" had built what he liked:  it was to be seen
+at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a picture out of
+his head into a noble and exultant reality.  At the same time a
+landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made accessories of
+screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look of newness remained
+upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at least one thing yet clean
+under the grimy sky.  For, though the smoke was thinner in this direction, and
+at this long distance from the heart of the town, it was not absent, and
+under tutelage of wind and weather could be malignant even here, where cows
+had wandered in the meadows and corn had been growing not ten years gone.
+
+Altogether, the New House was a success.  It was one of those architects'
+successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing of the
+people who lived in it save that they were rich.  There are houses that cannot
+be detached from their own people without protesting:  every inch of mortar
+seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no matter what be done to
+it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the old name sadly to itself
+unceasingly.  But the New House was of a kind to change hands without emotion.
+In our swelling cities, great places of its type are useful as financial
+gauges of the business tides; rich families, one after another, take title and
+occupy such houses as fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide.  It was
+impossible to imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the
+New House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it-- "beautiful."
+
+What the architect thought of the "Golfo di Napoli," which hung in its vast
+gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to be
+conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
+
+"Edith, did you say only eleven feet?" Bibbs panted, staring at it, as the
+white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his overcoat.
+
+"Eleven without the frame," she explained.  "It's splendid, don't you think?
+It lightens things up so.  The hall was kind of gloomy before."
+
+"No gloom now!" said Bibbs.
+
+"This statue in the corner is pretty, too," she remarked.  "Mamma and I bought
+that."  And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a grove of tubbed
+palms, a "life-size," black-bearded Moor, of a plastic compositon painted with
+unappeasable gloss and brilliancy.  Upon his chocolate head he wore a gold
+turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped spear; and for the rest, he was red
+and yellow and black and silver.
+
+"Hallelujah!" was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith, saying
+she would "find mamma," left him blinking at the Moor.  Presently, after she
+had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood waiting, Bibbs's
+traveling-bag in his hand.  "What do YOU think of it?" Bibbs asked, solemnly.
+
+"Gran'!" replied the servitor.  "She mightly hard to dus'.  Dus' git in all
+'em wrinkles.  Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'."
+
+"I expect she must be," said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively to the
+black bull beard for a moment.  "Is there a place anywhere I could lie down?"
+
+"Yessuh.  We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh.  Right up
+staihs, suh.  Nice room."
+
+He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to rest, and
+noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the exodus from the
+"old" house.  Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the patently nominal
+direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly enjoying his own
+affectation of being harassed with care.
+
+"Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night," Bibbs's
+guide explained, chuckling.  "Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night!  Big
+doin's!"
+
+The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in every
+particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it pleasant-- though,
+indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed pleasant to him after his
+journey.  He stretched himself flat immediately, and having replied "Not now"
+to the attendant's offer to unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
+
+White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made an exit
+on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed overseer --in the
+hall without.  Said the emerging one:  "He mighty shaky, Mist' Jackson. Drop
+right down an' shet his eyes.  Eyelids all black.  Rich folks gotta go same as
+anybody else.  Anybody ast me if I change 'ith 'at ole boy --No, suh!  Le'm
+keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an' keep out the ground!"
+
+Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference.  "Yessuh, he look tuh me like
+somebody awready laid out," he concluded.  And upon the stairway landing, near
+by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise pessimistic.
+
+"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper.  "It give me a turn to see him go
+by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish!  Mrs. Cronin, tell me:  d'it make ye
+kind o' sick to look at um?"
+
+"Sick?  No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"
+
+"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--"  She
+fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+
+It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+
+She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like
+drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her.  Her husband and her
+daughter had long ago absorbed her.  What intelligence she had was given
+almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in the
+presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded.  Edith lived all
+day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his wife to her
+unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her existence as a
+thing separate from his.  She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him
+through them when she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy
+with the inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not
+comprehend it and partook of it only as a spectator.  They had known but one
+actual altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the
+early days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
+impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he had
+thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of "The Black Crook."
+But she had not once referred to this during the last ten years.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled more
+than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time and to be
+vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down over some unruly
+internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's door.
+
+At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
+rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+
+"Don't go, mother," he said.  "I'm not asleep."  He swung his long legs over
+the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder, restraining
+him; and he lay flat again.
+
+"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for a minute, but
+I want to see how you seem.  Edith said--"
+
+"Poor Edith!" he murmured.  "She couldn't look at me.  She--"
+
+"Nonsense!"  Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came back to
+the bedside.  "You look a great deal better than what you did before you went
+to the sanitarium, anyway.  It's done you good; a body can see that right
+away.  You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't got much color--"
+
+"No," he said, "I haven't much color."
+
+"But you will have when you get your strength back."
+
+"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully.  "THEN I will."
+
+"You look a great deal better than what I expected."
+
+"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.
+
+"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her exaggerate a
+little.  What about your diet?"
+
+"That's all right.  They told me to eat anything."
+
+"Anything at all?"
+
+"Well--anything I could."
+
+"That's good," she said, nodding.  "They mean for you just to build up your
+strength.  That's what they told me the last time I went to see you at the
+sanitarium.  You look better than what you did then, and that's only a little
+time ago.  How long was it?"
+
+"Eight months, I think."
+
+"No, it couldn't be.  I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was longer 'n I
+thought.  And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely even time to write
+more than just a line to ask how you were gettin' along, but I told Edith to
+write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked Jim to, too, and they both said they
+would, so I suppose you've kept up pretty well on the home news."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up a little
+and take an interest in things.  That's what papa was sayin' this morning,
+after we got your telegram; and that's what 'll stimilate your appetite, too.
+He was talkin' over his plans for you--"
+
+"Plans?"  Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light with
+his hand, so that he might see her better.  "What--"  He paused.  "What plans
+is he making for me, mother?"
+
+She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.  "Well, you
+better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible nervousness.  "He
+better tell you himself.  I don't feel as if I had any call, exactly, to go
+into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway."  She came and stood by the
+bedside once more.  "But you must remember, Bibbs, whatever papa does is for
+the best.  He loves his chuldern and wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em
+--and you'll always find he's right in the end."
+
+He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and she
+rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.  "You get
+a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night."
+
+"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too quickly.
+Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly, "Does father
+expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"
+
+"Well, I think he does," she answered.  "You see, it's the 'house-warming,' as
+he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around us, as
+well as the old friends and other folks.  It's just what he thinks you
+need--to take an interest and liven up.  You don't feel too bad to come down,
+do you?"
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Take a good look at me," he said.
+
+"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness.  "You're not so bad off
+as you think you are, Bibbs.  You're on the mend; and it won't do you any harm
+to please your--"
+
+"It isn't that," he interrupted.  "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might spoil
+somebody's appetite.  Edith--"
+
+"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn.  "You're a
+plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody!  You look like you been
+through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all there is to it."
+
+"All right.  I'll come to the party.  If the rest of you can stand it, I can!"
+
+"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall.  "Now take a nap,
+and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get dressed up
+before dinner.  You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!"
+
+Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed.  Something she had
+said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over interminably.
+"His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--"
+And then, taking the place of "his plans for you," after what seemed a long,
+long while, her flurried voice came back to him insistently, seeming to
+whisper in his ear:  "He loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves
+his chuldern"--"you'll find he's always right--you'll find he's always
+right--"  Until at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and
+distorted realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing
+that came out of the wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing
+within the room, and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky,
+bridging the whole earth from pole to pole.  It was a cloud of black smoke,
+and out of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over,
+"His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--"  And then there
+was nothing.
+
+He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
+against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting to
+his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that it flew
+up, letting in a pale sunset.
+
+He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the next house,
+as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old Vertrees country mansion."
+It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the Sheridans' by a young
+hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box of a house with a giant
+salt-cellar atop for a cupola.  Paint had been spared for a long time, and no
+one could have put a name to the color of it, but in spite of that the place
+had no look of being out at heel, and the sward was as neatly trimmed as the
+Sheridans' own.
+
+The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of the
+New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly opposite
+the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make a little knoll
+upon which stood a small rustic "summer-house."  It was almost on a level with
+Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and it was easy for him to imagine
+the present dynasty of Vertreeses in grievous outcry when they had found this
+retreat ruined by the juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the
+"summer-house" was pleasant and pretty in summer.  It had the lookof a place
+wherein little girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and
+"housekeeping," or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull
+on warm afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
+dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
+
+Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship with
+anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window and
+paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection.  He looked the
+mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long and
+earnest scrutiny of the face.  Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was
+profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent upon
+classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become pessimistic.  He
+shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and
+continued to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.
+
+"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.
+
+And at that he was instantly aware of an observer.  Turning quickly, he was
+vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of the
+"summer-house" and staring full into his window--straight into his eyes, too,
+for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the flashingly censorious
+withdrawal of her own.  Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine,
+the manner of her action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect
+that she was in the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and
+tending, and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to
+any other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she had
+allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of things of
+which she was in reality unconscious.
+
+Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the same
+time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan or belonging
+to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained composure, and
+sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of the Vertreeses. An
+elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door and came to meet her.
+
+"Are you ready, Mary?  I've been looking for you.  What were you doing?"
+
+"Nothing.  Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows," said Mary Vertrees.
+"I got caught at it."
+
+"Mary!" cried her mother.  "Just as we were going to call!  Good heavens!"
+
+"We'll go, just the same," the daughter returned.  "I suppose those women
+would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground."
+
+"But WHO saw you?" insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+
+"One of the sons, I suppose he was.  I believe he's insane, or something.  At
+least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk about
+him.  He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.  Then he
+looked out and caught me."
+
+"What did he--"
+
+"Nothing, of course."
+
+"How did he look?"
+
+"Like a ghost in a blue suit," said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the street
+and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who was observing
+them from the window of his library.  "Rather tragic and altogether
+impossible.  Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!"
+
+And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for their
+gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+
+
+Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who had
+something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and began to
+pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return.  He was about sixty; a
+small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little sketch of an elderly
+dandy.  His lambrequin mustache--relic of a forgotten Anglomania--had been
+profoundly black, but now, like his smooth hair, it was approaching an equally
+sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a
+flavor of mode.  And for greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches;
+gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses
+in a pocket, a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat,
+labeling him the descendant of patriot warriors.
+
+The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr. Vertrees
+was anxious and decorative.  Under a mantel of imitation black marble a merry
+little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow "Eastlake" bookcases with
+long glass doors, and upon comfortable, incongruous furniture, and upon
+meaningless "woodwork" everywhere, and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings
+which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty
+years of possession, as "very fine things."  They had been the first people in
+town to possess Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but
+they still had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and
+when Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's houses
+he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he found an edition of
+Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final corroboration of culture,
+he would say, inevitably, "Those people know good pictures and they know good
+books."
+
+The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,  had
+ruined him because he had failed to understand it.  When towns begin to grow
+they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody.  Mr. Vertrees
+had been most strikingly the somebody in this case.  At about the time he
+bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance, an office-building and a
+large house not far from it, where he spent the winter; and he had a country
+place--a farm of four hundred acres--where he went for the summers to the
+comfortable, ugly old house that was his home now, perforce, all the year
+round.  If he had known how to sit still and let things happen he would have
+prospered miraculously; but, strangely enough, the dainty little man was one
+of the first to fall down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway
+to enact the role of Juggernaut for his better education.  He was a true
+prophet of the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
+buying bad.  He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and
+read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained milkers milked
+her dry and then ate her.  He sold the office-building and the house in town
+to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then he sold the farm, except
+the house and the ground about it, to pay the taxes on the suburban lots and
+to "keep them up."  The lots refused to stay up; but he had to do something to
+keep himself and his family up, so in despair he sold the lots (which went up
+beautifully the next year) for "traction stock" that was paying dividends; and
+thereafter he ceased to buy and sell.  Thus he disappeared altogether from the
+commercial surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top;
+and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her "anti-smoke"
+committee, had never heard the name.
+
+Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees "managed
+somehow" on the dividends, though "managing" became more and more difficult as
+the years went by and money bought less and less.  But there came a day when
+three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took greedy counsel with four
+fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long after that there were no more
+dividends for Mr. Vertrees.  In fact, there was nothing for Mr. Vertrees,
+because the "traction stock" henceforth was no stock at all, and he had
+mortgaged his house long ago to help "manage somehow" according to his
+conception of his "position in life"--one of his own old-fashioned phrases.
+Six months before the completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had
+sold his horses and the worn Victoria and "station-wagon," to pay the arrears
+of his two servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--
+and a pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
+ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service.  Mr.
+Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the
+buzzing city--he could do nothing.
+
+It may be said that he was at the end of his string.  Such times do come in
+all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if his
+feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
+
+The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight closed
+round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round about the
+heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone of firelight.
+But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the rattle of an outer
+door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went ringing through the
+house.  Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her return with her mother
+from their expedition among the barbarians.
+
+She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by the
+hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes.  Mrs. Vertrees
+followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary, she looked vaguely
+disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite certain to agree with her,
+and regretted it.
+
+"Papa!  Oh, oh!"  And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon her
+eyes.  "I'm SO glad you made us go!  I wouldn't have missed it--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees shook her head.  "I suppose I'm very dull," she said, gently. "I
+didn't see anything amusing.  They're most ordinary, and the house is
+altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--"
+
+"Papa!" Mary cried, breaking in.  "They asked us to DINNER!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"And I'm GOING!" she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.  "Think of
+it!  Never in their house before; never met any of them but the daughter-- and
+just BARELY met her--"
+
+"What about you?" interrrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his wife.
+
+She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would not
+agree with her.  "I couldn't!" she said.  "I--"
+
+"Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!" cried
+Mary, choking.  "And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn it into a
+cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a squeal!"
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, "that Mary will have an
+uproarious time at my funeral.  She makes fun of--"
+
+Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel and,
+leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her shoe,
+twinkling in the firelight.
+
+"THEY didn't notice anything," she said.  "So far as they were concerned,
+mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed."
+
+"Who were 'they'?" asked her father.  "Whom did you see?"
+
+"Only the mother and daughter," Mary answered.  "Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy and
+rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the fashion
+magazines and talks about New York people that have their pictures in 'em. She
+tutors the mother, but not very successfully--partly because her own
+foundation is too flimsy and partly because she began too late.  They've got
+an enormous Moor of painted plaster or something in the hall, and the girl
+evidently thought it was to her credit that she selected it!"
+
+"They have oil-paintings, too," added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of gentle
+price at the Landseers.  "I've always thought oil-paintings in a private house
+the worst of taste."
+
+"Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!" said Mr. Vertrees, finishing the
+implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand.  "Go on, Mary.  None
+of the rest of them came in?  You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan or--"  He paused
+and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with the poker.  "Or one of
+the sons?"
+
+Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.  He
+turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
+
+"No," she said, "no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the sons
+thoroughly!"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+
+"Oh, most adroitly, too!" laughed the girl.  "Only she couldn't help
+unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!"
+
+"Mary Vertrees!"
+
+"Never mind, mamma!  Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM could
+help unconsiously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the same time! They
+all three kept looking at me and talking about the oldest son, Mr. James
+Sheridan, Junior.  Mrs. Sheridan said his father is very anxious 'to get Jim
+to marry and settle down,' and she assured me that 'Jim is right cultivated.'
+Another of the sons, the youngest one, caught me looking in the window this
+afternoon; but they didn't seem to consider him quite one of themselves,
+somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he
+had been 'right sick,' and had been to some cure or other.  They seemed
+relieved to bring the subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at
+me!  The other brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the
+new house across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns,
+Robert, goes so often.  I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch
+with Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe.  'Jim'
+still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night.  Papa--"  She stepped
+nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he
+did.  There may have been a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their
+surface merry with laughter.  "Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and
+Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a lunatic.  Roscoe is married.
+Papa, does it have to be Jim?"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply.  "You're outrageous!  That's a perfectly
+horrible way of talking!"
+
+"Well, I'm close to twenty-four," said Mary, turning to her.  "I haven't been
+able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I never
+shall.  Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in my life
+--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began to pay back.
+Unfortunately, I don't kow how to do anything--but something's got to be
+done."
+
+"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother, plaintively.
+"It's not--it's not--"
+
+"No, it's not," said Mary.  "I know that!"
+
+"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired, uneasily.
+"'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"
+
+"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it.  "We were so very cordial and easy!
+I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind old woman on
+a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who did it.  She played
+around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's in a dreadful hurry to
+get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it might impress that Lamhorn
+boy to find us there to-night.  It's a sort of house-warming dinner, and they
+talked about it and talked about it--and then the girl got her courage up and
+blurted out the invitation.  And mamma--"  Here Mary was once more a victim to
+incorrigible merriment.  "Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T!  She swallowed
+and squealed--I mean you coughed, dear!  And then, papa, she said that you and
+she had promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
+daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show!  So there I am, and
+there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!"
+
+And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture of
+flying grace as she sped.
+
+When she came down, at twenty munutes after seven, her father stood in the
+hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through the dark. He
+looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze was fond and
+proud--and profoundly disturbed.  But she smiled and nodded gaily, and, when
+she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said.  "I LOOK rich, don't I,
+papa?"
+
+She did.  She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called "regal."
+A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily poised as a
+boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were like her mother's, but
+for the rest she went back to some stronger and livelier ancestor than either
+of her parents.
+
+"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.
+
+"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.
+
+"And my dress?"  She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor of
+white and silver.  "Anything better at Nice next winter, do you think?" She
+laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again.  "Two years old,
+and no one would dream it!  I did it over."
+
+"You can do anything, Mary."
+
+There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a significance
+not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic.  It was as if he suggested something
+to her and begged her forgiveness in the same breath.
+
+And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he.  She lifted her
+hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he should
+feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+
+"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely.  "I know exactly what you
+want me to do."
+
+
+It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there was
+an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room, and after a
+preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to converse--necessarily at the
+tops of their voices.  The whole company of fifty sat at a great oblong table,
+improvised for the occasion by carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an
+improvisation, it seemed a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores
+of crystal and silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
+white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
+marvelous, gleaming buildings:  one in the center and one at each end, white
+miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing.  They were
+models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan
+Apartments, and the Pump Works.  Nearly all the guests recognized them without
+having to be told what they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.
+
+The arrangement of the table was visably baronial.  At the head sat the great
+Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him; then on each
+side came the neighbors of the "old" house, grading down to vassals and
+retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments, and the like-- at
+the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a consolation for the less
+important.  Here, too, among the thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a
+meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could look at him and eat.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were wholesome
+folk who understood that dinner meant something intended for introduction into
+the system by means of an aperture in the face, devised by nature for that
+express purpose.  And besides, nobody looked at Bibbs.
+
+He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong enough
+to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting effort, and the
+talk that went on about him was too fast and too fragmentary for his drawl to
+keep pace with it.  So he felt relieved when each of his neighbors in turn,
+after a polite inquiry about his health, turned to seek livelier reponses in
+other directions.  For the talk went on with the eating, incessantly.  It rose
+over the throbbing of the orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and
+china and glass, and there was a mighty babble.
+
+"Yes, sir!  Started without a dollar." . . . "Yellow flounces on the
+overskirt--" . . . "I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger this
+year,' I says." . . . "Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one weeks." . . .
+"One of the bigest men in the bigest--" ...  "The wife says she'll have to let
+out my pants if my appetite--" . . . "Say, did you see that statue of a Turk
+in the hall?  One of the finest things I ever--"  . . . "Not a dollar, not a
+nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I says, and so he ups and--" .
+. . "Yes, the baby makes four,  they've lost now.". . . "Well, they got their
+raise, and they went in big." . . . "Yes, sir!  Not a dollar to his name, and
+look at what--" . . . "You wait! The population of this town's goin' to hit
+the million mark before she stops." . . . "Well, if you can show me a bigger
+deal than--"
+
+And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the continual
+booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the sentence, "Yes,
+young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's just what'll do it for
+my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass grow where one grew before!"  It
+was his familiar flourish, an old story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed
+for the edification of Mary Vertrees.
+
+It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave.  He sat there
+knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big, smooth, red
+face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the simplest,
+happiest, most boy-like vanity.  He was the picture of health, of good cheer,
+and of power on a holiday.  He had thirty teeth, none bought, and showed most
+of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was thick, and as unruly as a farm
+laborer's; his chest was deep and big beneath its vast facade of starched
+white linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling three large pearls; his
+hands were stubby and strong, and he used them freely in gestures of marked
+picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he
+had not lost the look of readiness and activity.
+
+He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at every
+one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they were noisy;
+and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure, and, of course,
+met the warmest encouragement from his guests.  Edith had discovered that he
+had very foggy notions of the difference between a band and an orchestra, and
+when it was made clear to him he had held out for a band until Edith
+threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra they hired consoled him, and
+he had now no regrets in the matter.
+
+He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the table
+with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate or a glass,
+without permitting these side-products to interfere with the real business of
+eating and shouting.
+
+"Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!" he would bellow down the length of the table
+to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the "Toreador" song,
+perhaps.  "Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy Lee'!"  And when the
+leader would shake his head apologetically in answer to an obedient shriek
+from Mrs. Sheridan, the "Toreador" continuing vehemently, Sheridan would roar
+half-remembered fragments of "Nancy Lee," naturally mingling some Bizet with
+the air of that uxorious tribute.
+
+"Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! "A sail-er's wife a
+sail-er's star should be!  Yo ho, oh, oh! "Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee!  Oh,
+Na-hancy Lee!"
+
+"HAY, there, old lady!" he would bellow.  "Tell 'em to play 'In the Gloaming.'
+In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they don't know that,
+what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'?  THAT'S good music! That's the
+kind o' music I like!  Come on, now!  Mrs. Callin, get 'em singin' down in
+your part o' the table.  What's the matter you folks down there, anyway?
+Larboard watch, ahoy!"
+
+"What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals.  La-a-r-board watch,
+ahoy!"
+
+No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans' table
+had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than conviction,
+it bore none now; though "mineral waters" were copiously poured from bottles
+wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved wholly satisfactory to almost
+all of the guests.  And certainly no wine could have inspired more turbulent
+good spirits in the host.  Not even Bibbs was an alloy in this night's
+happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had said, he had "plans for Bibbs"--plans
+which were going to straighten out some things that had gone wrong.
+
+So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps, turning to
+Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the table at his right,
+he would become autobiographical.  Gentlemen less naive than he had paid her
+that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired the autobiographical impulse in
+every man who met her--it needed but the sight of her.
+
+The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund host
+as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund king and
+the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court to each other, and
+everybody paid court to them.  Down near the sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs
+sat, there was audible speculation and admiration.  "Wonder who that lady
+is--makin' such a hit with the old man."  "Must be some heiress."  "Heiress?
+Golly, I guess I could stand it to marry rich, then!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees with an
+almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect Sheridan's pastoral
+gaieties--and other things--would have upon her, but she seemed delighted with
+everything, and with him most of all.  She treated him as if he were some
+delicious, foolish old joke that she understood perfectly, laughing at him
+almost violently when he bragged--probably his first experience of that kind
+in his life.  It enchanted him.
+
+As he proclaimed to the table, she had "a way with her."  She had, indeed, as
+Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the feast began. Since
+his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed upon him so protracted a
+full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the look, his lovely neighbor said--and
+it was her first speech to him--
+
+"I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and "Why?" was all he managed to say.
+
+She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a mystification
+equal to his own, by his sister across the table.  No one, reflected Edith,
+could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would "really flirt" with
+married men--she was obviously the "opposite of all that."  Edith defined her
+as a "thoroughbred," a "nice girl"; and the look given to Roscoe was
+astounding.  Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and she was another whom it puzzled
+--though not because its recipient was married.
+
+"Because!" said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable.  "And also
+because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead for both
+of us if we don't get along."
+
+Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been brought
+up to believe that when a man married he "married and settled down."  It was
+"all right," he felt, for a man as old as his father to pay florid compliments
+to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but for himself--"a young married
+man"--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't even be quite moral. He knew that young
+married people might have friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl
+and Lamhorn never "flirted"--they were always very matter-of-fact with each
+other.  Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she
+hoped he was susceptible.
+
+"Yes--we're neighbors," he said, awkwardly.
+
+"Next-door neighbors in houses, too," she added.
+
+"No, not exactly.  I live across the street."
+
+"Why, no!" she exclaimed, and seemed startled.  "Your mother told me this
+afternoon that you lived at home."
+
+"Yes, of course I live at home.  I built that new house across the street."
+
+"But you--"  she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into her
+cheek.  "But I understood--"
+
+"No," he said; "my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year, but
+that's all.  Edith and Jim live with them, of course."
+
+"I--I see," she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from him
+and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the name, "Mr.
+James Sheridan, Jr."  And from that moment Roscoe had little enough cause for
+wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing coquetries.
+
+Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor to "get
+through with old Roscoe," as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a chance.
+"Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always been the steady wheel-horse of
+the family.  Jim was "steady" enough, but was considered livelier than Roscoe,
+which in truth is not saying much for Jim's liveliness. As their father
+habitually boasted, both brothers were "capable, hard-working young business
+men," and the principal difference between them was merely that which resulted
+from Jim's being still a bachelor.  Physically they were of the same type:
+dark of eyes and of hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was
+several inches taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth
+of the father.  Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could
+have sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing "rich
+suitings in dark mixtures."
+
+Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
+color, which increased his approbation.  "What's that old Roscoe saying to
+you, Miss Vertrees?" he asked.  "These young married men are mighty  forward
+nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush."
+
+"Am I blushing?" she said.  "Are you sure?"  And with that she gave him ample
+opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted upon Roscoe.
+"I think you must be mistaken," she continued.  "I think it's your brother who
+is blushing.  I've thrown him into confusion."
+
+"How?"
+
+She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as confidential
+as she could make it, under cover of the uproar.  "By trying to begin with him
+a courtship I meant for YOU!"
+
+This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was.  He supposed it a
+nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath.  He realized that he
+wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly snared by
+that realization.
+
+"By George!" he said.  "I guess you're the kind of girl that can say anything
+--yes, and get away with it, too!"
+
+She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
+laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and she
+said: "But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not.  I wish
+you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a change to get away with YOU?"
+
+"More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!" Jim was inspired to
+reply.  "Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making fun of me
+like that."
+
+"I mightn't be so much in fun as you think," she said, regarding him with
+sudden gravity.
+
+"Well," said Jim, in simple honesty, "you're a funny girl!"
+
+Her gravity continued an instant longer.  "I may not turn out to be funny for
+YOU."
+
+"So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can manage
+to be satisfied."  And with that, to his own surprise, it was his turn to
+blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+
+"Yes," he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, "I can see you're
+the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really means
+anything!"
+
+"'Laugh'!" she cried, gaily.  "Why, it might be a matter of life and death!
+But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once, considering the
+mistake I made with your brother."
+
+Jim was dazed.  She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and nonsense
+with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it; he was but too
+sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a consciousness that he could
+never quite know this giddy and alluring lady, no matter how long it pleased
+her to play with him.  But he mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
+
+"Put what question?" he said, breathlessly.
+
+"As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family," she returned, speaking
+slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, "I think it would be well for me
+to know at once whether you are already walking out with any young lady or
+not.  Mr. Sheridan, think well!  Are you spoken for?"
+
+"Not yet," he gasped.  "Are you?"
+
+"NO!" she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
+proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+
+Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a lively
+conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss Vertrees was
+"starting rather picturesquely with Jim."  And he added, languidly, "Do you
+suppose she WOULD?"
+
+For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed interested
+in the clasp of a long "rope" of pearls, a loop of which she was allowing to
+swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table and following with
+her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the clasp at the end of the
+loop.  She wore many jewels.  She was pretty, but hers was not the kind of
+prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous accessories, and jeweled
+head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
+
+"I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim," repeated
+Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+"I heard you."  There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her eyes, no
+matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just now she did not
+care to cover it; she looked sullen.  "Starting any stronger than you did with
+Edith?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, keep the peace!" he said, crossly.  "That's off, of course."
+
+"You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely," said Sibyl,
+looking at him steadily.  "You've talked to her for--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake," he begged, "keep the peace!"
+
+"Well, what have you just been doing?!"
+
+"SH!" he said.  "Listen to your father-in-law."
+
+Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having begun
+to play "The Rosary," to his vast content.
+
+"I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM," he roared, beating the measures with
+his fork.  "EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's the matter
+with all you folks?  Why'n't you SING?  Miss Vertrees, I bet a thousand
+dollars YOU sing!  Why'n't--"
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, "you don't
+know what you interrupted!  Your son isn't used to my rough ways, and my
+soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say something
+important."
+
+"I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!" the father threatened,
+more delighted with her than ever.  "By gosh! if I was his age--or a widower
+right NOW--"
+
+"Oh, wait!" cried Mary.  "If they'd only make less noice!  I want Mrs.
+Sheridan to hear."
+
+"She'd say the same," he shouted.  "She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
+couldn't get ahead o' Jim.  Why, when I was his age--"
+
+"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who had
+grown read again.  "He's going to tell us how, when he was your age, he made
+those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could see for yourself
+he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"
+
+At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped.  "Look here, young lady!"
+he roared.  "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or I'm goin' to
+kiss you!"
+
+Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but Mary
+Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+
+"Both!" she cried. "Both!  The one to make me forget the other!"
+
+"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.  "Jim,"
+he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send you back to
+the machine-shop with Bibbs!"
+
+And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and watching Mary
+Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich little girl in a
+garden--Bibbs heard.  He heard--and he knew what his father's plans were now.
+
+
+Mrs. Vertrees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired after a
+restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his Landseers.  Mary had
+taken a key, insisting that he should not come for her and seeming confident
+that she would not lack for escort; nor did the sequel prove her confidence
+unwarranted.  But Mrs. Vertrees had a long vigil of it.
+
+She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her in  a
+wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they had been
+when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through the slow night
+hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her own room, which was
+directly over the "front hall."  There, book in hand, she employed the time in
+her own reminiscences, though it was her belief that she was reading Madame de
+Remusat's.
+
+Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
+deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought her--
+and there is tragedy.  Like her husband, she thought backward because she did
+not dare think forward definitely.  What thinking forward this troubled couple
+ventured took the form of a slender hope which neither of them could have
+borne to hear put in words, and yet they had talked it over, day after day,
+from the very hour when they heard Sheridan was to build his New House next
+door.  For--so quickly does any ideal of human behavior become an antique
+--their youth was of the innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding" and
+"gentility," and no craft had been more straitly trained upon them than that
+of talking about things without mentioning them.  Herein was marked the most
+vital difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
+Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
+matters.  He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
+grocery while they were still dancing.
+
+It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
+clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
+Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"
+
+The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath of cold
+and bracing air into her mother's room.  "Yes," she said, before Mrs. Vertrees
+could speak, "he brought me home!"
+
+She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light pat
+upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+
+"Mamma!" Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that she had
+enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold.  "Why don't you ask me?"
+
+This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable.  "I don't--" she
+faltered.  "Ask you what, Mary?"
+
+"How I got along and what he's like."
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary.  "And I got along so fast--"  She broke
+off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went at it, of course.
+We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
+plaintively.
+
+"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow afternoon, and
+to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.  You see, after you
+give the first push, you must leave it to them while YOU pretend to run away!"
+
+"My dear, I don't know what to--"
+
+"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her.  "So that's all right! Now
+I'll tell you all about it.  It was gorgeous and deafening and tee-total.  We
+could have lived a year on it.  I'm not good at figures, but I calculated that
+if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned and the station-wagon and
+the Victoria, we could manage at least twice as long on the cost of the
+'house-warming.'  I think the orchids alone would have lasted us a couple of
+months.  There they were, before me, but I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em,
+and so--well, so I did what I could!"
+
+She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother.  "It seemed
+to be a success--what I could," she said, clasping her hands behind her neck
+and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic accompaniment to her
+narrative.  "The girl Edith and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were
+too anxious about the effect of things on me.  The father's worth a bushel of
+both of them, if they knew it.  He's what he is.  I like him."  She paused
+reflectively, continuing, "Edith's 'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's
+good-looking and not stupid, but I think he's--"  She interrupted herself with
+a cheery outcry: "Oh! I mustn't be calling him names!  If he's trying to make
+Edith like him, I ought to respect him as a colleague."
+
+"I don't understand a thing you're talking about," Mrs. Vertrees complained.
+
+"All the better!  Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's always
+known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that know.  He sat
+between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan.  SHE'S like those people you wondered
+about at the theater, the last time we went--dressed in ball-gowns; bound to
+show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere!  She flatters the father, and so did
+I, for that matter--but not that way.  I treated him outrageously!"
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"That's what flattered him.  After dinner he made the whole regiment of us
+follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the Palatine.
+He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em listened as if they
+thought he intended to make them a present of the house.  What he was proudest
+of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples panorama in the hall.  He made us
+look at all the plumbing--bath-rooms and everywhere else--and then he made us
+look at the Bay of Naples.  He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but
+I think it's more.  And he led us all into the  ready-made library to see a
+poem Edith had taken a prize with at school.   They'd had it printed in gold
+letters and framed in mother-of-pearl.  But the poem itself was rather simple
+and wistful and nice--he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him.  She
+was modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else.  And then,
+after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street to her
+house with them--her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim Sheridan--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was shocked.  "'Jim'!" she exclaimed.  "Mary, PLEASE--"
+
+"Of course," said Mary.  "I'll make it as easy for you as I can, mamma.  Mr.
+James Sheridan, Junior.  We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe explained that
+'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed that Mr. Lamhorn was
+the only one near death's door on that account.  Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said
+they knew I'd been bored at the dinner.  They were objectionably apologetic
+about it, and they seemed to think NOW we were going to have a 'good time' to
+make up for it.  But I hadn't been bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and
+the 'good time' at Mrs. Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid."
+
+"But, Mary," her mother began, "is--is--"  And she seemed unable to complete
+the question.
+
+"Never mind, mamma. I'll say it.  Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid?  I'm
+sure he's not at all stupid about business.  Otherwise--Oh, what right have I
+to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly my kind?  On the big
+dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the Sheridan Building--"
+
+"Oh, no!"  Mrs. Vertrees cried.  "Surely not!"
+
+"Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what.  But, after all, I
+wondered if they were so bad.  If I'd been at a dinner at a palace in Italy,
+and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver peices had referred to
+some great deed or achievement of the family, I shouldn't have felt superior;
+I'd have thought it picturesque and stately--I'd have been impressed.  And
+what's the real difference?  The icing is temporary, and that's much more
+modest, isn't it?  And why is it vulgar to feel important more on account of
+something you've done yourself than because of something one of your ancestors
+did?  Besides, if we go back a few generations, we've all got such hundreds of
+ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of
+ourselves about.  Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to Mr.
+James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't see anything out of place in the
+Sheridan Building in sugar."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the conclusion
+of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head gravely.  "My dear,
+dear child," she said, "it seems to me--It looks--I'm afraid--"
+
+"Say as much of it as you can, mamma," said Mary, encouragingly.  "I can get
+it, if you'll just give me one key-word."
+
+"Everything you say," Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, "seems to have the air of
+--It is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--"
+
+"Oh, I see!  You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
+him."
+
+"Not exactly, Mary.  That wasn't quite what I meant," said Mrs. Vertrees,
+speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness.  "But you said that--
+that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan's
+unentertaining--"
+
+"And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at dinner,
+and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I--"  And then it
+was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter understood,
+Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+
+"Well," she asked, gravely, "is there anything else I can do?  You and papa
+don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the only
+thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress me.  That's
+all there is about it. isn't it?"
+
+"But nothing MUST distress you!" the mother cried.
+
+"That's what I say!" said Mary, cheerfully.  "And so it doesn't.  It's all
+right."  She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
+room.  But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against the
+foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet.  "Mother, you've
+told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter whom a girl marries."
+
+"No, no!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.  "I never said such a--"
+
+"No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT.  It's true, isn't it, that marriage
+really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'?  To get right down to
+it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?  One man as well as
+another?"
+
+"Oh, my dear!  I'm sure your father and I--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mary, indulgently.  "I don't mean you and papa.  But isn't it
+propinquity that makes marriages?  So many people say so, there must be
+something in it."
+
+"Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that."  And Mrs. Vertrees lifted
+pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared.  "It sounds
+--almost reckless!"
+
+Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily.  "Never fret, dear!
+I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been too
+thorough-going a little pig!  And if it IS propinquity that does our choosing
+for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more than THAT! How
+could there be any more propinquity than the very house next door?"
+
+She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door this
+time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob.  "Oh, the one that
+caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--"
+
+"Did he speak of it?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+
+"No.  He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one.  I didn't meet him. But
+he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when he's not.
+Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was 'well enough';
+and it may be he's only an invalid.  He looks dreadfully ill, but he has
+pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were in the Sheridan
+family"--she laughed a little ruefully--"he might be interesting to talk to
+sometimes, when there was too much stocks and bonds.  I didn't see him after
+dinner."
+
+"There must be something wrong with him," said Mrs. Vertrees.  "They'd have
+introduced him if there wasn't."
+
+"I don't know.  He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people like
+that just don't seem to 'count' in a family.  His father spoke of sending him
+back to a machine-shop or some sort; I suppose he meant when the poor thing
+gets better.  I glanced at him just then, when Mr. Sheridan mentioned him, and
+he happened to be looking straight at me; and he was pathetic-looking enough
+before that, but the most tragic change came over him. He seemed just to die,
+right there at the table!"
+
+"You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling."
+
+"No," said Mary, thoughtfully, "I don't think he is; but he might be
+uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he once
+sets out to do.  But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy just then!
+I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--"
+
+"I wouldn't."  Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the
+remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness.  "I'd keep my mind on pleasanter
+things, Mary."
+
+Mary laughed and nodded.  "Yes, indeed!  Plenty pleasant enough, and probably,
+if all were known, too good--even for me!"
+
+And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden were
+off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+
+
+Edith, glancing casually into the "ready-made" library, stopped abruptly,
+seeing Bibbs there alone.  He was standing before the pearl-framed and golden-
+lettered poem, musingly inspecting it.  He read it:
+
+
+           Fugitive
+        I will forget the things that sting:
+          The lashing look, the barbed word.
+        I know the very hands that fling
+          The stones at me had never stirred
+        To anger but for their own scars.
+          They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
+        I'll keep my heart among the stars
+          Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like
+        These wounded ones I must not be,
+          For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
+        So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free
+          Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+
+"Bibbs!" Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she came
+into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than that
+warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
+
+Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by the
+poem.  "Pretty young, isn't it?" he said.  "There must have been something
+about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe the poem did it."
+
+She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low voice:
+"I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs. I'd like a
+chance to forget the whole silly business.  I didn't want them to frame it,
+and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about it; but here, that night,
+after the dinner, didn't he go and read it aloud to the whole crowd of 'em!
+And then they all wanted to know what other poems I'd written and why I didn't
+keep it up and write some more, and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this
+and why that, till I thought I'd die of shame!"
+
+"You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp," Bibbs suggested.
+
+"I couldn't tell 'em anything!  I just choke with mortification every time
+anybody speaks of the thing."
+
+Bibbs looked grieved.  "The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith.  You see, you were
+only seventeen when you wrote it."
+
+"Oh, hush up!" she snapped.  "I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time I
+touched it.  Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was.  I
+had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--"
+
+"No, no," he said, comfortingly.  "It was the very most flattering thing ever
+happen to me.  It was almost my last flight before I went to the machine-shop,
+and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--"
+
+"But I DON'T like it!" she exclaimed.  "I don't even understand it--and papa
+made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it!  The truth is I
+never dreamed it 'd get the prize."
+
+"Maybe they expected father to endow the school," Bibbs murmered.
+
+"Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!  I
+hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how I 'keep
+my heart among the stars.'  He makes it seem such a mushy kind of thing, the
+way he says it.  I hate it!"
+
+"You'll have to live it down, Edith.  Perhaps abroad and under another name
+you might find--"
+
+"Oh, hush up!  I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance I
+get."  She turned away petulantly, moving to the door.  "I'd like to think I
+could hope to hear the last of it before I die!"
+
+"Edith!" he called, as she went into the hall.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to me?"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the threshold.
+
+"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
+impersonal way.  "But I've noticed you look at me lately.  I wondered if
+I'd--"
+
+"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully.  "This month
+you've been here's done you no end of good.  It's the change."
+
+"Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change."
+
+"You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw," said Edith, with supreme
+candor.  "But I don't know much about it.  I've never seen a corpse in my
+life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you mustn't
+judge by me.  I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say.  But you're
+right about my not being able to look at you at first.  You had a kind of
+whiteness that--Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose, but you've got more
+just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look.  Anybody could look at you now,
+Bibbs, and no--not get--"
+
+"Sick?"
+
+"Well--almost that!" she laughed.  "And you're getting a better color every
+day, Bibbs; you really are.  You're getting along splendidly."
+
+"I--I'm afraid so," he said, ruefully.
+
+"'Afraid so'!  Well, if you aren't the queerest!  I suppose you mean father
+might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.  I heard him
+say something about it the night of the--"  The jingle of a distant bell
+interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch.  "Bobby Lamhorn!  I'm going to
+motor him out to look at a place in the country.  Afternoon, Bibbs!"
+
+When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his eye
+wandering among the titles of the books.  The library consisted almost
+entirely of handsome "uniform editions": Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith,
+Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray,
+Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and
+Tasso.  There were shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of
+"famous classics," of "Oriental masterpieces," of "masterpieces of oratory,"
+and more shelves of "selected libraries" of "literature," of "the drama," and
+of "modern science."  They made an effective decoration for the room, all
+these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a
+reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but
+Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them
+a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that
+nobody else considered them at all.  Himself, he disturbed not one.
+
+There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house, and
+white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.  "Awready, Mist'
+Bibbs," he announced.  "You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you' ride, an' she cain'
+go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at fo' 'clock.  Aw ready,
+suh."
+
+He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in the
+manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way.  In the hall they
+passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket opened the door
+with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the chauffeur in the car which
+stood waiting in the driveway.
+
+"It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I first
+came home, George," said Bibbs, thoughtfully.  "What did you tell me?"
+
+"Yessuh!" George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
+reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor.  "You ast me
+when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty near ev'y day
+all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me twicet."  He shook his head
+solemnly.  "Look to me mus' be somep'm might lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!"
+
+"Mighty what?"
+
+"Mighty lamiDAL!" George, burst out laughing.  "What DO 'at word mean, Mist'
+Bibbs?"
+
+"It's new to me, George.  Where did you hear it?"
+
+"I nev' DID hear it!" said George.  "I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f an'
+she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at!  An' she soun' so good, seem
+like she GOTTA mean somep'm!"
+
+"Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something.  Why, yes--"
+
+"Do she?" cried George.  "WHAT she mean?"
+
+"It's exactly the word for the statue," said Bibbs, with conviction, as he
+climbed into the car.  "It's a lamiDAL statue."
+
+"Hiyi!" George exulted.  "Man! Man! Listen!  Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
+statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!" "I expect she is!" said
+Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from
+sight.
+
+George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in the
+hallway.  "Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she is!'  Ev'y day he
+try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways, las' thing HE say,
+'I expec' she is!'  You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git well, 'at young man go'
+be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson.  Yes-suh, right now I pick 'im fo'
+firs' money!"
+
+"Look out with all 'at money, George!" Jackson warned the enthusiast.  "White
+folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer 'n you.  You the on'y man bettin' on
+'im!"
+
+"I risk it!" cried George, merrily.  "I put her all on now--ev'y cent!  'At
+boy's go' be flower o' the flock!"
+
+This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for the
+meaning of "lamiDAL," differed radically from another prediction concerning
+Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some twenty minutes later.
+
+Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees beside him, in
+his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon the highroad.  The two
+cars were going in opposite directions, and the occupants of Jim's had only a
+swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on the back seat--his white face
+startlingly white against cap and collar of black fur--but he flashed into
+recognition as Mary bowed to him.
+
+Jim waved his left hand carelessly.  "It's Bibbs, taking his constitutional,"
+he explained.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Mary.  "I bowed to him, too, though I've never met him. In
+fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice.  I hope he won't think I'm very
+bold, bowing to him."
+
+"I doubt if he noticed it," said honest Jim.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried.
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them."
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Jim.  "Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is funny."
+
+"Is he?  How?" she asked.  "He strikes me as anything but funny."
+
+"Well, I'm his brother," Jim said, deprecatingly, "but I don't know what he's
+like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS his brother,
+the way I do Roscoe.  Bibbs never did seem more than half alive to me.  Of
+course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we were too big to play
+with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his own age.  He'd rather just
+sit in the house and mope around by himslef.  Nobody could ever get him to DO
+anything; you can't get him to do anything now.  He never had any LIFE in him;
+and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the
+laziest man God ever made!  Father put him in the machine-shop over at the
+Pump Works--best thing in the world for him--and he was just plain no account.
+It made him sick!  If he'd had the right kind of energy--the kind father's
+got, for instance, or Roscoe, either--why, it wouldn't made him sick.  And
+suppose it was either of them--yes, or me, either--do you think any of us
+would have stopped if we WERE sick?  Not much!  I hate to say it, but Bibbs
+Sheridan 'll never amount to anything as long as he lives."
+
+Mary looked thoughtful.  "Is there any particular reason why he should?" she
+asked.
+
+"Good gracious!" he exclaimed.  "You don't mean that, do you?  Don't you
+believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much money his
+father's got?  Hasn't the business of this world got to be carried on by
+everybody in it?  Are we going to lay back on what we've got and see other
+fellows get ahead of us?  If we've got big things already, isn't it every
+man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger?  Isn't it his duty?  Don't we
+always want to get bigger and bigger?"
+
+"Ye-es--I don't know.  But I feel rather sorry for your brother.  He looked so
+lonely--and sick."
+
+"He's gettin' better every day," Jim said.  "Dr. Gurney says so.  There's
+nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths imaginary.
+'Nerves'!  People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous diseases,
+because they don't have time to imagine 'em."
+
+"You mean his trouble is really mental?"
+
+"Oh, he's not a lunatic," said Jim.  "He's just queer. Sometimes he'll say
+something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off the
+subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all.  For instance, the other
+day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall.  The darky asked
+him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody else in the world
+would have just said what time they DID want it, and that would have been all
+there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says, and I heard him with my own ears.
+'What time do I want the car?' he says. 'Well, now, that depends--that
+depends,' he says.  He talks slow like that, you know.  'I'll tell you what
+time I want the car, George,' he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think of
+this statue!'  That's exactly his words! Asked the darky what he thought of
+that Arab Edith and mother bought for the hall!"
+
+Mary pondered upon this.  "He might have been in fun, perhaps," she suggested.
+
+"Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work of art!
+Where on earth would be the fun of that?  No, you're just kind-hearted--and
+that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!" she laughed.
+
+"See here!" he cried.  "Isn't there any way for us to get over this Mister and
+Miss thing?  A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed to be with you
+a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you know how I feel by
+this time--"
+
+She looked panic-stricken immediately.  "Oh, no," she protested, quickly. "No,
+I don't, and--"
+
+"Yes, you do," he said, and his voice shook a little.  "You couldn't help
+knowing."
+
+"But I do!" she denied, hurriedly.  "I do help knowing.  I mean--Oh, wait!"
+
+"What for?  You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly WANTED me
+to feel that way--or else pretended--"
+
+"Now, now!" she lamented.  "You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!"
+
+"'Spoilin' it!'"  He slowed down the car and turned his face to her squarely.
+"See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--"
+
+"Stop!  Stop the car a minute."  And when he had complied she faced him as
+squarely as he evidently desired her to face him.  "Listen.  I don't want you
+to go on, to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You mean it's just a whim?"
+
+"I don't know," she repeated.  Her voice was low and troubled and honest, and
+she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+
+"Will you tell me something?"
+
+"Almost anything."
+
+"Have you ever told any man you loved him?"
+
+And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous.  "No," she
+said.  "And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that--or ever know what it
+means.  I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan."
+
+"Then you--you've just been flirting with me!"  Poor Jim looked both furious
+and crestfallen.
+
+"Not on bit!" she cried.  "Not one word!  Not one syllable!  I've meant every
+single thing!"
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"Of course you don't!" she said.  "Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start the
+car.  Now!  Thank you.  Slowly, till I finish what I have to say.  I have not
+flirted with you.  I have deliberately courted you.  One thing more, and then
+I want you to take me straight home, talking about the weather all the way. I
+said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care' for any man, and that is true.
+I doubt the existence of the kind of 'caring' we hear about in poems and plays
+and novels.  I think it must be just a kind of emotional TALK-- most of it.
+At all events, I don't feel it.  Now, we can go faster, please."
+
+"Just where does that let me out?" he demanded.  "How does that excuse  you
+for--"
+
+"It isn't an excuse," she said, gently, and gave him one final look,  wholly
+desolate.  "I haven't said I should never marry."
+
+"What?" Jim gasped.
+
+She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+unfathomably sorrowful.
+
+"I promise nothing," she said, faintly.
+
+"You needn't!" shouted Jim, radiant and exultant.  "You needn't!  By  George!
+I know you're square; that's enough for me!  You wait and  promise whenever
+you're ready!"
+
+"Don't forget what I asked," she begged him.
+
+"Talk about the weather?  I will!  God bless the old weather!" cried the
+happy Jim.
+
+
+Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields and
+sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean air  beneath a
+glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so  maltreated there, that
+from early October to mid-May it was impossible  for men to remember that blue
+is the rightful color overhead.
+
+Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost  resembling a
+pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom.   How largely this
+apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his  face it is difficult
+to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the  result of a lady's bowing
+to him upon no more formal introduction than  the circumstance of his having
+caught her looking into his window a month  before.  She had bowed definitely;
+she had bowed charmingly.  And it  seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to
+convey her forgiveness.
+
+There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to his
+experience, and he rode the warmer for it.  Nor did he lack the  impression
+that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her  veil
+tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind--and that  look of gay
+friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
+
+By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed  and
+tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the  smoke.
+Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon, that  nest of
+cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine shrouded  in its own
+steam.  But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very heart of  it, for a
+commanded interview with his father, the distant cloud was like  an implacable
+genius issuing thunderously in smoke from his enchanted  bottle, and
+irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+
+They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of November
+late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and here the  sky
+shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray; the smoke did  not
+visibly permeate the air, but it was there, nevertheless-- impalpable, thin,
+no more than the dust of smoke.  And then, as the car  drove on, the chimneys
+and stacks of factories came swimming up into view  like miles of steamers
+advancing abreast, every funnel with its vast  plume, savage and black,
+sweeping to the horizon, dripping wealth and  dirt and suffocation over league
+on league already rich and vile with grime.
+
+The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar  and
+clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears.  And now the car  passed
+two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways  possible to
+make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and lurid  the next with
+the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing  blackened giants, half
+naked, in passionate action, struggling with  formless things in the hot
+illumination.  And big as these shops were,  they were growing bigger,
+spreading over a third block, where two new  structures were mushrooming to
+completion in some hasty cement process of  a stability not over-reassuring.
+Bibbs pulled the rug closer about him,  and not even the phantom of color was
+left upon his cheeks as he passed  this place, for he knew it too well.
+Across the face of one of the  buildings there was an enormous sign: "Sheridan
+Automatic Pump Co., Inc."
+
+Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and adding
+their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses of a
+thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots and  nudging
+one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from one  another; bad
+neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch some  night when the
+right wind blew.  They were only waiting for that wind and  a cigarette, and
+then they would all be gone together--a pinch of  incense burned upon the
+tripod of the god.
+
+Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there a
+forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying.  Some people  said
+it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure  that asphalt
+and "improving" the streets did it; but Bigness was in too  Big a hurry to
+bother much about trees.  He had telegraph-poles and  telephone-poles and
+electric-light-poles and trolley-polls by the  thousand to take their places.
+So he let the trees die and put up his  poles.  They were hideous, but nobody
+minded that; and sometimes the  wires fell and killed people--but not often
+enough to matter at all.
+
+Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the town  where
+the few solid old houses not already demolished were in transition:  some,
+with their fronts torn away, were being made into segments of
+apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into trade, brazenly
+putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors, seeming to mean it  for a
+joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped humorously over the  tops of
+temporary office buildings of one story erected in the old front  yards.
+Altogether, the town here was like a boarding-house hash the  Sunday after
+Thanksgiving; the old ingredients were discernible.
+
+This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the
+roaring holy of holies itself.  The car must stop at every crossing while  the
+dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before  it.
+Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet  above him;
+newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them, rising  higher; old
+buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings were coming  down; the
+streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked  underground between
+palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders  in the sky.
+Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the  wind like
+torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way round swarming  corners;
+motor-cars of every kind and shape known to man babbled  frightful warnings
+and frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored  wildly for passage;
+steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic  tentacle and claw; riveters
+rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook  to the thunder of gigantic
+trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was  the sound of earthquake
+playing accompaniments for battle and sudden  death.  On one of the new steel
+buildings no work was being done that  afternoon.  The building had killed a
+man in the morning--and the  steel-workers always stop for the day when that
+"happens."
+
+And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the  brobdingnagian
+camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the  pagan women--there
+would be work to-day and dancing to-night.  For the  Puritan's dry voice is
+but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush  and roar of the coming of
+the new Egypt.
+
+Bibbs was on time.  He knew it must be "to the minute" or his father  would
+consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's  office marked
+four precisely when Bibbs walked in.  Coincidentally with  his entrance five
+people who had been at work in the office, under  Sheridan's direction, walked
+out.  They departed upon no visible or  audible suggestion, and with a
+promptness that seemed ominous to the  new-comer.  As the massive door clicked
+softly behind the elderly  stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had
+a feeling that they  all understood that he was a failure as a great man's
+son, a  disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been
+summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly  what
+they understood.
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan.
+
+It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried  fathers
+to place delinquents in the sitting-posture.  Bibbs sat.
+
+Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of  silence,
+then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his  big hands,
+loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back.  They  were soiled, as
+were all other hands down-town, except such as might be  still damp from a basin.
+
+"Well, Bibbs," he said at last, not altering his attitude, "do you know  what
+I'm goin' to do with you?"
+
+Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon the
+ceiling.  "I heard you tell Jim," he began, in his slow way.  "You said  you'd
+send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to Miss  Vertrees.
+So I suppose that must be your plan for me.  But--"
+
+"But what?" said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+
+"Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?"
+
+That brought his father sharply round to face him.  "You beat the devil!
+Bibbs, what IS the matter with you?  Why can't you be like anybody else?"
+
+"Liver, maybe," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+"Boh!  Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you  organically.
+No.  You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter, and  that's ALL the
+matter.  Oh, no one o' these BIG dreamers that put through  the big deals.!
+No, sir!  You're the kind o' dreamer that just sets out  on the back fence and
+thinks about how much trouble there must be in the  world!  That ain't the
+kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs; it's the kind  that borrows fifteen cents
+from his wife's uncle's brother-in-law to get  ten cent's worth o' plug
+tobacco and a nickel's worth o' quinine!"
+
+He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned again  to
+the window.
+
+"Look out there!" he bade his son.  "Look out o' that window!  Look at  the
+life and evergy down there!  I should think ANY young man's blood  would
+tingle to get into it and be part of it.  Look at the big things  young men
+are doin' in this town!"  He swung about, coming to the  mahogany desk in the
+middle of the room.  "Look at what I was doin' at  your age!  Look at what
+your own brothers are doin'!  Look at Roscoe!   Yes, and look at Jim!  I made
+Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty  Company last New-Year's, with charge of
+every inch o' ground and every  brick and every shingle and stick o' wood we
+own; and it's an example to  any young man--or ole man, either--the way he
+took ahold of it.  Last  July we found out we wanted two more big warehouses
+at the Pump Works-- wanted 'em quick.  Contractors said it couldn't be done;
+said nine or  ten months at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way.  What
+'d Jim do?   Took the contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and
+concrete  process; kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night
+and  day himself--and, by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next  week!
+Four months and a half, and every inch fireproof!  I tell you  Jim's one o'
+these fellers that make miracles happen!  Now, I don't say  every young man
+can be like Jim, because there's mighty few got his  ability, but every young
+man can go in and do his share.  This town is  God's own country, and there's
+opportunity for anybody with a pound of  energy and an ounce o' gumption.  I
+tell you these young business men I  watch just do my heart good!  THEY don't
+set around on the back fence-- no, sir!  They take enough exercise to keep
+their health; and they go to  a baseball game once or twice a week in summmer,
+maybe, and they're  raisin' nice families, with sons to take their places
+sometime and carry  on the work--because the work's got to go ON!  They're
+puttin' their  life-blood into it, I tell you, and that's why we're gettin'
+bigger every  minute, and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin'
+to keep ON  gettin' bigger!"
+
+He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing  that
+Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still  fixed upon
+the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was  impelled to
+groan.  "Oh, Lord!" he said.  "This is the way you always were. I don't
+believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'!  You don't LOOK  as if you
+did.  By George! it's discouraging!"
+
+"I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger," said Bibbs,
+bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively.  "I don't see  just
+why--"
+
+"WHAT?"  Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and  staring
+across it incredulously at his son.
+
+"I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?"
+
+"Great God!" shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his  clenched
+fist.  "A son of mine asks me that!  You go out and ask the  poorest
+day-laborer you can find!  Ask him that question--"
+
+"I did once," Bibbs interrupted; "when I was in the machine-shop.  I--"
+
+"Wha'd he say?"
+
+"He said, 'Oh, hell!'" answered Bibbs, mildly.
+
+"Yes, I reckon he would!" Sheridan swung away from the desk.  "I reckon  he
+certainly would!  And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!"
+
+"It's the same answer, then?"  Bibbs's voice was serious, almost tremulous.
+
+"Damnation!" Sheridan roared.  "Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,  you
+ninny?  Did you ever hear the word Ambition?  Did you ever hear the  word
+PROGRESS?"
+
+He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging,  his
+throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences.  "Now then," he said,  huskily,
+when the anguish had somewhat abated, "what do you want to do?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What do you WANT to do, I said."
+
+Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered.  "What--what do--I--what--"
+
+"If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?"
+
+Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound  shyness.  He
+bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his  shoe, which he
+moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to  the desk in school.
+
+"What would you do?  Loaf?"
+
+"No, sir."  Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it  made
+was unquestionably a guilty sound.  "I suppose I'd--I'd--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose I'd try to--to write."
+
+"Write what?"
+
+"Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I see," said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was  putting
+upon himself.  "That is, you want to write, but you don't want to  write
+anything of any account."
+
+"You think--"
+
+Sheridan got up again.  "I take my hat off to the man that can write a  good
+ad," he said, emphatically.  "The best writin' talent in this  country is
+right spang in the ad business to-day.  You buy a magazine for  good
+writin'--look on the back of it!  Let me tell you I pay money for  that kind
+o' writin'.  Maybe you think it's easy.  Just try it!  I've  tried it, and I
+can't do it.  I tell you an ad's got to be written so it  makes people do the
+hardest thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's  got to make 'em give up
+their MONEY!  You talk about 'poems and essays.'   I tell you when it comes to
+the actual skill o' puttin' words together so  as to make things HAPPEN, R. T.
+Bloss, right here in this city, knows  more in a minute than George Waldo
+Emerson ever knew in his whole life!"
+
+"You--you may be--" Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered  in a
+cough.
+
+"Of COURSE I'm right!  And if it ain't just like you to want to take up  with
+the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'!   My Lord,
+Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work!  You can't pick up a newspaper  without havin' to
+see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane Eyre,'  or 'East Lynne,' at
+the God-Knows-What Club.  And 'poetry'!  Why, look at  Edith!  I expect that
+poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water mark for  you, young man, and it's
+the only one she's ever managed to write in her  whole LIFE!  When I wanted
+her to go on and write some more she said it  took too much time.  Said it
+took months and months.  And Edith's a smart  girl; she's got more energy in
+her little finger than you ever give me a  chance to see in your whole body,
+Bibbs.  Now look at the facts: say she  could turn out four or five poems a
+year and you could turn out maybe  two.  That medal she got was worth about
+fifteen dollars, so there's your  income--thirty dollars a year!  That's a
+fine success to make of your  life!  I'm not sayin' a word against poetry.  I
+wouldn't take ten  thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith's; and
+poetry's all  right enough in its place--but you leave it to the girls.  A
+man's got  to do a man's work in this world!"
+
+He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
+Bibbs confidentially on the knee.  "This city's got the greatest future  in
+America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're  goin' to
+have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty fair share.  I love  this town.  It's
+God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every  day right along, I
+don't know how many years.  I love it like I do my own  business, and I'd
+fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family.   It's a beautiful town.
+Look at our wholesale district; look at any  district you want to; look at the
+park system we're puttin' through, and  the boulevards and the public
+statuary.  And she grows.  God! how she  grows!"  He had become intensely
+grave; he spoke with solemnity.  "Now,  Bibbs,  I can't take any of it--nor
+any gold or silver nor buildings  nor bonds--away with me in my shroud when I
+have to go.  But I want to  leave my share  in it to my boys.  I've worked for
+it; I've been a  builder and a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where
+one grew  before, whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to
+grow.   I've built big, and I want the buildin' to go on.  And when my last
+hour  comes I want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're
+fit to take charge and go ON with it.  Bibbs, when that hour comes I  want to
+know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big  things.  Bibbs,
+when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've  made mine, here
+below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my  boys."
+
+He leaned back, deeply moved.  "There!" he said, huskily.  "I've never  spoken
+more what was in my heart in my life.  I do it because I want you  to
+understand--and not think me a mean father.  I never had to talk  that way to
+Jim and Roscoe.  They understood without any talk, Bibbs."
+
+"I see," said Bibbs.  "At least I think I do.  But--"
+
+"Wait a minute!"  Sheridan raised his hand.  "If you see the least bit in  the
+world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here  and
+talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries.  And you must
+understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have him come  back
+on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because  he
+couldn't stand work.  Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs.  I've  had a
+whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another,  and I
+reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does,  anyway!  Now
+here, I'll be frank with you.  I started you in harder than  what I did the
+other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw  you needed to be
+shook up more'n they did.  You were always kind of moody  and mopish--and you
+needed work that 'd keep you on the jump.  Now, why  did it make you sick
+instead of brace you up and make a man of you the  way it ought of done?  I
+pinned ole Gurney down to it.  I says, 'Look  here, ain't it really because he
+just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says,  'that's it.  If he'd enjoyed it, it
+wouldn't 'a' hurt him.  He loathes it,  and that affects his nervous system
+The more he tries it, the more he  hates it; and the more he hates it, the
+more injury it does him.'  That  ain't quite his words, but it's what he
+meant.  And that's about the way  it is."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "that's about the way it is."
+
+"Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to  make
+you like it!"
+
+Bibbs shivered.  And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+ghostly.  "I can't," he said, in a low voice.  "I can't."
+
+"Can't go back to the shop?"
+
+"No. Can't like it.  I can't."
+
+Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone.  To his own view, he had reasoned
+exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father  should,
+only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious  stubbornness
+which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from  childhood.  "By George,
+you will!" he cried.  "You'll go back there and  you'll like it!  Gurney says
+it won't hurt you if you like it, and he  says it 'll kill you if you go back
+and hate it; so it looks as if it was  about up to you not to hate it.  Well,
+Gurney's a fool!  Hatin' work  doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to
+kill you, whether you hate  it or not.   I've never made a mistake in a
+serious matter in my life,  and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in
+the first place.  And I'm  goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back there
+and vindicate my  judgment.  Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.'  Well,
+you're goin' to  learn the right one!  He says in a couple more months this
+fool thing  that's been the matter with you 'll be disappeared completely and
+you'll  be back in as good or better condition than you were before you ever
+went  into the shop.  And right then is when you begin over--right in that
+same shop!  Nobody can call me a hard man or a mean father.  I do the  best I
+can for my chuldern, and I take full responsibility for bringin'  my sons up
+to be men.  Now, so far, I've failed with you.  But I'm not  goin' to keep ON
+failin'.  I never tackled a job YET I didn't put  through, and I'm not goin'
+to begin with my own son.  I'm goin' to make  a MAN of you.  By God!  I am!"
+
+Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned.  "You say you  give
+me a couple of months?" he said.
+
+Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk.  "Gurney said two months more
+would put you back where you were.  You go home and begin to get yourself  in
+the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up!  Good-by!"
+
+"Good-by, sir," said Bibbs, meekly.
+
+
+Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the "lamidal"
+George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of  temporary
+quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception of  himself as a
+permanent incumbent.  However, he had set upon the  mantelpiece the two
+photographs that he owned: one, a "group" twenty  years old--his father and
+mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys--and  the other a "cabinet" of Edith at
+sixteen.  And upon a table were the  books he had taken from his trunk: Sartor
+Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque,  Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles.  There
+were some other books in the  trunk--a large one, which remained unremoved at
+the foot of the bed,  adding to the general impression of transiency.  It
+contained nearly all  the possessions as well as the secret life of Bibbs
+Sheridan, and Bibbs  sat beside it, the day after his interview with his
+father, raking over a  small collection of manuscripts in the top tray.  Some
+of these he  glanced through dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but
+one made  him smile.  Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully
+began to  read it.  It was written on paper stamped "Hood Sanitarium," and
+bore the  title, "Leisure."
+
+     A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if  he is
+running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful quality  in the
+stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to recommend him to  the
+approbation of his superiors.  For a profession adapted solely to the  pursuit
+of happiness in thinking, I would choose that of an invalid: his  money is
+time and he may spend it on Olympus.  It will not suffice to be  an amateur
+invalid.  To my way of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all
+outward purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect  enjoyment of
+life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of  recovery; he must lie
+serene in his long chair in the sunshine. The world  must be on the other side
+of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and  so high that he cannot hear
+the roaring of the furnace fires and the  screaming of the whistles.  Peace--
+
+Having read so far as the word "peace," Bibbs suffered an interruption
+interesting as a coincidence of contrast.  High voices sounded in the  hall
+just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel  was in
+progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and  continuing
+it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+
+"Yes, you BETTER go home!" Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly.  "You
+better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!"
+
+"Edie, Edie!" he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+
+"You see here!"  This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and  tremulous.
+"Don't you talk to me that way!  I came here to tell Mother  Sheridan what I'd
+heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she  thought she ought to, and I
+did it for your own good."
+
+"Yes, you did!"  And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly.  "Yes, you  did!
+YOU didn't have any other reason!  OH no!  YOU don't want to break  it up
+between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--"
+
+"Edie, Edie!  Now, now!"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma!  I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
+tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what  about
+his not going to HER house. How--"
+
+"I've explained that to Mother Sheridan."  Sibyl's voice indicated that  she
+was descending the stairs.  "Married people are not the same.  Some  things
+that should be shielded from a young girl--"
+
+This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith.  "'Shielded from a
+young girl'!" she shrilled.  "You seem pretty willing to be the shield!   You
+look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!"
+
+Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
+pacification were renewed.  "Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good,  and
+you'd oughtn't to--"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone!  If you dare tell papa--"
+
+"Now, now!  I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--"
+
+"You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!" the girl cried, passionately.
+
+"Well, we'll see.  You just come back in your own room, and we'll--"
+
+"No!  I WON'T 'talk it over'!  Stop pulling me!  Let me ALONE!"  And  Edith,
+flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open,  swung round it
+into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw  herself, face down,
+upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had  no perception of Bibbs's
+presence in the room.  Gasping and sobbing in a  passion of tears, she beat
+the coverlet and pillows with her clenched  fists. "Sneak!" she babbled aloud.
+"Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass!  Cat!"
+
+Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward  the
+door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some  sound of
+his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
+
+"Bibbs!  I thought I saw you go out awhile ago."
+
+"Yes.  I came back, though.  I'm sorry--"
+
+"Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?"
+
+"Only what you said in the hall.  You lie down again, Edith.  I'm going  out."
+
+"No; don't go."  She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob,  and
+repeated her request.  "Don't go.  I don't mind you; you're quiet,  anyhow.
+Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere.  I don't mind you at  all, but I
+wish you'd sit down."
+
+"All right."  And he returned to his chair beside the trunk.  "Go ahead  and
+cry all you want, Edith," he said.  "No harm in that!"
+
+"Sibyl told mamma--OH!" she began, choking.  "Mary Vertrees had mamma  and
+Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had  some women
+there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just  laid herself out
+to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em  ever since, and now
+she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn  is so bad that, even
+though they like his family, none of the nice people  in town would let him in
+their houses.  In the first place, it's a  falsehood, and I don't believe a
+word of it; and in the second place I  know the reason she did it, and, what's
+more, she KNOWS I know it!  I  won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and
+all of you would  think I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool
+he'd  probably quit speaking to me.  But it's true!  Just you watch her;
+that's  all I ask.  Just you watch that woman.  You'll see!"
+
+As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching "that woman."  Glancing from  the
+window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old  house next
+door.  She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked  quickly up the path
+to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of  calling.  But he did not
+mention this to his sister, who, after  delivering herself of a rather vague
+jeremiad upon the subject of her  sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her
+own chamber, leaving him to  his speculations.  The chief of these concerned
+the social elasticities  of women.  Sibyl had just been a participant in a
+violent scene; she had  suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to
+set her quivering  with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to
+the presence of  people whom she knew no more than "formally."  Bibbs
+marveled.  Surely,  he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon
+Sibyl's face or in  her manner;  she could not have ironed it all quite out in
+the three or  four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses' door.
+
+And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+wondering what  internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
+master.  But  Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
+anything  except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
+casual  caller.  She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose that
+brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
+intelligent.  For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
+antiquity.  She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may  and
+does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex  as well,
+finding invariably strong supporters among these latter.  It is  a type that
+has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought  greater, save for
+the check put upon its power by intelligent women and  by its own "lack of
+perspective," for it is a type that never sees  itself.  Sibyl followed her
+impulses with no reflection or question--it  was like a hound on the gallop
+after a master on horseback.  She had not  even the instinct to stop and
+consider her effect.  If she wished to make  a certain impression she believed
+that she made it.  She believed that  she was believed.
+
+"My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down,"  Mary
+said, when they were seated.
+
+Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had been
+brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark addressed to  her
+by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms.  It was  intended
+partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an  impression of
+sweetness.
+
+"Just thought I'd fly in a minute," she said, continuing the cooing to
+relieve the last doubt of her gentiality.  "I thought I'd just behave like
+REAL country neighbors.  We are almost out in the country, so far from
+down-town, aren't we?  And it seemed such a LOVELY day!  I wanted to tell  you
+how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that afternoon.   You see,
+coming here a bride and never having lived here before, I've had  to depend on
+my husband's friends almost entirely, and I really 've known  scarcely
+anybody.  Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed in business ever  since he was a
+mere boy, why, of course--"
+
+She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+
+"Of course," said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+
+"Yes.  I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that  afternoon,"
+Sibyl went on.  "They're really delightful people.  Indeed  they are!  Yes--"
+
+She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite  errand.
+Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of  abstraction as she
+looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the  errand was a serious one
+for the caller and easily to be connected with  the slight but perceptible
+agitation underlying her assumption of  cheerful ease.   There was a
+restlessnes of breathing, a restlessness of  hands.
+
+"Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some to the people  here
+in town the other day," said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and  protracting it.
+"They said something that took ME by surprise!  We were  talking about our
+mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--"
+
+Mary interrupted her promptly.  "Do you mean 'mutual' to include my  mother
+and me?" she asked.
+
+"Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean."
+
+"No," said Mary.  "We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
+ours."
+
+To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased.  "That's  just
+the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!" she cried, with a vehemence that  made Mary
+stare.  "Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families  here speak of
+him!"
+
+Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure.   "I
+had the impression he was a friend of yours," she said; adding,  hastily, "and
+your husband's"
+
+"Oh yes," said the caller, absently.  "He is, certainly.  A man's  reputation
+for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to  married people, of
+course.  It's where young girls are in question.  THEN  it may be very, very
+dangerous.  There are a great many things safe and  proper for married people
+that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young  girl.  Don't you agree, Miss
+Vertrees?"
+
+"I don't know," returned the frank Mary.  "Do you mean that you intend to
+remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's doing
+so?"
+
+"That's it exactly!" was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl.  "What I
+feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable for
+Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it.  I tell you,"  she
+cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, "her father ought to put  his foot
+down!"
+
+Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and then
+retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one might  catch a
+glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back into  hiding under a
+bush.
+
+"Of course," said Sibyl, much more composedly, "I hardly need say that  it's
+entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this.  I'm as  fond of
+Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting  about it.  It
+would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled."
+
+This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear.  Sibyl tried to sing with  pathos,
+but she flatted.
+
+And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the stress  of
+some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not uncommonly  developed a
+phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by  placing two
+mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed.   In this case,
+particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness   of  Mary.  The Mary
+Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened  to her own frantic
+purpose--a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of  penetrating that purpose.
+Sibyl sat there believing that she was  projecting the image of herself that
+she desired to project, never  dreaming that with every word, every look, and
+every gesture she was more  and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to
+the clear eyes of Mary.   And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed
+woman, in manner half  rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but possessed
+by emotions that  appeared to be strong--perhaps even violent.  What those
+emotions were  Mary had not guessed, but she began to suspect.
+
+"And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled," Sibyl continued.  "It would be a
+dreadful thing for the whole family.  She's the very apple of Father
+Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe.  It
+would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
+Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody  doesn't tell
+him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his  consent and hurry on
+the wedding before he finds out, and then it would  be too late.  You see,
+Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to  decide just what it's my duty to
+do."
+
+"I see," said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, "Does Miss Sheridan seem
+to--to care very much about him?"
+
+"He's deliberately fascinated her," returned the visitor, beginning to
+breathe quickly and heavily.  "Oh, she wasn't difficult!  She knew she  wasn't
+in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that  were, and
+she thought he was one of 'em.  But that was only the start  that made it easy
+for him--and he didn't need it.  He could have done  it, anyway!" Sibyl was
+launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice  shook.  "He went after her
+deliberately, the way he does everything; he's  as cold-blooded as a fish.
+All he cares about is his own pleasure, and  lately he's decided it would be
+pleasant to get hold of a piece of real  money--and there was Edith!  And
+he'll marry her!  Nothing on earth can  stop him unless he finds out she won't
+HAVE any money if she marries him,  and the only person that could make him
+understand that is Father  Sheridan.  Somehow, that's got to be managed,
+because Lamhorn is going to  hurry it on as fast as he can.  He told me so
+last night.  He said he was  going to marry her the first minute he could
+persuade her to it--and  little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!"  Sibyl's
+eyes flashed green  again.  "And he swore he'd do it," she panted.  "He swore
+he'd marry  Edith Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!"
+
+And then Mary understood.  Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
+creature incredulously, a sudden vivid  picture in her mind, a canvas of
+unconscious Sibyl's painting.  Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she  saw
+Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps-- for Roscoe
+might have been in the house, or servants might have head.   She saw Sibyl
+entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and  Lamhorn--tired of
+her--first evasive, then brutally letting her have  the truth; and at last,
+infuriated, "swearing" to marry her rival.  If  Sibyl had not babbled out the
+word "swore" it might have been less plain.
+
+The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what he had confessed.   "You
+see," she said, more quietly, "whatever's going to be done ought to  done
+right away.  I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard  about
+Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard!  I told her right before  Edith.  I
+think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because  nobody can say
+it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend  would do.  But
+Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid to  ever come right
+out with anything.  Father Sheridan's different.  Edith  can get anything she
+wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary  indulgence, but when it
+comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel  rock.  If it's a question of his
+will against anybody else's he'd make  his will rule if it killed 'em both!
+Now, he'd never in the world let  Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew
+his reputation.  So, you  see, somebody's got to tell him.  It isn't a very
+easy position for me,  is it, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"No," said Mary, gravely.
+
+"Well, to be frank," said Sibyl, smiling, "that's why I've come to you."
+
+"To ME!"  Mary frowned.
+
+Sibyl rippled and cooed again.  "There isn't ANYBODY even made such a hit
+with Father Sheridan in his life as you have.  And of course we ALL hope
+you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the  family!"
+(This sally with another and louder effect of laughter.)  "And  if it's MY
+duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+
+"Listen," said Sibyl.  "Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this  story,
+and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a good  reputation
+and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose  (what's most likely)
+she loses her temper and says I invented it, then  what am I going to do?
+Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and  her daughter, and they're out
+of the question, anyway.  But suppose I  could say: 'All right, if you want
+proof, ask Miss Vertrees.  She came  with me, and she's waiting in the next
+room right now, to--"
+
+"No, no," said Mary, quickly.  "You mustn't--"
+
+"Listen just a minute more," Sibyl urged, confidingly.  She was on easy
+ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success.  "You  naturally
+don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but if  YOU take part
+in it, it won't be one.  You don't know yourself what  weight you carry over
+there, and no one would have the right to say you  did it except out of the
+purest kindness.  Don't you see that Jim and his  father would admire you all
+the more for it?  Miss Vertrees, listen!   Don't you see we OUGHT to do it,
+you and I?  Do you suppose Robert  Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her?
+Do you suppose a man like  him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for
+the money?"  And again  Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface.  "I tell you he's
+after nothing on  earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile,
+over there,  next door!  He'd marry ANYBODY to do it.  Marry Edith?" she
+cried.  "I  tell you he'd marry their nigger cook for THAT!"
+
+She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too  vehement, but a
+glace at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she  had produced the
+effect she wished.  Mary was not looking at her; she was  staring straight
+before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining.  She  became visibly a
+little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+
+"After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's  money-pile,
+over there, next door!"  The voice was vulgar, the words were  vulgar--and the
+plain truth was vulgar!  How it rang in Mary Vertrees's  ears!  The clear
+mirror had caught its own image clearly in the flawed  one at last.
+
+Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter.  She offered her  bargain.
+"Now don't you worry," she said, sunnily, "about this setting  Edith against
+you.  She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she  tried to be
+spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in  over there, or
+managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a  house, and Jim likes
+to come there.  I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that  way; she's too crazy to
+have you take her around with the smart crowd,  but if she DID, you needn't
+worry.  And another thing--I guess you  won't mind Jim's own sister-in-law
+speaking of it.  Of course, I don't  know just how matters stand between you
+and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are  about as much alike as two brothers can be,
+and Roscoe was very slow  making up his mind; sometimes I used to think he
+actually never WOULD.   Now, what I mean is, sisters-in-law can do lots of
+things to help matters  on like that.  There's lots of little things can be
+said, and lots--"
+
+She stopped, puzzled.  Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and  now,
+still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or  any other
+kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of the  room.
+
+Sibyl was a little taken aback.  She supposed Mary had remembered  something
+neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and  that she would
+return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of  absent-mindedness not
+to have excused herself, especially as her guest  was talking.  And, Mary's
+return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think  this unprefaced exit odder
+and ruder than she had first considered it.   There might have been more
+excuse for it, she thought, had she been  speaking of matters less
+important--offering to do the girl all the  kindness in her power, too!
+
+Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of her
+show; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory of the
+furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and engravings.   Then
+she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window and stood  looking out
+upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair she had  abandoned, and sat
+again.  There was no sound in the house.
+
+A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her face,  and
+slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears.  She looked  at her
+watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since she had  looked at it
+before.
+
+She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let  herself
+softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her  own house.
+
+Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily.  "Saw you from the window,"  he
+explained.  "You must find a lot to say to that old lady."
+
+"What old lady?"
+
+"Mrs. Vertrees.  I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the  daughter
+come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk  on up the
+street.  Don't stand out on the porch," he said, crossly.   "Come in here.
+There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you  about.  Come in!"
+
+But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house and
+started.  He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun,  staring
+fixedly.  "Something's the matter over there," he muttered, and  then, more
+loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, "What's the  matter over
+there?"
+
+Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its hightest speed,  and
+as he saw Roscoe he made a genture singularly eloquent of calamity,  and was
+lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street.  Edith had  followed part of
+the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she  was crying bitterly.
+She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
+
+"By George!" gasped Roscoe.  "I believe somebody's dead!"
+
+And he started for the New House at a run.
+
+
+Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon, and  at
+about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from  foreign
+parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with  Sheridan and his
+colleagues.  Herr Favre, in spite of his French name,  was a gentleman of
+Bavaria.  It was his first visit to our country, and  Sheridan took pleasure
+in showing him the sights of the country's finest  city.  They got into an
+open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan  Building, and were driven
+first, slowly and momentously, through the  wholesale district and the retail
+district; then more rapidly they  inspected the packing-houses and the
+stock-yards; then skirmished over  the "park system" and "boulevards"; and
+after that whizzed through the  "residence section" on their way to the
+factories and foundries.
+
+"All cray," observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+
+"'Cray'?" echoed Sheridan.  "I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?"
+
+"No white," said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the long rows  of
+houses on both sides of the street.  "No white lace window-curtains;  all cray
+lace window-curtains."
+
+"Oh. I see!"  Sheridan laughed indulgently.  "You mean 'GRAY.'  No, they
+ain't, they're white.  I never saw any gray ones."
+
+Herr Favre shook his head, much amused.  "There are NO white ones," he  said.
+"There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white  window-curtains, no white
+house, no white peeble!"  He pointed upward.   "Smoke!"  Then he sniffed the
+air and clasped his nose between forefinger  and thumb.  "Smoke!  Smoke
+ef'rywhere.  Smoke in your insites."  He  tapped his chest.  "Smoke in your
+lunks!"
+
+"Oh!  SMOKE!"  Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
+patently finding it delicious.  "You BET we got smoke!"
+
+"Exbensif!" said Herr Favre.  "Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics.  Maybe in  summer
+it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it."
+
+Sheridan laughed uproariously.  "They know it means new spring hats for 'em!"
+
+"They must need many, too!" said the vistior.  "New hats, new all things,  but
+nothing white.  In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing peeble."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"In Munchen.  You say 'Munich.'"
+
+"Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip, and  I
+tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty  dirty and
+mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel.  Now comin'  right down TO
+it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town  than in Munich?  I
+know you got more enterprise up there than the part of  the old country I saw,
+and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're  associated with others like
+you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place,  wouldn't you heap rather be here
+than over there?"
+
+"For me," said Herr Favre, "no.  Here I should not think I was living.   It
+would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else."
+
+"We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world.  THEY
+like it."
+
+"Oh yes."  And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly.  "The first generation,  they
+bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are Americans,  like
+you."  He tapped his host's big knee genially.  "You are patriot; so  are
+they."
+
+"Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+Farver!" Sheridan exclaimed, gaily.  "You certainly stand up for your own
+town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would  here.
+Yes, SIR!  You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after you've  seen our city!
+It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of  admire you for it; every
+man ought to stick up for his own, even when he  sees the other fellow's got
+the goods on him.  Yet I expect way down deep  in your heart, Mr. Farver,
+you'd rather live right here than any place  else in the world, if you had
+your choice.  Man alive! this is God's  country, Mr. Farver, and a blind man
+couldn't help seein' it!  You  couldn't stand where you do in a business way
+and NOT see it.  Soho,  boy!  Here we are.  This is the big works, and I'll
+show you something  now that 'll make your eyes stick out!"
+
+They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was  personally
+conducted and personally instructed by the founder and  president, the buzzing
+queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+
+"Now I'll take you for a spin in the country," said Sheridan, when at  last
+they came out to the car again.  "We'll take a breezer."  But, with  his foot
+on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out of  the office
+smiling a greeting.   "Hello, young fellow!" Sheridan said,  heartily.  "On
+the job, are you , Jimmie?  Ha!  They don't catch you OFF  of it very often, I
+guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in  the country sometimes
+with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside  you!"  He roared with
+laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder.   "That's all right with me--if
+it is with HER!  So, Jimmie?  Well, when  we goin' to move into your new
+warehouses?  Monday?"
+
+"Sunday, if you want to," said Jim.
+
+"No!" cried his father, delighted.  "Don't tell me you're goin' to keep  your
+word about dates!  That's no way to do contractin'!  Never heard of  a
+contractor yet didn't want more time."
+
+"They'll be all ready for you on the minute," said Jim.  "I'm going over  both
+of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof.  I  guess they'll
+pass inspection, too!"
+
+"Well, then, when you get through with that," said his father, "you go and
+take your girl out ridin'.  By George! you've earned it!  You tell her  you
+stand high with ME!"  He stepped into the car, waving a waggish  farewell, and
+when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his  companion a broad
+face literally shining with pride.  "That's my boy  Jimmie!" he said.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," said Herr Favre.
+
+"I got two o' the finest boys," said Sheridan, "I got two o' the finest  boys
+God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver!  Jim's the oldest, and  I tell
+you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM  in bed!  My
+other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's a  wizard.  You saw
+them two new-process warehouses, just about finished?   Well, JIM built 'em.
+I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver."  And he  recited this history,
+describing the new process at length; in fact, he  had such pride in Jim's
+achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it  more than once.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an  hour
+later.  They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
+
+"He is that!" said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: "I got a fine
+family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern.  I got a daughter now; you take her  and
+put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em.   There's
+culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load,  and here
+lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it--her and my
+daughter-in-law, both.  I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.   I'm
+goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and  you'll
+see--and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been holdin'  their own
+with the best.  Myself, I and the wife never had time for much  o' that kind
+o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern; and  my daughter
+she's always kind of taken to it.  I'll read you a poem she  wrote when I get
+you up at the house.  She wrote it in school and took  the first prize for
+poetry with it.  I tell you they don't make 'em any  smarter 'n that girl, Mr.
+Farver.  Yes, sir; take us all round, we're a  pretty happy family; yes, sir.
+Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet, and I  haven't ever spoke to him and his
+wife about it--it's kind of a  delicate matter--but it's about time the wife
+and I saw some  gran'-chuldern growin' up around us.  I certainly do hanker
+for about  four or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee.  Boys,
+I  hope, o' course; that's only natural.  Jim's got his eye on a mighty
+splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us.  I expect you heard  me
+joshin' him about it back yonder.  She's one of the ole blue-bloods  here, and
+I guess it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER!  She's one  these girls that
+stand tight up and look at you!  And pretty?  She's the  prettiest thing you
+ever saw!  Good size, too; good health and good  sense.  Jim 'll be just right
+if he gets her.  I must say it tickles ME to  think o' the way that boy took
+ahold o' that job back yonder.  Four  months and a half!  Yes, sir--"
+
+He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain the
+stranger throughout the long drive.  Darkness had fallen before they  reached
+the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan  allowed Herr
+Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were  shrieking extra
+editions of the evening paper.
+
+"Now, good night, Mr. Farver," said Sheridan, leaning from the car to  shake
+hands with his guest.  "Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and  take you up
+to--Go on away, boy!"
+
+A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, "Extry!  Secon'
+Extry.  Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT.  Extry!"
+
+"Get out!" laughed Sheridan.  "Who wants to read about accidents?  Get out!"
+
+The boy moved away philosophically.  "Extry!  Extry!" he shrilled.   "Three
+men killed!  Extry!  Millionaire killed!  Two other men killed!   Extry!
+Extry!"
+
+"Don't forget, Mr. Farver." Sheridan completed his interrupted  farewells.
+"I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner.  I'll  be here for you
+about half-past five to-morrow afternoon.  Hope you  'njoyed the drive much as
+I have.  Good night--good night!"  He leaned  back, speaking to the chauffer.
+"Now you can take me around to the  Central City barber-shop, boy.  I want to
+get a shave 'fore I go up home."
+
+"Extry!  Extry!" screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
+bats in the dusk.  "Extry!  All about the horrable acciDENT!  Extry!"  It
+struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many "Extras"; they printed
+"Extras" for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties.  It was a mistake,  he
+decided, critically.  Crying "Wolf!" too often wouldn't sell the  goods; it
+was bad business.  The papers would "make more in the long  run," he was sure,
+if they published an "Extra" only when something of  real importance happened.
+
+"Extry!  All about the hor'ble AX'nt!  Extry!" a boy squawked under his  nose,
+as he descended from the car.
+
+"Go on away!" said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled.  He liked to see  the
+youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+
+But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus  cried
+his wares.
+
+"Say, Yallern," said this second, hoarse with awe, "'n't chew know who  that
+IS?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It's SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Jeest!" cried the first, staring insanely.
+
+At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,  and
+Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head  barber.  The
+barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was  their habit to give
+him a "reception," his entrance being always the  signal for a flurry of
+jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses  of briskness and gaiety.
+But it was not so this evening.
+
+The shop was crowded.  Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men  waiting,
+and by men in the latter stages of treatment.  "Extras" lay upon  vacant seats
+and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+
+There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened the
+door.  His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering of a
+firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men turned  their
+prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing silence  in the
+shop.
+
+The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau.  His
+left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section  of
+his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above  it, the
+razor motionless.  And then, roused from trance by the door's  closing, he
+accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence.  The barber  remembered that there
+are no circumstances in life--or just after it-- under which a man does not
+need to be shaved.
+
+He stepped forward, profoundly graave.  "I be through with this man in  the
+chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone.  "Yessuh." And
+of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, "You goin'  RESIGN?" he
+demanded in a fierce undertone.  "You goin' take Mist'  Sheridan's coat?"  He
+sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers,  taking his meaning,
+averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of  subdued conversation
+buzzing from chair to chair.
+
+"You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan," said the head barber, gently.   "I
+fix nice chair fo' you to wait in."
+
+"Never mind," said Sheridan.  "Go on get through with your man."
+
+"Yessuh."  And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
+Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+
+Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently.  Sheridan did not know  what
+to make of it.  Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand  for the
+meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been  imposed upon him
+by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd  look every man in the
+shop had bent upon him.
+
+Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the  shop,
+and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly  shifted,
+furtive glances here and there.  He made this brief survey after  wondering if
+one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the night  before; but
+there was no vacancy in either line.
+
+The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of the
+"Extra" there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it.  The  first
+of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:     Fatally Faulty.
+New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist     to Death with Inventor.  Seven
+Escape When Crash Comes.  Death    Claims--
+
+Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the  print
+from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him,  pale and
+gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+
+"I've come for you, father," said Bibbs.  "Here's the boy with your coat  and
+hat.  Put them on and come home."
+
+And even then Sheridan did not understand.  So secure was he in the  strength
+and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what  calamity had
+befallen him.  But he was frightened.
+
+Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,  but as
+they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his son's  sleeve
+with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood face to  face.
+
+"What--what--"  His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it,  he was
+so frightened.
+
+"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face.  "Young North Side
+millionaire insuntly killed!  Extry!"
+
+"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
+
+Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+
+"And YOU come to tell me that?"
+
+Sheridan did not know what he said.  But in those first words and in the
+first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered  cry of
+accusation:
+
+"Why wasn't it you?"
+
+
+Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three days
+later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite in his  mind:
+the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs  wondered how many
+million times that had happened since men first made a  word to name the sons
+of one mother.  Almost literally he had buried his  strong brother, for
+Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead son. He had nothing to help
+him meet the shock, neither definite religion nor  "philosophy" definite or
+indefinite.  He could only beat his forehead and  beg, over and over, to be
+killed with an ax, while his wife was helpless  except to entreat him not to
+"take on," herself adding a continuous  lamentation.  Edith, weeping, made
+truce with Sibyl and saw to it that  the mourning garments were beyond
+criticism.  Roscoe was dazed, and he  shirked, justifying himself curiously be
+saying he "never had any  experience in such matters."  So it was Bibbs, the
+shy outsider, who  became, during this dreadful little time, the master of the
+house; for as  strange a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a
+death.  He met  the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time
+for the  funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and he
+selected  Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other things.
+Jim  had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the rites with a
+picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs wished to avoid  this,
+but upon reflection he offered no objection--he divined that the  Knights and
+their service would be not precisely a consolation, but a  satisfaction to his
+father.  So the Knights led the procession, with  their band playing a dirge
+part of the long way to the cemetery; and then  turned back, after forming in
+two lines, plumed hats sympathetically in  hand, to let the hearse and the
+carriages pass between.
+
+"Mighty fine-lookin' men," said Sheridan, brokenly.  "They all--all  liked
+him.  He was--"  His breath caught in a sob and choked him.  "He  was--a Grand
+Supreme Herald."
+
+Bibbs had divined aright.
+
+"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot.  All of the black group
+shivered, execpt Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust."  Bibbs stood  passive,
+for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a  familiar
+neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long  time, and even
+now he could prophesy no protracted separation between  himself and dust.  The
+machine-shop had brought him very close, and if he  had to go back it would
+probably bring him closer still; so close--as  Dr. Gurney predicted--that no
+one would be able to tell the difference  between dust and himself.  And
+Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would  be all the more determined to "make
+a man" of him, now that there was a  man less in the family.  To Bibbs's
+knowledge, no one and nothing had  ever prevented his father from carrying
+through his plans, once he had  determined upon them; and Sheridan was
+incapable of believing that any  plan of his would not work out according to
+his calculations.  His nature  unfitted him to accept failure.  He had the
+gift of terrible persistence,  and with unflecked confidence that his way was
+the only way he would hold  to that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who
+understood very well, in his  passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a
+way which might make, not a  man, but dust of him.  But he had no shudder for
+the thought.
+
+He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought.  The truth  about
+Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so thoroughly  formed
+the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that no doubt he  had
+forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them,  especially those
+which concerned himself.  But he had not hidden his  feelings about his father
+where they could not be found.  He was strange  to his father, but his father
+was not strange to him.  He knew that  Sheridan's plans were conceived in the
+stubborn belief that they would  bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself;
+and whatever the result was  to be, the son had no bitterness.  Far otherwise,
+for as he looked at the  big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost
+unbearable pity laid  hands upon Bibbs's throat.  Roscoe stood blinking, his
+lip quivering;  Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse
+against her  husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
+
+It was over.  Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and  Bibbs
+nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line  of waiting
+carriages.  Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the  grave filled; the
+rest were to go.  The groups began to move away over  the turf; wheels creaked
+on the graveled drive; and one by one the  carriages filled and departed, the
+horses setting off at a walk.  Bibbs  gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he
+knew that his father kept looking  back as he went toward the carriage, and
+that was a thing he did not want  to see.  But after a little while there were
+no sounds of wheels or hoofs  on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that
+every one had gone.  A  coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing
+patiently.
+
+The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it,  and
+Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking
+thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock
+beneath the darkening November sky.  "It's too bad!" he half whispered,  his
+lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was too bad  that the
+strong brother had been the one to go.  For this was his last  thought before
+he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all  alone, on the
+other side of the drive.
+
+She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope
+where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the  barbaric
+and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:  urn-crowned
+columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and  shop-carved
+children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in  unthought
+pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky.  Against such a  background,
+Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long  and slender,
+and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the  undertaker's coupe out
+of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the  box and the shaggy horses
+standing patiently in attitudes without hope  and without regret.  But for
+Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting  --she was a vivid, living
+creature of a beautiful world.  And a  graveyard is not the place for people
+to look charming.
+
+She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused
+than Bibbs.  In "Edith's" poem he had declared his intention of hiding  his
+heart "among the stars"; and in his boyhood one day he had  successfully
+hidden his body in the coal-pile.  He had been no comrade of  other boys or of
+girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were  only a few
+fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium.  All  his life Bibbs
+had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker  in the world.
+Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the  unexpected lady before him
+had causes other than his shyness and her  unexpectedness.  For Mary Vertrees
+had been a shining figure in the  little world of late given to the view of
+this humble and elusive  outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts
+beating faster than  those of the actors in the spectacle.  Thus with Bibbs
+now.  He started  and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness,
+his fingers  fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, "I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with  you.
+I--"  She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
+
+"Why--why--yes," Bibbs stammered.  "I'll--I'll be de--Won't you  get in?"
+
+In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words.  Then  Mary
+withour more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the  door.
+
+"You're very kind," she said, somewhat breathlessly.  "I should have had  to
+walk, and it's beginning to get dark.  It's three miles, I think."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs.  "It--it is beginning to get dark.  I--I noticed  that."
+
+"I ought to tell you--I--" Mary began, confusedly.  She bit her lip,  sat
+silent a moment, then spoke with composure.  "It must seem odd, my--"
+
+"No, no!" Bibbs protested, earnestly.  "Not in the--in the least."
+
+"It does, though," said Mary.  "I had not intended to come to the  cemetery,
+Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came  and whispered to
+me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your sister  sent him.  So I came.
+But when we reached here I--oh, I felt that  perhaps I--"
+
+Bibbs nodded gravely.  "Yes, yes," he murmured.
+
+"I got out on the opposite side of the carriage," she continued.  "I mean
+opposite from--from where all of you were.  And I wandered off over in  the
+other direction; and I didn't realize how little time--it takes.   From where
+I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at least I  didn't notice them.
+So when I got back, just now, you were the only one  here.  I didn't know the
+other people in the carriage I came in, and of  course they didn't think to
+wait for me.  That's why--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "I--"  And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+
+Mary looked out through the dusty window.  "I think we'd better be going
+home, if you please," she said.
+
+"Yes," Bibbs agreed, not moving.  "It will be dark before we get there."
+
+She gave him a quick little glance.  "I think you must be very tired, Mr.
+Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be," she said, gently.  "If  you'll
+let me, I'll--"  And without explaining her purpose she opened  the door on
+her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+
+Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+
+"Driver!" she called, in her clear voice, loudly.  "Driver! We'd like to
+start, please!  Driver!  Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
+please."  The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once
+more.  "I noticed that he was asleep when we got in," she said.   "I  suppose
+they have a great deal of night work."
+
+Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.   "I've
+never been able to apologize quickly," he said, with his accustomed  slowness,
+"because if I try to I stammer.  My brother Roscoe whipped me  once, when we
+were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil.  It took me so  long to tell him
+it was an accident, he finished before I did."
+
+Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle  voice
+or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state  of their
+vehicle was an "accident."  She had formed a casual impression  of him, not
+without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was  unlike any of her
+cursory and vague imaginings of him.  And suddenly she  saw a picture he had
+not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy  hammering a smaller, sickly
+boy, and the sickly boy unresentful.  Not  that picture alone; others flashed
+before her.  Instantaneously she had a  glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his
+life.   She had a queer feeling, new  to her experience, of knowing him
+instantly.  It startled her a litttle;  and then, with some surprise, she
+realized that she was glad he had sat so  long, after getting into the coupe,
+before he noticed that it had not  started.  What she did not realize,
+however, was that she had made no  response to his apology, and they passed
+out of the cemetery gates,  neither having spoken again.
+
+Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was  silence.
+The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a  rich presence
+for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the  two could see the
+other, nor did even their garments touch.  But neither  had any sense of being
+alone.  The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling  presently on paved streeets;
+there were the sounds, as from a distance, of  the plod-plod of the horses;
+and sometimes the driver became audible,  coughing asthmatically, or saying,
+"You, JOE!" with a spiritless flap of  the whip upon an unresponsive back.
+Oblongs of light from the lamps at  street-corners came swimming into the
+interior of the coupe and, thinning  rapidly to lances, passed utterly,
+leaving greater darkness.  And yet  neither of these two last attendants at
+Jim Sheridan's funeral broke the  silence.
+
+It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late.  Abruptly  she
+realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
+companion and not talking to him.  "Mr. Sheridan," she began, not knowing
+what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized  the
+queerness of this drive--"Mr. Sheridan, I--"
+
+The coupe stopped.  "You, JOE!" said the driver, reproachfully, and  climbed
+down and opened the door.
+
+"What's the trouble?" Bibbs inquired.
+
+"Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir."
+
+Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it  mustn't
+be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+
+"What?" Bibbs demanded.
+
+"We're there, sir," said the driver, sympathetically.  "Next house north  of
+Mr. Sheridan's."
+
+Bibbs descended to the curb.  "Why, yes," he said.  "Yes, you seem to be
+right."  And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front  windows of
+Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+
+"Let me help you," said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she  was
+several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+
+"Oh no," she murmured.  "I think I can--"  She meant that she could get  out
+of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already  accomplished
+this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
+
+"You, JOE!" cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box.  And he  rumbled
+away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
+
+"Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, stiffly.  She  did
+not offer her hand.  "Good night."
+
+"Good night," Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked  beside
+her to the door.  Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran.   Realization
+of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her,  beginning to shock her;
+she stepped aside from the light that fell  through the glass panels of the
+door and withheld her hand as it touched  the old-fashioned bell-handle.
+
+"I'm quite safe, thank you," she said, with a little emphasis.  "Good night."
+
+"Good night," said Bibbs, and went obediently.  When he reached the  street he
+looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+
+Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out  from
+the pavement to cross the street.  They were Roscoe and his wife.
+
+"Where are your eyes, Bibbs?" demanded Roscoe.  "Sleep-walking, as usual?"
+
+But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm.  "Come over to our house for a  little
+while, Bibbs," she urged.  "I want to--"
+
+"No, I'd better--"
+
+"Yes.  I want you to.  Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet  over
+there--all worn out.  Just come for a minute."
+
+He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with  real
+feeling: "'All worn out!'  Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs!  And  I don't
+wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it.  You mustn't get  down sick
+again.  I'm going to make you take a little brandy."
+
+He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and was
+grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the  decanters
+on the sideboard.  Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much  heavier libation
+in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl  leaned against the
+sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and  recalling the names of the
+donors of flowers and wreaths.  She pressed  Bibbs to remain longer when he
+rose to go, and then, as he persisted, she  went with him to the front door.
+He opened it, and she said:
+
+"Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you.   How
+did you happen to be there?"
+
+"I had only been to the door," he said.  "Good night, Sibyl."
+
+"Wait," she insisted.  "We saw you coming out."
+
+"I wasn't," he explained, moving to depart.  "I'd just brought Miss  Vertrees
+home."
+
+"What?" she cried.
+
+"Yes," he said, and stepped out upon the porch, "that was it.  Good  night,
+Sibyl."
+
+"Wait!" she said, following him across the threshold.  "How did that  happen?
+I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the-- the--"  She
+paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+
+"I did wait.  Miss Vertrees was there," he said, reluctantly.  "She had
+walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were  leaving.
+When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one left."
+
+She regarded him with dilating eyes.  She spoke with a slow  breathlessness.
+"And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!"
+
+Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually  over
+her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the  door shut
+behind her.
+
+
+Bibbs went home pondering.  He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed.   The
+laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it  seemed to
+him that she had only affected to effort to suppress it and  that she wished
+it to be significant.  Significant of what?  And why had  she wished to
+impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement?   He found no answer,
+but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he  wished that he had not
+encountered her.
+
+At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering about  the
+house, several mournfully admiring the "Bay of Naples," and others  occupied
+with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for trains.   Edith and her
+mother had retired to some upper fastness, but Bibbs  interviewed Jackson and
+had the various groups of relatives summoned to  the dining-room for food.
+One great-uncle, old Gideon Sheridan from  Boonville, could not be found, and
+Bibbs went in search of him.  He  ransacked the house, discovering the missing
+antique at last by  accident.  Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe,
+Bibbs heard a  murmurous sound, and paused to listen.  The sound proved to be
+a quavering  and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
+
+"The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away!  We got to remember that;  we
+got to remember that!  I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin'  along, and
+I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son the Lord  give me, and He
+has taken all away.  For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord  takuth away!
+Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James.  Bildad  the Shuhite says,
+'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people,  nor any remaining in
+his dwellings.'  Bildad the Shuhite--"
+
+Bibbs opened the door softly.  His father was lying upon the bed, in his
+underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging  backward
+and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard  and gazing at
+the ceiling as he talked.  Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but  Uncle Gideon paid
+no attention.
+
+"Bibdad the Shuhite spake and his says, 'If thy children have sinned  against
+Him and He have cast them away--"
+
+There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows  rattled.
+The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but  Uncle Gideon
+leaped from his chair.  "My God!" he cried.  "What's that?"
+
+There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.   Bibbs
+went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,  discovered the
+source of the distubance.  Gideon's grandson, a boy of  fourteen, had brought
+his camera to the funeral and was taking  "flash-lights" of the Moor.  Uncle
+Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's  explanation, would have returned to finish his
+quotation from Bildad the  Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little
+argument persuaded  him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed,
+after closing  the door of his father's room.
+
+He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several
+attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was  a
+relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to
+convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.  They were the  last
+to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.
+
+He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to  the
+window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary  Vertrees
+lived.  Then he open his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book  half filled
+with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
+
+     Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the  cemetery,
+but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are out of  hearing, it
+strikes up, "Darktown is Out To-night."  That is natural-- but there are women
+whose laughter is like the whirring of whips.  Why is  it that certain kinds
+of laughter seem to spoil something hidden away  from the laughers?  If they
+do not know of it, and have never seen it,  how can their laughter hurt it?
+Yet it does.   Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+out of  place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a man would not
+look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look beautiful, though, at  the
+funeral of a man whom she had known and liked.  And in that case,  too, she
+would probably not want to talk if she drove home from the  cemetery with his
+brother: nor would she want the brother to talk.   Silence is usually either
+stupid or timid.  But for a man who stammers if  he tries to talk fast, and
+drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer,  that nobody has time to listen to
+him, silence is advisable.   Nevertheless, too much silence is open to
+suspicion.  It may be  reticence, or it may be a vacuum.  It may be dignity,
+or it may be false  teeth.    Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become
+perceptible in a  small inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of
+gasoline rising  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside
+her than  all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady--but
+there  ARE!    Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may be three
+feet.   When it is three feet you have not time to say a great deal before you
+reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that one should begin to speak.     No one
+could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of  the people that are
+in this world.  There are some so wonderful you do  not understand how the
+dead COULD die.  How could they let themselves?   A falling building does
+not care who falls with it.  It does not  choose who shall be upon its roof
+and who shall not.  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman
+of the world  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the
+length of  time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+miles, she  might expect that man to say something of some sort!  Even if she
+thought  him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had heard from others that he
+was  a disappointment to his own people, even if she had seen for herself that
+he was a useless and irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect  him
+at least to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try  to make
+sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every  step of the
+way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a frozen  fish.  And she
+might be right.  She might be right if she thought him  about as pleasant a
+companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
+
+Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk.  Then, after a  period
+of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown  and
+slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door.   Upon the
+floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the  evening, to
+place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was  untouched.  Bibbs
+stood listening outside the door for several minutes.   There came no sound
+from within, and he went back to his own room and to bed.
+
+In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+experience.  Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little pause
+--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun.  It is a curious
+half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person experiencing it  may
+not know for that instant his own name or age or sex, he may be  acutely
+conscious of depression or elation.  It is the moment, as we say,  before we
+"remember"; and for the first time in Bibbs's life it came to  him bringing a
+vague happiness.  He woke to a sense of new riches; he had  the feeling of a
+boy waking to a birthday.  But when the next moment  brought him his memory,
+he found nothing that could explain his  exhilaration.  On the contrary, under
+the circumstances it seemed  grotesquely unwarranted.  However, it was a brief
+visitation and was gone  before he had finished dressing.  It left a little
+trail, the pleased  recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained
+unsolved.  And, in  fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually the
+result of a drive  home from a funeral.  No wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs
+Sheridan!
+
+His father had gone when he came down-stairs.  "Went on down to 's  office,
+jes' same," Jackson informed him.  "Came sat breakfas'-table, all  by 'mself;
+eat nothin'.  George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat a  thing.  Yessuh,
+went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do.  Yessuh, I reckon putty much
+ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do."
+
+It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right.  The day passed as other days had
+passed.  Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried a
+little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be seen.   Edith
+was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved  herself able to
+argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving  calls in the earliest
+stages of "mourning."  Lunch was as usual--for  Jim and his father had always
+lunched down-town--and the afternoon was  as usual.  Bibbs went for his drive,
+and his mother went with him, as she  sometimes did when the weather was
+pleasant.  Altogether, the usualness  of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
+
+During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood.   "But
+you wouldn't remember about that," she said, after narrating an  episode.
+"You were too little.  He was always a good boy, just like  that.  And he'd
+save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank.  I  reckon it 'll just
+about kill your father to put somebody in his place as  president of the
+Realty Company, Bibbs.  I know he can't move Roscoe  over; he told me last
+week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any one  man could handle and not
+go crazy.  Oh, it's a pity--"  She stopped to  wipe her eyes.  "It's a pity
+you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and  kind o' pick up his ways.  Think
+what it'd meant to papa now! You never  did run with either Roscoe or Jim any,
+even before you got sick.  Of  course, you were younger; but it always DID
+seem queer--and you three  bein' brothers like that.  I don't believe I ever
+saw you and Jim sit  down together for a good talk in my life."
+
+"Mother, I've been away so long," Bibbs returned, gently. "And since I  came
+home I--"
+
+"Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs," she said.  "Jim ain't been home  much of
+an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin'  and goin' to
+the theater and places, and often not even at the house for  dinner.  Right
+the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some  miser'ble rest'rant
+down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein'  the night work and
+gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he  told papa he would.  I
+reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if  there'd been more
+opportunity, Bibbs.  I expect you feel almost as if you  scarcely really knew
+him right well."
+
+"I suppose I really didn't, mother.  He was busy, you see, and I hadn't  much
+to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know  much about
+them."
+
+"It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!" she moaned.  "And you'll have to learn to
+know about 'em NOW, Bibbs!  I haven't said much to you, because I felt it  was
+all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will  just kill
+him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this!  You  mustn't LET
+him, Bibbs--you mustn't!  You don't know how he's grieved  over you, and now
+he can't stand any more--he just can't!  Whatever he  says for you to do, you
+DO it, Bibbs, you DO it!  I want you to promise  me you will."
+
+"I would if I could," he said, sorrowfully.
+
+"No, no!  Why can't you?" she cried, clutching his arm.  "He wants you to  go
+back to the machine-shop and--"
+
+"And--'like it!" said Bibbs.
+
+"Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit.  Dr. Gurney said it  wouldn't
+hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said  that himself,
+Bibbs.  So why can't you do it?  Can't you do that much for  your father?  You
+ought to think what he's done for YOU.  You got a  beautiful house to live in;
+you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur  coats and warm clothes; you been
+taken care of all your life.  And you  don't KNOW how he worked for the money
+to give all these things to you!   You don't DREAM what he had to go through
+and what he risked when we were  startin' out in life; and you never WILL
+know!  And now this blow has  fallen on him out of a clear sky, and you make
+it out to be a hardship to  do like he wants you to!  And all on earth he asks
+is for you to go back  to the work in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you!
+That's all he  asks.  Look, Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we
+get there  I want you to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to.
+Promise  me!"
+
+In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see  him
+better, and it blew out on the smoky wind.  He readjusted it for her  before
+he spoke.
+
+"I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother," he said.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, satisfied.  "That's a good boy!  That's all I  wanted
+you to say."
+
+"Don't give me any credit," he said, ruefully.  "There isn't anything  else
+for me to do."
+
+"Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!"
+
+"No, no," he soothed her.  "We'll have to begin to make the spirit a  cheerful
+one.  We may--"  They were turning into their own driveway as  he spoke, and
+he glanced at the old house next door.  Mary Vertrees was  visible in the
+twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the  door open behind
+her.  She bowed gravely.
+
+"'We may'--what?" asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+"You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'."
+
+"Did I?" said Bibbs, blankly.  "Well, what WERE we saying?"
+
+"Of all the queer boys!" she cried.  "You always were.  Always!  You  haven't
+forgot what you just promised me, have you?"
+
+"No," he answered, as the car stopped.  "No, the spirit will be as  cheerful
+as the flesh will let it, mother.  It won't do to behave like--"
+
+His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she failed  to
+here his final words.
+
+"Behave like who, Bibbs?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+But she was fretful in her grief.  "You said it wouldn't do to behave  like
+SOMEBODY.  Behave like WHO?"
+
+"It was just nonsense," he explained, turning to go in.  "An obscure  person I
+don't think much of lately."
+
+"Behave like WHO?" she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell  Dr.
+Gurney about it.
+
+"Like Bildad the Shuhite!" was what Bibbs said.
+
+
+The outward usualness of things continued after dinner.  It was  Sheridan's
+custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the  library, while his
+wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit)  or allowed herself to be
+repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms  of solitaire.  To-night she
+did neither, but sat in her customary chair,  gazing at the fire, while
+Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his  lap, though now and then he
+lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall  back upon his knees again.  Bibbs
+came in noiselessly and sat in a  corner, doing nothing; and from a
+"reception-room" across the hall an  indistinct vocal murmur became just
+audible at intervals.  Once, when  this murmur grew louder, under stress of
+some irrepressible merriment,  Edith's voice could be heard--"Bobby, aren't
+you awful!" and Sheridan  glanced across at his wife appealingly.
+
+She rose at once and went into the "reception-room"; there was a flurry  of
+whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith and her  suitor
+changing quarters to a more distant room.  Mrs. Sheridan returned  to her
+chair in the library.
+
+"They won't bother you any more, papa," she said, in a comforting voice.
+"She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening, and  I
+said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd already  told
+him he could."  She paused, then added, rather guiltily: "I got kind  of a
+notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used to.  Maybe-- maybe you
+better ask Roscoe, papa."  And as Sheridan nodded solemnly, she  concluded, in
+haste: "Don't say I said to.  I might be wrong about it,  anyway."
+
+He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.  Sheridan
+broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that  brought tears.
+"That Miss Vertrees was a good girl," she said.  "SHE was  all right."
+
+Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of  thought,
+for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+
+"Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?" she  faltered.
+"Did you--
+
+He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.   "I
+fixed it," he said, in a husky voice.  "I moved Cantwell up, and put  Johnston
+in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the four  men with
+salaries high enough to take it."  He went to her, put his hand  upon her
+shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath.  "It's my  bedtime,
+mamma; I'm goin' up."  He dropped the hand from her shoulder and  moved slowly
+away, but when he reached the door he stopped and spoke  again, without
+turning to look at her.  "The Realty Company 'll go right  on just the same,"
+he said.  "It's like--it's like sand, mamma.  It  puts me in mind of chuldern
+playin' in a sand-pile.  One of 'em sticks  his finger in the sand and makes a
+hole, and another of 'em 'll pat the  place with his hand, and all the little
+grains of sand run in and fill it  up and settle against one another; and
+then, right away it's flat on top  again, and you can't tell there ever was a
+hole there.  The Realty Company  'll go on all right, mamma.  There ain't
+anything anywhere, I reckon,  that wouldn't go right on--just the same."
+
+And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread  upon
+the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.   "It's
+so forlong," she said, chokingly.  "That's the first time he spoke  since he
+came in the house this evening.  I know it must 'a' hurt him to  hear Edith
+laughin' with that Lamhorn.  She'd oughtn't to let him come,  right the very
+first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it!  She  just seems to lose
+her head over him, and it scares me.  You heard what  Sibyl said the other
+day, and--and you heard what--what--"
+
+"What Edith said to Sibyl?"  Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+
+"We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!" she wailed.  "Oh, it looks as if
+movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck!  It scares  me!"
+She put both her hands over her face.  "Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you  only wasn't
+so QUEER!  If you could only been a kind of dependable son!   I don't know
+what we're all comin' to!"  And, weeping, she followed her  husband.
+
+Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man  who
+has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called  "the
+smoking-room"--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn.  They looked up  in no
+welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a  less
+conspicuous adjacency.
+
+"Good evening," said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a  leather
+easy-chair near them.
+
+"What is it?" asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+
+"Nothing," he returned, smiling.
+
+She frowned.  "Did you want something?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing in the world.  Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't  be
+going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left  for me
+to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn."
+
+"'CHAT with'!" she echoed, incredulously.
+
+"I can talk about almost anything," said Bibbs with an air of genial
+politeness.  "It doesn't matter to ME.  I don't know much about business  --if
+that's what you happened to be talking about.  But you aren't in  business,
+are you, Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+"Not now," returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+
+"I'm not, either," said Bibbs.  "It was getting cloudier than usual, I
+noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest.  Rain
+to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of which  had
+now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he sat  expectantly,
+looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if implying  that it was
+their turn to speak.  Edith returned his gaze with a mixture  of astonishment
+and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was obviously  disturbed, though Bibbs
+had been as considerate as possible in presenting  the weather as a topic.
+Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in  his mind at any time except
+"personalities"--he could talk about people  and he could make love.  Bibbs,
+wishing to be courteous, offered the weather.
+
+Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
+leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for  the
+rest of the evening.  There was not reason to hope that he would  move, and
+Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
+
+"I was just going," he said, rising.
+
+"Oh NO!" Edith cried, sharply.
+
+"Yes.  Good night!  I think I--"
+
+"Too bad," said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,  while
+Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall.  She heard  Bibbs
+offering to "help" Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather  curtly
+declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed  by the
+closing of the outer door.  She ran into the hall.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" she cried, furiously.  "What do you MEAN?   How
+did you dare come in there when you knew--"
+
+Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
+stairs, sobbing.  She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up,  a
+few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+
+"Oh, Bibbs," she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't to  distress
+your sister!  She says you drove that young man right out of the  house.
+You'd ought to been more considerate."
+
+Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's  naive
+shadow motionless across its threshold.  "Yes," he said.  "He  doesn't appear
+to much of a 'man's man.'  He ran at just a glimpse of one."
+
+Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: "You call yourself one?"
+
+"No, no," he answered.  "I said, 'just a glimpse of one.'  I didn't claim  --"
+But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+
+"There," he said, sighing.  "That's almost the first time in my life I  ever
+tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in  what I
+tried to do.  As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!"
+
+"You hurt her feelin's," she groaned.  "You must 'a' gone at it too  rough,
+Bibbs."
+
+He looked upon her wanly.  "That's my trouble, mother," he murmured.   "I'm a
+plain, blunt fellow.  I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man."
+
+For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness.  "Hush your  nonsense!"
+she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile  appearing.  "You go
+to bed."
+
+He kissed her and obeyed.
+
+Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
+
+"You mustn't do that under a misapprehension," he warned her, when they  were
+alone in the dining-room.
+
+"Do what under a what?" she asked.
+
+"Speak to me.  I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'" he  told
+her, gravely.  "I have a prejudice against that young man."
+
+She laughed.  "I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+prejudices against!"  In mockery she adopted the manner of one who  implores.
+"Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence  with papa
+against him!"  And she laughed louder.
+
+"Listen," he said, with peculiar earnestness.  "I'll tell you now,
+because--because I've decided I'm one of the family."  And then, as if  the
+earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further, he continued,  in his
+usual tone, "I'm drunk with power, Edith."
+
+"What do you want to tell me?" she damanded, brusquely.
+
+"Lamhorn made love to Sibyl," he said.
+
+Edith hooted. "SHE did to HIM!  And because you overheard that spat  between
+us the other day when I the same of accused her of it, and said  something
+like that to you afterward--"
+
+"No," he said, gravely.  "I KNOW."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+Lamhorn--"
+
+Edith screamed with laughter.  "You were with ROSCOE--and you heard  Lamhorn
+making love to Sibyl!"
+
+"No.  I heard them quarreling."
+
+"You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!" she cried.  "You say he made love to  her
+because you heard them quarreling!"
+
+"That's it.  If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by  the way
+they quarrel."
+
+"You'll kill me, Bibbs!  What were they quarreling about?"
+
+"Nothing.  That's how I knew.  People who quarrel over nothing!--it's  always
+certain--"
+
+Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery.  "You ought  to
+know.  You've had so much experience, yourself!"
+
+"I haven't any, Edith," he said.  "My life has been about as exciting as  an
+incubator chicken's.  But I look out through the glass at things."
+
+"Well, then," she said, "if you look out through the glass you must know  what
+effect such stuff would have upon ME!" She rose, visibly agitated.   "What if
+it WAS true?" she dmanded, bitterly.  "What if it was true a  hundred times
+over?  You sit there with your silly face half ready to  giggle and half ready
+to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about  Sibyl picking on Bobby
+Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think  it matters to ME?  What if I
+already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'?   What if I understood WHY she--"
+She broke off with a violent gesture, a  sweep of her arm extended at full
+length, as if she hurled something to  the ground.  "Do you think a girl that
+really cared for a man would pay  any attention to THAT?  Or to YOU, Bibbs
+Sheridan!"
+
+He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.   She
+met it with unwavering pride.  Finally he nodded slowly, as if she  had spoken
+and he meant to agree with what she said.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said.  "I won't come into the smoking-room again.  I'm  sorry,
+Edith.  Nobody can make you see anything now.  You'll never see  until you see
+for yourself.  The rest of us will do better to keep out of  it--especially
+me!"
+
+"That's sensible," she responded, curtly.  "You're most surprising of all
+when you're sensible, Bibbs."
+
+"Yes," he sighed.  "I'm a dull dog.  Shake hands and forgive me, Edith."
+
+Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and George
+appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting there,  he
+announced.  And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch upon  the
+shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
+
+Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
+glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in.  He was not over  fifty,
+in spite of Sheridan's habitual "ole Doc Gurney."  He was gray,  however,
+almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
+
+"Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs," he said, not  rising.
+"Wants me to 'look you over' again.  Come around here in front  of me--between
+me and the fire.  I want to see if I can see through you."
+
+"You mean you're too sleepy to move," returned Bibbs, complying.  "I  think
+you'll notice that I'm getting worse."
+
+"Taken on about twelve pounds," said Gurney.  "Thirteen, maybe."
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"Well, it won't do."  The doctor rubbed his eyelids.  "You're so much  better
+I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just  where you are.
+You come down to my place this afternoon.  Walk down-- all the way.  I suppose
+you know why your father wants to know."
+
+Bibbs nodded.  "Machine-shop."
+
+"Still hate it?"
+
+Bibbs nodded again.
+
+"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted.  "Yes, I expect it 'll make a lump  in
+your gizzard again. Well, what do you say?  Shall I tell him you've  got the
+old lump there yet?  You still want to write, do you?"
+
+"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully.  "My kind of writing!"
+
+"Yes," the doctor agreed.  "I suppose it you broke away and lived on  roots
+and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of  editors'
+you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred  dollars a
+year by the time you're fifty."
+
+"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
+
+"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily.  "You  don't
+hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noice  and jar and
+dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'   You'd like to go
+somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask  on a balcony,
+smelling flowers and writing sonnets.  You'd grow fat on it  and have a
+delicate little life all to yourself.   Well, what do you  say?  I can lie
+like sixty, Bibbs!  Shall I tell your father he'll lose  another of his boys
+if you don't go to Sicily?"
+
+"I don't want to go to Sicily," said Bibbs.  "I want to stay right here."
+
+The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his patient  a
+sharp glance.  "It's a risk," he said.  "I think we'll find you're so  much
+better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.  Something's  got hold of
+you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as you used to  be.  But I warn
+you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did  before, and perhaps even
+harder, Bibbs."
+
+He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids.  "Well, when we go over  you
+this afternoon what are we going to say about it?"
+
+"Tell him I'm ready," said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+
+"Oh no," Gurney laughed.  "Not quite yet; but you may be almost.  We'll  see.
+Don't forget I said to walk down."
+
+And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor  informed
+Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing.   "Here's a
+new 'situation' for a one-act farce," he said, gloomily, to his  next patient
+when Bibbs had gone.  "Doctor tells a man he's well, and  that's his death
+sentence, likely.  Dam' funny world!"
+
+Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon  this
+point.  In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any  point, so
+discouraging was the young man's improvement.  It was a dingy  afternoon, and
+the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to  his nostrils, though
+most of the pedestrians were so saturated with the  smell they could no longer
+detect it.  Nearly all of them walked  hurriedly, too intent upon their
+destinations to be more than half aware  of the wayside; they wore the
+expressions of people under a vague yet  constant strain.  They were all
+lightly powdered, inside and out, with  fine dust and grit from the hard-paved
+streets, and they were unaware of  that also.  They did not even notice that
+they saw the smoke, though the  thickened air was like a shrouding mist.  And
+when Bibbs passed the new  "Sheridan Apartments," now almost completed, he
+observed that the marble  of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like
+his gloves, which  were new.
+
+That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way  from
+his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which  continued
+till he reached the vicinity of his home.  His route was by a  street parallel
+to that on which the New House fronted, and in his  preoccupation he walked a
+block farther than he intended, so that, having  crossed to his own street, he
+approached the New House from the north,  and as he came to the corner of Mr.
+Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's  daughter emerged from the front door and walked
+thoughtfully down the  path to the old picket gate.  She was unconscious of
+the approach of the  pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she
+had opened the  gate and he was almost beside her.  Then she looked up, and as
+she saw  him she started visibly.  And if this thing had happened to Robert
+Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of  faint-hearted
+Bibbs's thoughts.  Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his  thought.  He would
+have said:
+
+"You jumped because you were thinking of me!"
+
+
+Mary was the picture of a lady flustered.  She stood with one hand  closing
+the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction  Bibbs was
+walking.  There appeared to be nothing for it but that they  should walk
+together, at least as far as the New House.  But Bibbs had  paused in his slow
+stride, and there elapsed an instant before either  spoke or moved--it was no
+longer than that, and yet it sufficed for  each to seem to say, by look and
+attitude, "Why, it's YOU!"
+
+Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's name  as
+if about to deliver a message of importance.  Then both came to a stop
+simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk  on
+together he contrived to find his voice.
+
+"I--I--hate a frozen fish myself," he said.  "I think three miles was  too
+long for you to put up with one."
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled.  "Mr. Sheridan, you're  lovely
+to put it that way.  But it's always the girl's place to say it's  turning
+cooler!  I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know  each other
+well enough not to say SOMETHING!  It was an imposition for me  to have made
+you bring me home, and after I went into the house I decided  I should have
+walked.  Besides, it wasn't three miles to the car-line.  I  never thought of
+it!"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, earnestly.  "I didn't, either.  I might have said  something
+if I'd thought of anything.  I'm talking now, though; I must  remember that,
+and not worry about it later.  I think I'm talking, though  it doesn't sound
+intelligent even to me.  I made up my mind that if I  ever met you again I'd
+turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what  it said.  I--"
+
+She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one  which
+Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple  would crawl
+five miles to hear."  And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's  father's son
+took heart to forget some of his trepidation.  "I'll be any  kind of idiot,"
+he said, "if you'll laugh at me some more.  It won't be  difficult for me."
+
+She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
+perceived.  It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
+description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the  first
+time.  "Rather tragic and altogether impossible."  It seemed to her  now that
+she must have been blind.
+
+They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
+possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of one  of
+them.
+
+"I'll keep on talking," Bibbs continued, cheerfully, "and you keep on
+laughing.  I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon.  I'm
+making a noise, and that makes you make music.  Don't be bothered by my
+bleating out such things as that.  I'm really frightened, and that makes  me
+bleat anything.  I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what  I'll
+think of myself later if I don't keep talking--talking now, I mean  --and I'm
+afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do.  And besides  these two things,
+I'm frightened, anyhow.  I don't remember talking as  much as this more than
+once or twice in my life.  I suppose it was always  in me to do it, though,
+the first time I met any one who didn't know me  well enough not to listen."
+
+"But you're not really talking to me," said Mary.  "You're just thinking
+aloud."
+
+"No," he returned, gravely.  "I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making  vocal
+sounds because I believe it's more mannerly.  I seem to be the  subject of
+what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it,  but I don't know
+how.  I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't  know how to manage
+it."
+
+"You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan," she said.   "Not
+even if you really talked about yourself."  She turned her face  toward him as
+she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was pathetically  amazed by the
+look she gave him.  It was a glowing look, warmly friendly  and understanding,
+and, what almost shocked him, it was an eagerly  interested look.  Bibbs was
+not accustomed to anything like that.
+
+"I--you--I--I'm--" he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks  grew
+almost vivid.
+
+She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came  into
+his face.  There was something about him, too, that explained how  "queer"
+many people might think him; but he did not seem "queer" to Mary  Vertrees; he
+seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
+
+He waited, and became coherent.  "YOU say something now," he said.  "I  don't
+even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny  man's
+solo!  You--"
+
+"No," she interrupted.  "I'd rather play your accompaniment."
+
+"I'll stop and listen to it, then."
+
+"Perhaps--" she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a gesture  with
+her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were  approaching.  "Do
+you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?"
+
+"I suppose I could," he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
+"But I don't want to.  Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better  say
+anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit.  The other reason  I don't
+want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where you're  going, and
+where I'll be sent back."
+
+She shook her head in cheery negation.  "Not unless you want to be.   Would
+you like to come with me?"
+
+"Why--why--yes," he said.  "Anywhere!"  And again it was apparent  that he
+spoke in simple truthfulness.
+
+"Then come--if you care for organ music.  The organist is an old friend  of
+mine, and sometimes he plays for me.  He's a dear old man.  He had a  degree
+from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up  everything for
+music.  That's he, waiting in the doorway.  He looks like  Beethoven, doesn't
+he?  I think he knows that, perhaps, and enjoys it a  little.  I hope so."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps.  "I think Beethoven
+would like it, too.  It must be pleasant to look like other people."
+
+"I haven't kept you?" Mary said to the organist.
+
+"No, no," he answered, heartily.  "I would not mind so only you should  shooer
+come!"
+
+"This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft.  He has come to listen with me."
+
+The organist looked bluntly surprised.  "Iss that SO?" he exclaimed.   "Well,
+I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink.   He iss
+musician himself, then, of course."
+
+"No," said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together.  "I--I  played
+the--I tried to play--"  Fortunately he checked himself; he had  been about to
+offer the information that he had failed to master the  jews'-harp in his
+boyhood.  "No, I'm not a musician," he contented  himself with saying.
+
+"What?" Dr. Kraft's surprise increased.  "Young man, you are fortunate!   I
+play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone.  You are the first.   You are
+the first one EVER!"
+
+They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist  finished
+speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees  in a dazed way
+that was not of her preceiving; for, though she stopped  as he did, her gaze
+followed the organist, who was walking away from  them toward the front of the
+church, shaking his white Beethovian mane  roguishly.
+
+"It's false pretenses on my part," Bibbs said.  "You mean to be kind to  the
+sick, but I'm not an invalid any more.  I'm so well I'm going back to  work in
+a few days.  I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't  I?"
+
+"No," said Mary, beginning to walk forward.  "Not unless you don't like  great
+music."
+
+He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+ascended to the organ.  It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
+ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they  covered
+all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure,  reaching its high
+perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician  ludicrously daring the
+attempt to conrol a monster certain to overwhelm  him.
+
+"This afternoon some Handel!" he turned to shout.
+
+Mary nodded.  "Will you like that?" she asked Bibbs.
+
+"I don't know.  I never heard any except 'Largo.'  I don't know anything
+about music.  I don't even know how to pretend I do.  If I knew enough  to
+pretend, I would."
+
+"No," said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, "you wouldn't."
+
+She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;  the
+hugh empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people  listening
+filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with  it.  The two sat
+intensely still, the great sound all round about them,  while the church grew
+dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a tiny  star of light.  His white
+head moved from side to side beneath it  rhythmically, or lunged and recovered
+with the fierceness of a duelist  thrusting, but he was magnificently the
+master of his giant, and it sang  to his magic as he bade it.
+
+Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing.  Such a thing was wholly
+unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life.  Unlike the  tale,
+it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the  enchanted cave,
+and that--for Bibbs--was what made its magic  dazing.  It seemed to him a
+long, long time since he had been walking  home drearily from Dr. Gurney's
+office; it seemed to him that he had  set out upon a happy journey since then,
+and that he had reached  another planet, where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone
+together listening  to a vast choiring of invisible soldiers and holy angels.
+There were  armies of voices about them singing praise and thanksgiving; and
+yet  they were alone.  It was incredible that the walls of the church were
+not the boundaries of the universe, to remain so for ever; incredible  that
+there was a smoky street just yonder, where housemaids were  bringing in
+evening papers from front steps and where children were  taking their last
+spins on roller-skates before being haled indoors for  dinner.
+
+He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend.  He knew it
+could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her,  saying:
+"You hear this strain?  You hear that strain?  You know the dream  that these
+sounds bring to me?"  And it seemed to him as though she  answered
+continually: "I hear!  I hear that strain, and I hear the new  one that you
+are hearing now.  I know the dream that these sounds bring  to you.  Yes, yes,
+I hear it all!  We hear--together!"
+
+And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except  the
+vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white  head
+moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting  beside
+him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in  the
+darkness, though he did not look at her.  And all the mighty chanting  of the
+organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be  chorusing
+of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing  for him the
+world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she  was so kind to
+him.  It all meant Mary.
+
+
+But when she asked him what it meant,on their homeward way, he was  silent.
+They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,  walking slowly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it meant to me," she said, as he did not immediately
+reply.  "Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all  others
+to me: courage!  That's it.  It makes cowardice of whining seem so
+infinitesimal--it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
+infinitesimal."
+
+"Yes," he said.  "It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering every  way
+to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town to-morrow.   And yet
+there isn't anything down there worth getting to.  They're like  servants
+drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery  itself is the
+great thing.  They make so much noise and fuss and dirt  they forget that the
+house was meant to live in.  The housework has to be  done, but the people who
+do it have been so overpaid that they're  confused and worship the housework.
+They're overpaid, and yet, poor  things! they haven't anything that a chicken
+can't have.  Of course, when  the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that
+will be different."
+
+"Do you mean 'communism'?" she asked, and she made their slow pace a  little
+slower--they had only three blocks to go.
+
+"Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
+now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
+'Communism'?  Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for  all
+the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak ones  a fair
+distance ahead, so that all can run something like even on the  stretch.  And
+wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all cross  the winning-line
+together?  Who really enjoys beating anybody--if he  sees the beaten man's
+face?  The only way we can enjoy getting ahead of  other people nowadays is by
+forgetting what the other people feel.  And  that," he added, "is nothing of
+what the music meant to me.  You see, if  I keep talking about what it didn't
+mean I can keep from telling you what  it did mean."
+
+"Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?" she asked.  "Triumph  and
+praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me."
+
+"Yes, they were all there," Bibbs said.  "I don't know the name of what  he
+played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much.  The man that  makes the
+music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the  name he puts to
+it can't make much difference--except to himself and  people very much like
+him, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that."
+
+"I image music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of the
+people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their own  natures
+as much as according to the music itself.  The musician might  compose
+something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail,  and some
+people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some  would think of
+how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of  himself at the head
+of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding  a white horse.  And
+then, if there were some jubilant passages in the  music, he'd think of a
+circus."
+
+They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did not open  it.
+Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her kindnesses--not  to be
+prompt in leaving him.
+
+"After all," she said, "you didn't tell me whether you liked it."
+
+"No.  I didn't need to."
+
+"No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask.  I knew.  But you said you  were
+trying to keep from telling me what it did mean."
+
+"I can't keep from telling it any longer," he said.  "The music meant to
+me--it meant the kindness of--of you."
+
+"Kindness?  How?"
+
+"You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--"
+
+"No," she said, decidedly.  "I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr.  Kraft
+play.  And you did."
+
+"It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were playing."
+
+Mary laughed.  "I?  I strum!  Piano.  A little Chopin--Grieg-- Chaminade.  You
+wouldn't listen!"
+
+Bibbs drew a deep breath.  "I'm frightened again," he said, in an  unsteady
+voice.  "I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--"  He  paused, and the
+words sank to a murmur.
+
+"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said.  "Yes, gladly.  It will  be
+merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon.  I play like a  hundred
+thousand other girls, and I like it.  I'm glad when any one's  willing to
+listen, and if you--"  She stopped, checked by a sudden  recollection, and
+laughed ruefully.  "But my piano won't be here after  to-night.  I--I'm
+sending it away to-morrow.  I'm afraid that if you'd  like me to play to you
+you'd have to come this evening."
+
+"You'll let me?" he cried.
+
+"Certainly, if you care to."
+
+"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that old  man in
+the church I could thank you."
+
+"Ah, but you haven't heard me play.  I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs.  "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."
+
+It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,  and
+he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything  especially
+significant, that she knew it was the truth.  For a moment she  was
+nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in.  "You'll come after  dinner,
+then?"
+
+"Yes," he said, not moving.  "Would you mind if I stood here until time  to
+come in?"
+
+She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the  response
+of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted  windows of the
+New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.
+
+That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+
+Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that is  beautiful
+is music, if you can listen.
+
+There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano.
+There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the  running
+of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are  hearing and
+to hear what you are seeing.
+
+There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to a  sparkling
+sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when she is  near you, you
+feel strong and ambitious; you forget that the world  doesn't like you.  You
+think that perhaps you are a great fellow, after  all.  Then you come away and
+feel like a boy who has fallen in love with  his Sunday-school teacher.
+You'll be whipped for it--and ought to be.
+
+There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.  But  they
+do not have the "Greek profile."  I do not believe Helen of Troy had  a "Greek
+profile"; they would not have fought about her if her nose had  been quite
+that long.  The Greek nose is not the adorable nose.  The  adorable nose is
+about an eighth of an inch shorter.
+
+Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the piano.
+Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such things as the
+primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a machine-shop into  music.
+But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner was always dealing in  immensities--a
+machine-shop would have put a majestic lump in so grand  a gizzard as that.
+
+There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to be  "sent
+away."  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.  "Sent  away" is a
+euphuism for "sent to prison."  But pianos are not sent to  prison, and they
+are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is sent to them.   Why are pianos "sent
+away"--and where?
+
+Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless life.
+Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the gloomy house  of
+that life as if some stray angel just happened to perch on the  roof-tree,
+resting and singing.  And the night after such a day is  lustrous and splendid
+with the memory of it.  Music and beauty and  kindness--those are the three
+greatest things God can give us.  To  bring them all in one day to one who
+expected nothing--ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as it
+is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich with new
+memories.  It is impossible to be  humble after a day of glory.
+
+Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter than  the
+Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
+
+There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a conquering  hero.
+But the sick tramp had better remember that's what he is.  Take  care, take
+care!  Humble's the word!
+
+
+That "mystery about pianos" which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to  Mr.
+Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs  scribbled
+the reference to it in his notes.  Mary had gone up-stairs upon  Bibbs's
+departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until  after midnight
+in the library, talking.  And in all that time they found  not one cheerful
+topic, but became more depressed with everything and  with every phase of
+everything that they discussed--no extraordinary  state of affairs in a family
+which has always "held up its head," only to  arrive in the end at a point
+where all it can do is to look on helplessly  at the processes of its own
+financial dissolution.  For that was the  point which this despairing couple
+had reached--they could do nothing  except look on and talk about it.  They
+were only vaporing, and they knew  it.
+
+"She needn't to have done that about her piano," vapored Mr. Vertrees.   "We
+could have managed somehow without it.  At least she ought to have  consulted
+me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with  the--the
+dealer."
+
+"She thought that it might be--annoying for you," Mrs. Vertrees  explained.
+"Really, she planned for you not to know about it until they  had
+removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to  mention it.
+You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this  morning.  She has
+another ides, too, I'm afraid.  It's--it's--"
+
+"Well?" he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+
+"Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided, of  course--it
+was about her furs."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed, quickly.  "I won't have it!  You must see to that.   I'd
+rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her."
+
+"I'll try not," his wife promised.  "Of course, they're very handsome."
+
+"All the more reason for her to keep them!" he returned, irritably.   "We're
+not THAT far gone, I think!"
+
+"Perhaps not yet," Mrs. Vertrees said.  "She seems to be troubled about
+the--the coal matter and--about Tilly.  Of course the piano will take  care of
+some things like those for a while and--"
+
+"I don't like it.  I gave her the piano to play on, not to--"
+
+"You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way," she said, comfortingly.
+"She arranged with the--with the purchaser that the men will come for  it
+about half after five in the afternoon.  The days are so short now  it's
+really quite winter."
+
+"Oh, yes," he agreed, moodily.  "So far as that goes people have a right  to
+move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I  suppose, even
+by daylight.  I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much  attention just
+now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early  the morning after
+the funeral."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration.  "I don't believe  that
+was because he wasn't suffering, though.  I'm sure it was only  because he
+felt his business was so important.  Mary told me he seemed  wrapped up in his
+son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about  most.  He isn't vulgar
+in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a  great deal about his--his
+actual money--though there was something  about blades of grass that I didn't
+comprehend.  I think he meant  something about his energy--but perhaps not.
+No, his bragging usually  seemed to be not so much a personal vainglory as
+about his family and the  greatness of this city."
+
+"'Greatness of this city'!" Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.   "It's
+nothing but a coal-hole!  I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who  has the
+luck to make it work for him.  I suppose it looks 'great' to any  YOUNG man,
+too, starting out to make his fortune out of it.  The fellows  that get what
+they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else  gets the habit.  But
+you have a different point of view if it's the city  that got what it wanted
+out of you!  Of course Sheridan says it's 'great'."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst.  "I believe," she
+began, timidly, "he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he has  never
+seemed so interested in the--the other one."
+
+Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon it;  he
+looked more haggard than before.  "'The other one'," he repeated,  averting
+his eyes.  "You mean--you mean the third son--the one that  was here this
+evening?"
+
+"Yes, the--the youngest," she returned, her voice so feeble it was  almost a
+whisper.
+
+And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes.  Nor did either  look
+at the other during that silence.
+
+At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly.  "What--
+ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she came  in this
+afternoon?  I heard you asking her something about him, but she  answered in
+such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch it."
+
+"She--she didn't say much.  All she said was this: I asked her if she  had
+enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful  creature I've
+ever known.'"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That was all.  He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he  doesn't seem
+quite so much so lately.  I was watching Mary from the  window when she went
+out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known  about him I'd have
+thought he had quite an interesting face."
+
+"If you 'hadn't known about him'?  Known what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, of course," she said, hurriedly.  "Nothing definite, that  is.
+Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we  thought at
+first.  It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their attitude  about him.  I
+suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him--perhaps  a little queer at
+times, so that he can't apply himself to anything--or  perhaps does odd
+things.  But, after all, of course, we only have an  impression about it.  We
+don't know--that is, positively.  I--"  She  paused, then went on: "I didn't
+know just how to ask--that is--I  didn't mention it to Mary.  I didn't--I--"
+The poor lady floundered  pitifully, concluding with a mumble.  "So soon
+after--after the--the  shock."
+
+"I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him," said Mr.  Vertrees.
+"I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of him  is--"  He broke
+off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation.  "I  can't image her--oh,
+NO!" he gasped.  And he began to pace the floor.   "A half-witted epileptic!"
+
+"No, no!" she cried.  "He may be all right.  We--"
+
+"Oh, it's horrible!  I can't--"  He threw himself back into his chair  again,
+sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply  at his
+sides.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous.  "You mustn't give way so," she said,  inspired
+for once almost to direct discourse.  "Whatever Mary might think  of doing, it
+wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours.  But if  WE
+should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account.  It  isn't
+because we think of ourselves."
+
+"Oh God, no!" he groaned.  "Not for us!  We can go to the poorhouse, but  Mary
+can't be a stenographer!"
+
+Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness.  "Of course," she  murmured,
+"it all seems very premature, speculating about such things,  but I had a
+queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested inthis  --"  She had
+almost said "in this one," but checked herself.  "In this  young man.  It's
+natural, of course; she is always so strong and well,  and he is--he seems to
+be, that is--rather appealing to the--the  sympathies."
+
+"Yes!" he agreed, bitterly.  "Precisely.  The sympathies!"
+
+"Perhaps," she faltered--"perhaps you might feel easier if I could have  a
+little talk with some one?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but  perhaps
+just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to be  talking with
+somebody that knew the family--and then I might find a  chance to say that I
+was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much, and-- Something of that kind
+perhaps?"
+
+"You don't know anybody that knows the family."
+
+"Yes.  That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family.  That  Mrs.
+Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced  little
+woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary.  I think she is  interested
+about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more  intimate with Mary,
+naturally.  She's always looking over here from her  house; she was looking
+out the window this afternoon when Mary went out,  I noticed--though I don't
+think Mary saw her.  I'm sure she wouldn't  think it out of place to--to be
+frank about matters.  She called the  other day, and Mary must rather like
+her--she said that evening that  the call had done her good.  Don't you think
+it might be wise?"
+
+"Wise?  I don't know.  I feel the whole matter is impossible."
+
+"Yes, so do I," she returned, promptly.  "It isn't really a thing we  should
+be considering seriously, of course.  Still--"
+
+"I should say not!  But possibly--"
+
+Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the  lights
+out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between them  that Mrs.
+Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain  definite information
+from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and  physical status of Bibbs.  And
+if he were subject to attacks of lunacy,  the unhappy pair decided to prevent
+the sacrifice they supposed their  daughter intended to make of herself.
+Altogether, if there were spiteful  ghosts in the old house that night,
+eavesdropping upon the woeful comedy,  they must have died anew of laughter!
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon.  Darkness  had
+fallen, and the piano-movers had come.  They were carrying the piano  down the
+front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway  behind them,
+preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation;  and Mrs. Roscoe
+Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the  light of the doorway.
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried.  "It did give me a fright!"
+
+"It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?"  Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this  informal
+appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.   "Won't you come
+in?"
+
+"No.  Oh no, thank you!" Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side.   "You
+don't know what a fright you've given me!  And it was nothing but  your
+piano!"  She laughed shrilly.  "You know, since our tragedy coming  so
+suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been--almost
+hysterical!  And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago,  and
+saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light,  carrying
+something heavy, and I almost fainted.  You see, it was just the  way it
+looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in, next  door, only
+such a few short days ago.  And I thought I'd seen your  daughter start for a
+drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three  o'clock--and--They aren't back
+yet, are they?"
+
+"No.  Good heavens!"
+
+"And the only thing I could think of was that something must have  happened to
+them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!"   She broke into
+laughter again.  "I suppose you're just sending it  somewhere to be repaired,
+aren't you?"
+
+"It's--it's being taken down-town," said Mrs. Vertrees.  "Won't you  come in
+and make me a little visit.  I was SO sorry, the other day, that  I was--ah--"
+She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her  invitation.  "Won't you come
+in?  I'd really--"
+
+"Thank you, but I must be running back.  My husband usually gets home  about
+this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there."
+
+"That's very sweet."  Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward  the
+street with Sibyl.  "It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't  it?
+Almost like a May evening."
+
+"I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano," said Sibyl, watching the
+instrument disappear into the big van at the curb.  "She plays  wonderfully,
+Mrs. Kittersby tells me."
+
+"Yes, she plays very well.  One of your relatives came to hear her  yesterday,
+after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him."
+
+"You mean Bibbs?" asked Sibyl.
+
+"The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan.  Yes.   He's very musical, isn't he?"
+
+"I never heard of it.  But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether he
+was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him.  Does your  daughter
+expect the piano back soon?"
+
+"I--I believe not immediately.  Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear  her
+play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was to be  removed this
+afternoon.  He seems almost well again."
+
+"Yes."  Sibyl nodded.   "His father's going to try to start him to work."
+
+"He seems very delicate," said Mrs. Vertrees.  "I shouldn't think he  would be
+able to stand a great deal, either physically or--"  She paused  and then
+added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness--"or  mentally."
+
+"Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right," said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+
+"Entirely?"  Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+
+"Yes, entirely."
+
+"But has he ALWAYS been?"  This question came with the same anxious
+eagerness.
+
+"Certainly.  He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it."
+
+"And you think--"
+
+"Bibbs is all right.  You needn't wor--" Sibyl choked, and pressed her
+handkerchief to her mouth.  "Good night, Mrs. Vertrees," she said,  hurriedly,
+as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner  above, sending a
+brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where  the two ladies were
+standing.
+
+"Won't you come in?" urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound of  a
+cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare.  "Do!
+There's Mary now, and she--"
+
+But Sibyl was half-way across the street.  "No, thanks," she called.   "I
+hope she won't miss her piano!"  And she ran into her own house and  plunged
+headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her  handkerchief over her
+mouth.
+
+The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the  quiet
+house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of a  decanter,
+dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the  hall; and, after
+a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth,  holding a dripping
+napkin in his hand.
+
+"What's your excitement?" he demanded.  "What do you find to go into
+hysterics over?  Another death in the family?"
+
+"Oh, it's funny! she gasped.  "Those old frost-bitten people!  I guess
+THEY'RE getting their come-upance!"  Lying prone, she elevated her feet  in
+the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+
+"Come through, come through!" said her husband, crossly.  "What you  been up
+to?"
+
+"Me?" she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+"Nothing.  It's them!  Those Vertreeses!"  She wiped her eyes.  "They've  had
+to sell their piano!"
+
+"Well, what of it?"
+
+"That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago," said Sibyl.   "They've
+been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as last  winter she
+knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and  patched, because she
+got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook had  HERS!  And the night of
+the house-warming I kind of got suspicious,  myself.  She didn't have one
+single piece of any kind of real jewelry,  and you could see her dress was an
+old one done over.  Men can't tell  those things, and you all made a big fuss
+over her, but I thought she  looked a sight, myself!  Of course, EDITH was
+crazy to have her, and--"
+
+"Well, well?" he urged, impatiently.
+
+"Well, I'm TELLING you!  Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING!   Just
+absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn!  The  family's all
+died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very  distant, and live
+East and scarcely know 'em.  She says the whole town's  been wondering what
+WOULD become of 'em.  The girl had plenty chances to  marry up to a year or so
+ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the  men off, and the ones that had
+wanted to went and married other girls.   Gracious!  they were lucky!  Marry
+HER?  The man that found himself tied  up to THAT girl--"
+
+"Terrible funny, terrible funny!" said Roscoe, with sarcasm.  "It's so  funny
+I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--"
+
+"Wait!" she begged.  "You'll see.  I was sitting by the window a little  while
+ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men  go into
+the house.  It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute I  got the idea
+they were moving out--the house has been foreclosed on,  Mrs. Kittersby says.
+It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was  out riding with Bibbs.
+Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over--and  it was their PIANO!  They'd
+sold it and were trying to sneak it out after  dark, so nobody'd catch on!"
+Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but  resumed, as her husband seemed about
+to interrupt the narrative.  "Wait a  minute, can't you?  The old lady was
+superintending, and she gave it all  away.  I sized her up for one of those
+old churchy people that tell all  kinds of lies except when it comes to so
+many words, and then they  can't.  She might just as well told me outright!
+Yes, they'd sold it;  and I hope they'll pay some of their debts.  They owe
+everybody, and last  week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with
+Mr. Vertrees.    Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't
+know WHEN  she'd seen any money, herself!  Did you ever hear of such a case as
+that  girl in you LIFE?"
+
+"What girl? Their cook?"
+
+"That Vertrees girl!  Don't you see they looked on our coming up into  this
+neighborhood as their last chance?  They were just going down and  out, and
+here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family!  So they doll the  girl up in
+her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan  --she's GOT to
+get one!  And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on  first with YOU.
+You remember, she just plain TOLD you she was going to  mash you, and then she
+found out you were the married one, and turned  right square around to Jim and
+carried him off his feet.  Oh, Jim was  landed--there's no doubt about THAT!
+But Jim was lucky; he didn't  live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for
+him!"  Sibyl's mirth had  vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity.
+"Well, she couldn't get  you, because you were married, and she couldn't get
+Jim, because Jim  died.  And there they were, dead broke!  Do you know what
+she did?  Do  you know what she's DOING?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Roscoe, gruffly.
+
+Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity.   "BIBBS!
+She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S  FUNERAL!
+Never spoke to him before!  Jim wasn't COLD!"
+
+She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan.  "Bibbs!" she  shrieked.
+"Bibbs!  Roscoe, THINK of it!  BIBBS!"
+
+He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that.   "And
+yesterday," she continued, between paroxysms--"yesterday she came  out of the
+house--just as he was passing.  She must have been looking  out--waiting for
+the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the  window!  And she got him there
+last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the old  lady gave that away!  And to-day she
+made him take her out in a machine!  And the cream of it is that they didn't
+even know  whether he was INSANE or not--they thought maybe he was, but she
+went  after him just the same!  The old lady set herself to pump me about it
+to-day.  BIBBS!  Oh, my Lord!  BIBBS!"
+
+But Roscoe looked grim.  "So it's funny to you, is it?  It sounds kind of
+pitiful to me.  I should think it would to a woman, too."
+
+"Oh, it might," she returned, sobering.  "It might, if those people  weren't
+such frozen-faced smart Alecks.  If they'd had the decency to  come down off
+the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny,  but to see 'em sit
+up on their pedestal all the time they're eating dirt  --well, I think it's
+funny!  That girl sits up as if she was Queen  Elizabeth, and expects people
+to wallow on the ground before her until  they get near enough for her to give
+'em a good kick with her old patched  shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all
+right!--and then she powders up and  goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Look here," said Roscoe, heavily; "I don't care about that one way or
+another.  If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you  about.  I
+was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim."
+
+At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright.  "What  is
+it?"
+
+"Well," he began, frowning, "what I was going to say then--"  He broke  off,
+and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in  his hand,
+threw it pettishly into a corner.  "I never expected I'd have  to say anything
+like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask  you what was the
+matter between you and Lamhorn."
+
+Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. "Well?"
+
+"I felt the time had come for me to know about it," he went on.  "You  never
+told me anything--"
+
+"You never asked," she interposed, curtly.
+
+"Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much," said Roscoe.  "It looks to  me
+now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good  many
+people do.  I don't say it wasn't my fault.  I was up early and down  to work
+all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed  soon as I'd
+got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show  in town.  Well,
+you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or  so, I began to see
+something was wrong.  I couldn't help seeing it."
+
+"Wrong?" she said.  "What like?"
+
+"You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and  excited
+and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down.  Now then,  Lamhorn had
+been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long  ago you got to
+picking on him about every little thing he did; you got to  quarreling with
+him when I was there and when I wasn't.  I could see  you'd been quarreling
+whenever I came in and he was here."
+
+"Do you object to that?" asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+
+"Yes--when it injures my wife's health!" he returned, with a quick lift  of
+his eyes to hers.  "You began to run down just about the time you  began
+falling out with him." He stepped close to her.  "See here, Sibyl,  I'm going
+to know what it means."
+
+"Oh, you ARE?" she snapped.
+
+"You're trembling," he said, gravely.
+
+"Yes.  I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find.  Go on!"
+
+"That was all I was going to say the other day," he said.  "I was going to
+ask you--"
+
+"Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY.  Yes.  What else  have
+you to say to-night?"
+
+"To-night," he replied, with grim swiftness, "I want to know why you keep
+telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here."
+
+She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, "And what  else
+did Edith want you to ask me?"
+
+"I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn," he said,
+fiercely.
+
+"Is that all Edith told you to ask me?  You saw her when you stopped in  there
+on your way home this evening, didn't you?  Didn't she tell you  then what I
+said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?"
+
+"No, she didn't!" he vociferated, his voice growing louder.  "She said,  'You
+tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see  her,
+because he isn't going to do it!'  That's what she said!  And I want  to know
+what it means.  I intend--"
+
+A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall.  "Dinner is ready," she  said,
+and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the  dining-room.
+Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+
+"I intend to know exactly what has been going on," he declared.  "I mean  to
+know just what--"
+
+Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+
+"Oh, you DO!" she cried, shrilly.  "You mean to know just what's what, do
+you?  You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your wife,  and
+then you come home making a scene before the servants and humiliating  me in
+their presence!  Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't hear every  word you
+said?  You go in there and eat your dinner alone!  Go on!  Go  and eat your
+dinner alone--because I won't eat with you!"
+
+And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon her,  and
+dashed up the stairway, panting.  He heard the door of her room slam
+overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+
+
+At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing  through
+the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,  found a couple
+of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor.  A  window had been open
+in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his  note-book on the
+sill--and the sheets were loose.  The door was open,  and when Bibbs came in
+and closed it, he did not notice that the two  sheets had blown out into the
+hall.  Sheridan recognized the handwriting  and put the sheets in his coat
+pocket, intending to give them to George  or Jackson for return to the owner,
+but he forgot and carried them  down-town with him.  At noon he found himself
+alone in his office, and,  having a little leisure, remembered the bits of
+manuscript, took them  out, and glanced at them.  A grance was enough to
+reveal that they were  not epistolary.  Sheridan would not have read a
+"private letter" that  came into his possession in that way, though in a
+"matter of business" he  might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an
+opportunity afforded  in any manner whatsoever.  Having satisfied himself that
+Bibbs's  scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son
+preferred  to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would
+be  justified in reading them.
+
+It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy generalization  of
+a companion, and will wear the most agreeable expression of accepting  it as
+the law, and then--days afterward, when the thing is a mummy to  its
+promulgator--she will inquire out of a clear sky: "WHY did you say  that the
+people down-town have nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?   What did you
+mean?"  And she may say it in a manner that makes a sensible  reply very
+difficult--you will be so full of wonder that she remembered  so seriously.
+
+Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is warm in
+winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but dozens.  He has  a
+clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he walks in his April  orchard
+under a roof of flowers.  He must die, violently perhaps, but  quickly.  Is
+Midas's cancer a better way?  The rooster's wives and  children must die.  Are
+those of Midas immortal?  His life is shorter than  the life of Midas, but
+Midas's life is only a sixth as long as that of  the Galapagos tortoise.
+
+The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh himself
+anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster doesn't get.   The
+office-building has an elevator, the rooster flies up to the bough.   Midas
+has a machine to take him to his work; the rooster finds his worm  underfoot.
+The "business man" feels a pressure sometimes, without knowing  why, and sits
+late at wine after the day's labor; next morning he curses his  head because
+it interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve  that pressure again.
+The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this  difference is in his favor.
+
+The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the weather.
+Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the weather.  The
+rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for to-morrow.  What  does
+he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the rooster will not have  without
+providing.
+
+The rooster and the prosperous worker: they are born, they grub, they  love;
+they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.  Neither knows  beauty;
+neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when Midas dies and the  rooster
+dies, there is one thing Midas has had and rooster has not.   Midas has had
+the excitement of accumulating what he has grubbed, and that  has been his
+life and his love and his god.  He cannot take that god  with him when he
+dies.  I wonder if the worthy gods are those we can take  with us.
+
+Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in his
+religion--
+
+The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more.  He
+crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a  waste-basket
+beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of  Names, which a
+book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a volume  now first put to
+use for the location of "Midas."  Having read the  legend, Sheridan walked up
+and down the spacious office, exhaling the  breath of contempt. "Dam' fool!"
+he mumbled.  But this was no new thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's
+notes a surpise to him; and presently he dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour.  For a long time
+he and Jim had lunched together habitually.  Roscoe preferred a club luncheon,
+but Jim and his father almost always went to a small restaurant near the
+Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes in the consumption of food,
+and twenty in talk, with cigars.  Jim came for his father every day, at five
+minutes after twelve, and Sheridan was again in his office at five minutes
+before one.  But now that Jim no longer came, Sheridan remained alone in his
+office; he had not gone out to lunch since Jim's death, nor did he have
+anything sent to him--he fasted until evening.
+
+It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes and
+handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like.  But these things were not
+the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far deeper.  Roscoe
+was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was a great comfort; but it
+was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily perceived his own likeness.  Jim was
+the one who would have been surest to keep the great property growing greater,
+year by year.  Sheridan had fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what
+the growth would be under Jim.  He had believed that Jim was absolutely
+certain to be one of the biggest men in the country.  Well, it was all up to
+Roscoe now!
+
+That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe.  It was a
+question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
+suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe about it.
+However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for several days, and
+when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no opportunity.
+
+He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
+o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower floor.
+He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer room of the
+series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would find his son busy with
+others, and that his question would have to be postponed, but when he entered
+the door marked "R. C. Sheridan.  Private," Roscoe was there alone.
+
+He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and he
+did not turn as his father opened the door.
+
+"Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy," said Sheridan.
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+
+"Well, I guess that's all right, too.  I let 'em wait sometimes myself!  I
+just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it 'll keep, if you're workin'
+something out in your mind!"
+
+Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused with
+his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in the chair.
+Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the office.  "You're
+all right, ain't you?" said Sheridan.  "Not sick, are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question.  "I
+wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn," he said.  "I guess your
+mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him longer
+'n any of us, so--"
+
+"I won't," said Roscoe, thickly--"I won't say a dam' thing about him!"
+
+Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position near the
+window where he could see his son's face.  Roscoe's eyes were bloodshot and
+vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted, and he was deathly
+pale.  The father stood aghast.
+
+"By George!" he muttered.  "ROSCOE!"
+
+"My name," said Roscoe.  "Can' help that."
+
+"ROSCOE!"  Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation.  Probably
+nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe--the
+steady old wheel-horse--in this condition.  "How'd you GET this way?" he
+demanded.  "You caught cold and took too much for it?"
+
+For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely.  "Yeuh!  Cold!  I been drinkun all time,
+lately.  Firs' you notice it?"
+
+"By George!" cried Sheridan.  "I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
+lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you. Boh!
+To see you like a common hog!"
+
+Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gensture. "Hog!"
+he repeated, chuckling.
+
+"Yes, a hog!" said Sheridan, angrily.  "In business hours!  I don't object to
+anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor, if a man
+keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one to baste him if
+he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe.  It ain't MY way.  I
+let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way on a grown-up son in
+moral matters.  I guess I was wrong!  You think them men out there are waitin'
+to talk business with a drunkard?  You think you can come to your office and
+do business drunk?  By George!  I wonder how often this has been happening and
+me not on to it!  I'll have a look over your books to-morrow, and I'll--"
+
+Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying, contriving to
+hold himself in position by clutching the back of the heavy chair in which he
+had been sitting.
+
+"Hoo--hoorah!" he cried.  "'S my principles, too.  Be drunkard all you want
+to--outside business hours.  Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere business
+hours!  Business!  Thassit!  You're right, father.  Drink!  Die! L'everything
+go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!"
+
+Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling his own
+office, overhead.  "Abercrombie?  Come down to my son Roscoe's suite and get
+rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in room two-fourteen.
+There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows on the Kinsey business.
+Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over with Roscoe, and tell 'em to
+come back day after to-morrow at two.  You needn't come in to let me know
+they're gone; we don't want to be disturbed.  Tell Pauly to call my house and
+send Claus down here with a closed car.  We may have to go out.  Tell him to
+hustle, and call me at Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"
+
+Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue.  "Drunk in business
+hours!  Thass awf'l!  Mus'n' do such thing!  Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble,
+mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours!  All right any other time.  Kill
+'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business hours!  Fine!  Mus'n' have
+any trouble 't 'll innerfere business.  Keep your trouble 't home.  Don' bring
+it to th' office.  Might innerfere business!  Have funerals on Sunday--might
+innerfere business!  Don' let your wife innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL
+your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for
+home use!  If you got die, go on die 't home--don' die round th' office!
+Might innerfere business!"
+
+Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his back
+to his son, affecting to read.  Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his father's
+significant posture.
+
+"You know wh' I think?" he went on.  "I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly any
+'telligence at all.  Won' work, an' di'n' get married.  Jim worked, an' he got
+killed.  I worked, an' I got married.  Look at me!  Jus' look at me, I ask
+you.  Fine 'dustriss young business man.  Look whass happen' to me!  Fine!"
+He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable gesture, and,
+immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair and caromed to the floor
+with a crash, remaining prostrate for several minutes, during which Sheridan
+did not relax his apparent attention to the newspaper.  He did not even look
+round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+
+Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by holding to
+the chair.  He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed in the
+prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile.  He rubbed his
+dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+
+"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+"Yes, you did.  What--what was it?"
+
+"Nothin'.  You better sit down."
+
+"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn.  You did ask me that.  Well, I
+won't tell you.  I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"
+
+The telephone-bell tinkled.  Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and said,
+"Right down."  Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and brought
+them to his son.  "Get into this coat," he said.  "You're goin' home."
+
+"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+
+They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the outer
+office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and told the
+operator to take on no more passengers until they reached the ground floor.
+Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the automobile without
+lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own house in the same
+manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word in the interval.
+
+Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without
+meeting any of his family.  But as he passed Bibbs's door her heard from
+within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of song:
+
+WHO looks a mustang in the eye? ... With a leap from the ground To the saddle
+in a bound. And away--and away! Hi-yay!
+
+It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any musical
+symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him whistle --and it seemed
+the last touch of irony that the useless fool should be merry to-day.
+
+To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he did
+not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked the door.
+
+
+He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and came to
+the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety manifest and was
+but partially reassured by his explanation that his lunch had "disagreed" with
+him a little.
+
+Presently, however, he spoke effectively.  Bibbs, whose appetite had become
+hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from white-jacket's
+salver.  "Here's another difference between Midas and chicken," Sheridan
+remarked, grimly.  "Midas can eat rooster, but rooster can't eat Midas.  I
+reckon you overlooked that.  Midas looks to me like he had the advantage
+there."
+
+Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his
+plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."
+
+Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for he
+could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with pleasure,
+thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon to her.  "Did
+you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!" she exclaimed.  "I
+declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!"
+
+"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.
+
+"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before anybody
+was up," said Sheridan.  "I reckon if people lose things in this house and
+expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do."
+
+"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.
+
+"He knows!" her father returned.  "Seems to me like I forgot to bring it home
+with me.  I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
+important, belongin' to a busy man like him."  He affected to search his
+pockets.  "What DID I do with it, now?  Oh yes!  Seems to me like I remember
+leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket."
+
+"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.
+
+Sheridan gave him a grin.  "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up early
+enough to fine things before I do!"
+
+It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the evening,
+to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
+
+"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the melancholy
+gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano. That removal had
+left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees that neither of them
+had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gas-light, though from a
+single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that
+knew the glowing presence of Mary.  He spoke lightly, not sadly.
+
+"Yes, it's come.  I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off any
+longer.  It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my face.  He
+means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence. Hard labor for
+life, I think."
+
+Mary shook her head.  "I don't think so.  He's too kind."
+
+"You think my father's KIND?"  And Bibbs stared at her.
+
+"Yes.  I'm sure of it.  I've felt that he has a great, brave heart.  It's only
+that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand any other
+way."
+
+"Ah yes," said Bibbs.  "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"
+
+She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes.  "It's going
+to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling.  "This has been just the last flicker
+of revolt.  Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work. There'd be no
+loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do best; but
+the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I have to give it up.
+To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
+
+"What is it like--exactly?"
+
+"I get up at six," he said.  "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which is
+aristocratic and no advantage.  The other workmen have tin buckets, and tin
+buckets are better.  I leave the house at six-thirty, and I'm at work in my
+overalls at seven.  I have an hour off at noon, and work again from one till
+five."
+
+"But the work itself?"
+
+"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all.  They couldn't give me a heavier
+job because I wasn't good enough."
+
+"But what will you do?  I want to know."
+
+"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there a
+'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's what
+I'll be sent back to."
+
+"But what is it?" she insisted.
+
+Bibbs explained.  "It's very simple and very easy.  I feed long strips of zinc
+into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little circles.
+All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a certain
+angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."
+
+He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade paler,
+and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes.  He may have known it and
+wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+
+"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
+incredible!" she exclaimed.  "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine nine
+hours a day!  No wonder--"  She broke off, and then, after a keen glance at
+his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad hand at it'!"
+
+He laughed ruefully.  "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say it.
+You see, it's a very  powerful machine, and there's a sort of rhythmical
+crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
+
+"How often is that?"
+
+"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more than
+one a second."
+
+"And you're close to it?"
+
+"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more gaily.
+"The others don't mind .  You see, it's something wrong with me. I have an
+idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and duck a little
+every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I was a treat to the
+other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me back.  They used to
+laugh at me all day long."
+
+Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on the
+arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek.  She was staring
+at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
+
+"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in a low
+voice.  "No.  He's not kind.  He ought to be proud to help you to the leisure
+to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them published for
+you--"
+
+"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in his
+voice.  "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can imagine his
+taking such a notion, he's have had R. T. Bloss put up posters all over the
+country: 'Read B. Sheridan.  Read the Poet with a Punch!' No. It's just as
+well he never got the--But what's the use?  I've never written anything worth
+printing, and I never shall."
+
+"You could!" she said.
+
+"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to do."
+
+"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could!  Ah, it's a pity!"
+
+"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly.  "I never could--but you're the kindest lady
+in this world, Miss Vertrees."
+
+She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was. "That
+sounds wrong," she said, impulsively.  "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.' I've thought
+of you by your first name ever since I met you.  Wouldn't you rather call me
+'Mary'?"
+
+Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+
+"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed.  "You're such an honest person, it's
+pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety."  She became grave
+again immediately.  "I hear myself laughing as if it were some one else.  It
+sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity." She got up restlessly,
+crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him.  "You've GOT to go
+back to that place?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And the other time you did it--"
+
+"Just over it," said Bibbs.  "Two years.  But I don't mind the prospect of a
+repetition so much as--"
+
+"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.
+
+Bibbs looked up at her shyly.  "I want to say it, but--but I come to a dead
+balk when I try.  I--"
+
+"Go on.  Say it, whatever it is," she bade him.  "You wouldn't know how to say
+anything I shouldn't like."
+
+"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he returned,
+moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he seemed to feel
+awkward, thoroughly.  "You see, all my life--until I met you--if I ever felt
+like saying anything, I wrote it instead.  Saying things is a new trick for
+me, and this--well, it's just this:  I used to feel as if I hadn't ever had
+any sort of a life at all.  I'd never been of use to anything or anybody, and
+I'd never had anything, myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking.  But now
+it's different--I'm still of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect
+of being useful, but I have had something for myself.  I've had a beautiful
+and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've
+lived it!  That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you
+have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"
+
+He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to
+say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet.  She did not speak, but
+a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to her
+chair again.  The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet that the
+sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.
+
+And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible.  "If you think
+it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make it last."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.
+
+"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes," he gulped.
+
+"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."
+
+He tried to evade her.  "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--"
+
+"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness.  "You said what you did
+because you think the shop's going to kill you."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Yes, you do think that!"  She rose to her feet again and came and stood
+before him.  "Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
+Don't deny it, Bibbs.  There!  See how easily I call you that!  You see I'm a
+friend, or I couldn't do it.  Well, if you meant what you said-- and you did
+mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.  The shop
+sha'n't hurt you.  It sha'n't!"
+
+And now Bibbs looked up.  She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid in
+generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+
+"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you!  Go back to the
+shop--but come to me when your day's work is done.  Let the machines crash
+their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash that deafens you is
+that much nearer the evening and me!"
+
+He stumbled to his feet.  "You say--" he gasped.
+
+"Every evening, dear Bibbs!"
+
+He could only stare, bewildered.
+
+"EVERY evening.  I want you.  They sha'n't hurt you again!"  And she held out
+her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp.  "If I could,
+I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you," she said.  "But
+all day long I'll send my thoughts to you.  You must keep remembering that
+your friend stands beside you.  And when the work is done --won't the night
+make up for the day?"
+
+Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of kindness.
+But all he could say was, huskily, "To think you're there-- with me--standing
+beside the old zinc-eater--"
+
+And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it
+meant not to be alone in the world.  He had a friend.
+
+
+When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father
+sitting alone by the library fire.  Bibbs went in and stood before him. "I'm
+cured, father," he said.  "When do I go back to the shop?  I'm ready."
+
+The desolate and grim old man did not relax.  "I was sittin' up to give you a
+last chance to say something like that.  I reckon it's about time! I just
+wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take you over there
+by the collar.  Last night I made up my mind I'd give you just one more day.
+Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to the eleventh hour!  All
+right.  Start in to-morrow.  It's the first o' the month.  Think you can get
+up in time?"
+
+"Six o'clock," Bibbs responded, briskly.  "And I want to tell you--I'm going
+in a 'cheerful spirit.'  As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!"
+
+"That's YOUR lookout!" his father grunted.  "They'll put you back on the
+clippin'-machine.  You get nine dollars a week."
+
+"More than I'm worth, too," said Bibbs, cheerily.  "That reminds me, I didn't
+mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing.  I meant--"
+
+"Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!"
+
+"I just wanted you to know.  Good night, father."
+
+"G'night!"
+
+The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became inaudible,
+and the house was quiet.  But presently, as Sheridan sat staring angrily at
+the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slipers could be heard descending, and
+Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression and the state of her
+toilette being those of a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on
+one side, has got up to look for burglars.
+
+"Papa!" she exclaimed, drowsily.  "Why'n't you go to bed?  It must be goin' on
+'leven o'clock!"
+
+She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the fire.
+"What's the matter?" she asked, sleep and anxiety striving sluggishly with
+each other in her voice.  "I knew you were worried all dinner-time.  You got
+something new on your mind besides Jim's bein' taken away like he was.  What's
+worryin' you now, papa?"
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+She jeered feebly.  "N' tell ME that!  You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't you?"
+
+"He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning," said Sheridan.
+
+"Just the same as he did before?"
+
+"Just pre-CISELY!"
+
+"How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Until he KNOWS something!"  The unhappy man struck his palms together, then
+got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he talked.
+"He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly in the six
+months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn it!  Do you
+suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn it?  No!  And I
+ain't a-goin' to tell him, either!  When he went there I had 'em set him on
+the simplest machine we got--and he stuck there!  How much prospect would
+there be of his learnin' to run the whole business if he can't run the easiest
+machine in it?  I sent him there to make him THOROUGH.  And what happened?  He
+didn't LIKE it!  That boy's whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something
+mulish that's against everything I want him to do.  I don't know what it is,
+but it's got to be worked out of him.  Now, labor ain't any more a simple
+question than what it was when we were young.  My idea is that, outside o'
+union troubles, the man that can manage workin'-in men is the man that's been
+one himself.  Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business,
+and HE set himself to balk on the first job!  That's what he did, and the
+balk's lasted close on to three years.  If he balks again I'm just done with
+him!  Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!"
+
+"I knew there was something else," said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a yawn.
+"You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less you'll tell
+me?"
+
+"Suppose something happened to Roscoe," he said.  "THEN what'd I have to look
+forward to?  THEN what could I depend on to hold things together?  A lummix!
+A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a groove!"
+
+"Roscoe?" she yawned.  "You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa.  He's the
+strongest child we had.  I never did know anybody keep better health than he
+does.  I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years.  You better go up
+to bed, papa."
+
+"Suppose something DID happen to him, though.  You don't know what it means,
+keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let alone makin'
+it grow the way I do.  I've seen too many estates hacked away in chunks, big
+and little.  I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out o' the woods, pack
+after pack, to see what they can tear off for themselves; and if that dead
+man's chuldern ain't on the job, night and day, everything he built 'll get
+carried off.  Carried off?  I've seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel
+in a cyclone--there wasn't even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood!  I've
+seen it, time and again.  My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME!
+It don't seem like I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys
+right than I have.  I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to
+be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
+bigger.  I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's got
+to have eyes in the back of his head.  You hear talk, sometimes, 'd make you
+think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll hear somebody
+hollerin' about 'the great unrest.'  You BET there's a 'great unrest'!  There
+ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's goin' to do to us in the
+end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but it's frothin' and bubblin'
+in the boiler.  This country's been fillin' up with it from all over the world
+for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with.
+Church ain't what it used to be.  Nothin's what it used to be--everything's
+turned up from the bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the
+air.  There's an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're
+goin' to keep your balance on the top of it.  And the schemers!  They run like
+bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is loose.
+Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst!
+You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it.  And the woods are
+full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto: 'Get the other
+fellow's money before he gets yours!'  And when a man's built as I have, when
+he's built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper--THOSE are
+the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it
+and put their names to it!  And what's the use of my havin' ever been born, if
+such a thing as that is goin' to happen?  What's the use of my havin' worked
+my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and
+scattered soon as I'm in the ground?"
+
+He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding the
+troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside.  His throat rumbled thunderously;
+the words came with stormy bitterness.  "You think this is a time for young
+men to be lyin' on beds of ease?  I tell you there never was such a time
+before; there never was such opportunity.  The sluggard is despoiled while he
+sleeps--yes, by George! if a may lays down they'll eat him before he
+wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky!  This
+is the business man's day; it used to be the soldier's day and the statesman's
+day, but this is OURS!  And it ain't a Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil!
+turmoil!--and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it
+yourself, or you'll only be a dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive.
+And that's what my son Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather
+do now than go out and do his part by me.  And if anything happens to
+Roscoe--"
+
+"Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense," Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment.   "There isn't anything goin'
+to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about nothin'.
+Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?"
+
+Sheridan halted.  "All right, mamma," he said, with a vast sigh.  "Let's go
+up."  And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of the
+fire.
+
+"Did you speak to Roscoe?" she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her drowsiness.
+"Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?"
+
+"No.  I will to-morrow."
+
+But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did Sheridan
+see fit to enter his son's house.  He waited.  Then, on the fourth day of the
+month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine in the morning, when
+Sheridan happened to be alone.
+
+"They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me."
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan, rising.
+
+Roscoe sat.  His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then
+walked away, smiling bitterly.  "Boh!" he exclaimed.  "Still at it!"
+
+"Yes," said Roscoe.  "I've had a couple of drinks this morning.  What about
+it?"
+
+"I reckon I better adopt some decent young man," his father returned. "I'd
+bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit.  I would!"
+
+"Better do it," Roscoe assently, sullenly.
+
+"When 'd you begin this thing?"
+
+"I always did drink a little.  Ever since I grew up, that is."
+
+"Leave that talk out!  You know what I mean."
+
+"Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the other
+day."
+
+Sheridan began cutting.  "It's a lie.  I've had Ray Wills up from your office.
+He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and he came
+through.  You were drunk twice before and couldn't work.  You been leavin'
+your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks.  I been over
+your books.  Your office is way behind.  You haven't done any work, to count,
+in a month."
+
+"All right," said Roscoe, drooping under the torture.  "It's all true."
+
+"What you goin' to do about it?"
+
+Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders.  "I can't stand very much talk
+about it, father," he said, pleadingly.
+
+"No!" Sheridan cried.  "Neither can I!  What do you think it means to ME?" He
+dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning.  "I can't stand to talk
+about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out what's the
+matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!"
+
+
+Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+
+"You can't straighten me out."
+
+"See here!" said Sheridan.  "Can you go back to your office and stay sober
+to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple o' huskies
+to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand if they see you
+tryin' to take it?"
+
+"You needn't worry about that," said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+resentment.  "I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst."
+
+"Well, what have you got?"
+
+"Nothing.   Nothing you can do anything about.  Nothing, I tell you."
+
+"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly.   "Now I can't fool with you
+to-day,  and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my office. You bring
+your wife to dinner to-morrow.  You didn't come last Sunday-- but you come
+to-morrow.  I'll talk this out with you when the women-folks are workin' the
+phonograph, after dinner.  Can you keep sober till then? You better be sure,
+because I'm going to send Abercrombie down to your office every little while,
+and he'll let me know."
+
+Roscoe paused at the door.  "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
+
+"TOLD him!"  And Sheridan laughed hideously.  "Do you suppose there's an
+elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
+
+Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+
+
+"WHO looks a mustang in the eye? Changety, chang, chang! Bash! Crash! BANG!"
+
+So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen because of
+the noise of the machinery.  He had discovered long ago that the uproar was
+rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the afternoon of the
+fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing and clash of the
+metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling improvisations of his own
+among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash with vocal imitations:
+
+Fearless and bold, Chang! Bash! Behold! With a leap from the ground To the
+saddle in a bound, And away--and away! Hi-YAY! WHO looks a chang, chang, bash,
+crash, bang! WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash? NIGHT'S on the way
+EACH time I say, Hi-YAY! Crash, chang! Bash, chang! Chang, bang, BANG!
+
+The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was
+thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything was
+implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied eye. The first
+time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy instantly, and six months
+of it had only added increasing nausea to faintness.  But he felt neither now.
+"ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY THOUGHTS TO YOU.  YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT
+YOUR FRIEND STANDS BESIDE YOU."  He saw her there beside him, and the greasy,
+roaring place became suffused with radiance.  The poet was happy in his
+machine-shop; he was still a poet there.  And he fed his old zinc-eater, and
+sang:
+
+Away--and away! Hi-YAH! Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG! Wild are his eyes,
+Fiercely he dies! Hi-YAH! Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG! Ready to fling Our
+gloves in the ring--
+
+He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen. Their
+great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him standing with
+Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs.  Sheridan nodded to those nearest
+him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of them --but he kept his
+attention upon his son.  Bibbs worked steadily, never turning from his
+machine.  Now and then he varied his musical programme with remarks addressed
+to the zinc-eater.
+
+"Go on, you old crash-basher!  Chew it up!  It's good for you, if you don't
+try to bolt your vittles.  Fletcherize, you pig!  That's right-- YOU'LL never
+get a lump in your gizzard.  Want some more?  Here's a nice, shiny one."
+
+The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to Gurney's
+ear and shouted fiercely: "Talkin' to himself!  By George!"
+
+Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+
+Bibbs returned to song:
+
+Chang! Chang, bash, chang! It's I! WHO looks a mustang in the eye? Fearless
+and bo--
+
+His father grasped him by the arm.  "Here!" he shouted.  "Let ME show you how
+to run a strip through there.  The foreman says you're some better'n you used
+to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way and let me show you once."
+
+"Better be careful," Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+
+"Careful?  Boh!"  Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box.  "What you
+talkin' to yourself about?  Tryin' to make yourself think you're so abused
+you're goin' wrong in the head?"
+
+"'Abused'?  No!" shouted Bibbs.  "I was SINGING--because I 'like it'!  I told
+you I'd come back and 'like it.'"
+
+Sheridan may not have understood.  At all events, he made no reply, but began
+to run the strip of zinc through the machine.  He did it awkwardly --and with
+bad results.
+
+"Here!" he shouted.  "This is the way.  Watch how I do it.  There's nothin' to
+it, if you put your mind on it."  By his own showing then his mind was not
+upon it.  He continued to talk.  "All you got to look out for is to keep it
+pressed over to--"
+
+"Don't run your hand up with it," Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
+
+"Run nothin'!  You GOT to--"
+
+"Look out!" shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang forward.
+But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and the zinc-eater
+had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers. He swore vehemently,
+and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops over himself and Bibbs, but
+Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
+
+"Come out of here.  Come over to the lavatory in the office.  Bibbs, fetch my
+bag.  It's in my machine, outside."
+
+And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor still
+grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin. Sheridan had
+lost color, and temper, too.  He glared over his shoulder at his son as the
+latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+
+"You go on back to your work," he said.  "I've had worse snips than that from
+a pencil-sharpener."
+
+"Oh no, you haven't!" said Gurney.
+
+"I have, too!" Sheridan retorted, angrily.  "Bibbs, you go on back to your
+work.  There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc Gurney tryin'
+to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs a little
+court-plaster.  I slipped, or it wouldn't happened.  You get back on your
+job."
+
+"All right," said Bibbs.
+
+"HERE!"  Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door.  "You
+watch out when you're runnin' that machine!  You hear what I say?  I slipped,
+or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get your whole hand cut
+off!  You keep your eyes open!"
+
+"Yes, sir."  And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+
+Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
+outside, where conversation was possible.  "I sent him home, Bibbs.  He'll
+have to be careful of that hand.  Go get your overalls off.  I'll take you for
+a drive and leave you at home."
+
+"Can't," said Bibbs.  "Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows."
+
+"No, you don't," the doctor returned, smothering a yawn.  "He wants me to take
+you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much harm these
+four days on the machine have done you.  I guess you folks have got that old
+man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your house! But I don't need
+to go over you.  I can see with my eyes half shut--"
+
+"Yes," Bibbs interrupted, "that's what they are."
+
+"I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape.  What's made
+the difference?"
+
+"I like the machine," said Bibbs.  "I've made a friend of it.  I serenade it
+and talk to it, and then it talks back to me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed?  What does it say?"
+
+"What I want to hear."
+
+"Well, well!"  The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot repeatedly.
+"Better come along and take a drive with me.  You can take the time off that
+he allowed for the examination, and--"
+
+"Not at all," said Bibbs.  "I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till five
+o'clock.  I tell you I LIKE it!"
+
+"Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write."
+
+"I don't know about that," Bibbs said, thoughtfully; "but the zinc-eater
+doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least.  It's better than being in
+business; I'm sure of that.  I don't want anything to change.  I'd be content
+to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days."
+
+"You do beat the devil!" exclaimed Gurney.  "Your father's right when he tells
+me you're a mystery.  Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing when He made
+you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it!  Well, I'm off.  Go on back to
+your murdering old machine."  He climbed into his car, which he operated
+himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately in motion.  "Well, I
+rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him not to slide his hand
+along too far, and that he got hurt because he didn't pay attention to your
+warning, and because he was trying to show you how to do something you were
+already doing a great deal better than he could. You tell him I'll be around
+to look at it and change the dressing to-morrow morning.  Good-by."
+
+But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than change
+the dressing upon the damaged hand.  The injury was severe of its kind, and
+Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was rebellious and scornful,
+being brought to a degree of tractability only by means of horrible threats
+and talk of amputation.  However, he appeared at the dinner-table with his
+hand supported in a sling, which he seemed to regard as an indignity, while
+the natural inquiries upon the subject evidently struck him as deliberate
+insults.  Mrs. Sheridan, having been unable to contain her solicitude several
+times during the day, and having been checked each time in a manner that
+blanched her cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at
+five, to omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the
+sling if they possibly could.
+
+The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five.  Sibyl had taken pains not to arrive
+either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and the members of
+the family were all seated at the table within two minutes after she and
+Roscoe had entered the house.
+
+It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents.  The air seemed charged,
+awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as she
+sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that of a
+person engaged in prayer.  Edith was pale and intent.  Roscoe looked ill;
+Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive.  Bibbs had more
+color than any of these, and there was a strange brightness, like a light,
+upon his face.  It was curious to see anything so happy in the tense gloom of
+that household.
+
+Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate.  She never once
+looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance, heavily
+charged, and then looked away.  Roscoe ate nothing, and, like Edith, kept his
+eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself with the viands
+thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting it to his mouth. He did
+not once look at his father, though his father gazed heavily at him most of
+the time.  And between Edith and Sibyl, and between Roscoe and his father,
+some bitter wireless communication seemed continually to be taking place
+throughout the long silences prevailing during this enlivening ceremony of
+Sabbath refection.
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?" his mother asked, in the effort
+to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+
+"What did you say, mother?"
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning?"
+
+"I think so," he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+
+"You THINK so!  Don't you know?"
+
+"Oh yes.  Yes, I went to church!"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Just down the street.  It's brick."
+
+"What was the sermon about?"
+
+"What, mother?"
+
+"Can't you hear me?" she cried.  "I asked you what the sermon was about?"
+
+He roused himself.  "I think it was about--"  He frowned, seeming to
+concentrate his will to recollect.  "I think it was about something in the
+Bible."
+
+White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean upon
+Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry.  "He don't know they WAS any suhmon!"
+he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue.  "All he know is he
+was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!"  George was right.
+
+"Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?" Sibyl asked.
+
+"No," he answered.  "No, I didn't go alone."
+
+"Oh?"  Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry, and
+followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension.  "OH!"
+
+Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further.  And that completed
+the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+
+Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to other
+parts of the house.  Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the library,
+but was not well received.
+
+"YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks," Sheridan
+commanded.
+
+Bibbs retreated.  "Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!" he said.
+
+However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his mother
+and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn, according to
+their Sabbatical custom.  Edith sat in a corner, tapping her feet together and
+looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room, examining a brooch which
+she had detached from her throat; and Mrs. Sheridan was looking over a
+collection of records consisting exclusively of Caruso and rag-time.  She
+selected one of the latter, remarking that she thought it "right pretty," and
+followed it with one of the former and the same remark.
+
+As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad doorway,
+seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak.  Instead, he favored
+Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the room, George
+stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing after her in the
+hall with an air of successful diplomacy.  He made it perfectly clear that
+Edith had given him secret instructions and that it had been his pride and
+pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.
+
+Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with curious
+eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+
+"What's that?" she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+
+"Here's another right pretty record," said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting-- with
+patent nervousness--not to hear.  And she unloosed the music.
+
+Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch.  After a little
+while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold chair, with
+his eyes closed.
+
+"Where did Edith go?" she asked, curiously.
+
+"Edith?" he repeated, opening his eyes blankly.  "Is she gone?"
+
+Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway.  She leaned against the casing, still
+tapping her chin with the brooch.  Her eyes were dilating; she was suddenly at
+high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp excitement.  She
+listens intently.
+
+When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the library,
+during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and husky; "I won't
+say anything at all.  I tell you, you might just as well let me alone!"
+
+But there were other sound: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low protesting
+cadences in a male voice.  And as Mrs. Sheridan started another record, a
+sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She walked down
+the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+
+Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating.  Edith became
+instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to foot,
+and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+
+But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so white.
+At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences became
+nothing to Sibyl.  She courtesied, holding up her skirts and contorting her
+lips to the semblance of a smile.
+
+"Sit just as you were--both of you!" she said.  And then to Edith: "Did you
+tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?"
+
+"You march out of here!" said Edith, fiercely.  "March straight out of here!"
+
+Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+
+"Did you tell her I'd been telphoning you I wanted you to come?"
+
+"Oh, good God!" Lamhorn said.  "Hush!"
+
+"You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?" she cried.  "You knew that!"
+
+"HUSH!" he begged, panic-stricken.
+
+"That was a MANLY thing to do!  Oh, it was like a gentleman!  You wouldn't
+come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say! You
+were TIRED of what I had to say!  You'd heard it all a thousand times before,
+and you wouldn't come!  No! No! NO!" she stormed.  "You wouldn't even come for
+five minutes, but you could tell that little cat!  And SHE told my husband!
+You're a MAN!"
+
+Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
+Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her
+feelings.  "Get out of this house!" she shrieked.  "This is my father's house.
+Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!"
+
+"No! No!  I mustn't SPEAK--"
+
+"Don't you DARE!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously, fronting
+each other, their furious faces close.  Their voices shrilled and rose and
+cracked--they screeched.  They could be heard over the noise of the
+phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection.  They could be heard all
+over the house.  They were heard in the kitchen; they could have been heard in
+the cellar.  Neither of them cared for that.
+
+"You told my husband!" screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
+Edith's.  "You told my husband!  This man put THAT in you hands to strike me
+with!  HE did!"
+
+"I'll tell your husband again!  I'll tell him everything I know!  It's TIME
+your husband--"
+
+They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand.  "Do you want the neighbors in?"
+Sheridan thundered.
+
+There fell a shocking silence.  Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his mother
+in the doorway, and she understood what she had done.  She moved slowly toward
+the door; then suddenly she began to run.  She ran into the hall, and through
+it, and out of the house.  Roscoe followed her heavily, his eyes on the
+ground.
+
+"NOW THEN!" said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+
+The words were indefinite, but the voice was not.  Neither was the vicious
+gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction of
+the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and Jackson
+and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They fled
+lightly.
+
+"Papa, papa!" wailed Mrs. Sheridan.  "Look at your hand!  You'd oughtn't to
+been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder.  Look!"
+
+There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of the
+fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling.  "Now then!" he
+repeated.  "You goin' to leave my house?"
+
+"He will NOT!" sobbed Edith.  "Don't you DARE order him out!"
+
+"Don't you bother, dear," said Lamhorn, quietly.  "He doesn't understand. YOU
+mustn't be troubled."  Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very handsome,
+and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught eyes a persecuted
+noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels --the rabble
+being enacted by her father.
+
+"Don't come back, either!" said, Sheridan, realistic in this impersonation.
+"Keep off the premises!" he called savagely into the hall. "This family's
+through with you!"
+
+"It is NOT!" Edith cried, breaking from her mother.  "You'll SEE about that!
+You'll find out!  You'll find out what 'll happen!  What's HE done? I guess if
+I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it?  What's HE done, I'd like
+to know?  You don't know anything about it.  Don't you s'pose he told ME?  She
+was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he flirted with her a
+little.  That's everything he did, and it was before he met ME!  After that he
+wouldn't, and it wasn't anything, anyway --he never was serious a minute about
+it.  SHE wanted it to be serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up.
+He told her long ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and--"
+
+"Yes," said Sheridan, sternly; "that's HIS side of it!  That 'll do!  He
+doesn't come in this house again!"
+
+"You look out!" Edith cried.
+
+"Yes, I'll look out!  I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on the
+premises, but I had other things on my mind.  I had Abercrombie look up this
+young man privately, and he's no 'count.  He's no 'count on earth! He's no
+good!  He's NOTHIN'!  But it wouldn't matter if he was George Washington,
+after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!"
+
+"But, papa," Mrs. Sheridan began, "if Edie says it was all Sibyl's fault,
+makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--"
+
+"'S enough!" he roared.  "He keeps off these premises!  And if any of you so
+much as ever speak his name to me again--"
+
+But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of
+his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother. However,
+Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her husband in the
+library.  Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her pass, roused himself
+from reverie, and strolled in after her.
+
+"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. "She
+wouldn't even answer me.  They wasn't a sound from her room."
+
+"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it.  She never speaks to
+that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow-- Here!  You
+tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders.  No, you
+needn't.  I'll tell 'em myself."
+
+"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+His father glared at him.
+
+"It's no good," said Bibbs.  "Mother, when you were in love with father --"
+
+"My goodness!" she cried.  "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
+that--"
+
+"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs.  "And if
+YOUR father had told you--"
+
+"I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.
+
+"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan.  "What is
+it?"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants."
+
+"You're a--"  Sheridan gave it up.  "I don't know what to call you!"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants," Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully.  "You're up
+against something too strong for you.  If Edith were a weakling you'd have a
+chance this way, but she isn't.  She's got a lot of your determination,
+father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll beat you.  You can't
+keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does now.
+You can't make her think less of him, either.  Nobody can.  Your only chance
+is that she'll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go easy she
+probably will.  Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's just what
+you don't want, and as you DON'T want it, you'd better --"
+
+"I can't stand any more!" Sheridan burst out.  "If it's come to BIBBS advisin'
+me how to run this house I better resign.  Mamma, where's that nigger George?
+Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family. Bibbs, for God's sake
+go and lay down!  'Let her see him all she wants'! Oh, Lord! here's wisdom;
+here's--"
+
+"Bibbs," said Mrs. Sheridan, "if you haven't got anything to do, you might
+step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall.  I don't
+think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now."
+
+"All right."  And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and delivered
+them to Roscoe, who met him at the door.  Bibbs said only, "Forgot these,"
+and, "Good night, Roscoe," cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the New
+House.  His mother and father were still talking in the library, but with
+discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there he
+proceeded to write in his note-book.
+
+       There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+       Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+       very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+
+       You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+       will not wish for love--nor for ambition.  These are passions
+       and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
+       blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+
+       What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to be
+       turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross a
+       mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.  Friendship
+       walks gently and with open eyes.
+
+       To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there! To rise when
+       she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other half of
+       the hymn-book that she holds!  What  lover, with his fierce ways,
+       could know this transcendent happiness?
+
+       Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+       labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a
+       friend is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.
+       For the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love
+       it!
+
+       Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+       kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+       you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+       is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+       browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes
+       iridescent.  You see the gold in brown hair. Light floods
+       everything.
+
+       When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give you
+       nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in anything
+       for ever.
+
+       What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+       friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+       adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+       without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+       when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+       more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+       you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+       they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+       chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+       look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+       taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+       had not thought it out.
+
+       This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+       the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+       somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.
+
+       Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+       while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+       and a dreaming mind  all day if you had to scheme out dollars, or
+       if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+       attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+       letters beginning "Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents duly
+       noted."  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+       singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+       of your friend's greeting--always there--for you!  Who would
+       wake from such a dream as this?
+
+       Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
+       serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
+       things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+       blossom in the soot.  That is what it means not to be alone!  That
+       is what a friend gives you!
+
+Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
+somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own (and
+perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to sleep soundly
+through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
+
+His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of affairs of
+his family.  He had recognized his condition when he wrote, "Who would wake
+from such a dream as this?"  Bibbs was a sympathetic person, easily touched,
+but he was indeed living in a dream, and all things outside of it were veiled
+and remote--for that is the way of youth in a dream.  And Bibbs, who had never
+before been of any age, either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
+
+He went whistling from the house before even his father had come down-stairs.
+There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of soot, and though
+Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile at the curb before
+Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr. Gurney's, but went cheerily on
+his way through the dingy mist.  And when he was once more installed beside
+his faithful zinc-eater he whistled and sang to it, as other workmen did to
+their own machines sometimes, when things went well.  His comrades in the shop
+glanced at him amusedly now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at
+noon with a group of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked of
+electing him to their association.
+
+The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles blew.
+When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested himself of
+his overalls--his single divergence from the routine of his
+fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water copiously.  This was his
+transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail young
+working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the pavement a
+cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the point of elegance.
+
+The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and boys and
+women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five.  Many hurried and
+some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one another, and Bibbs,
+turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
+
+Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught sight of
+his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost passed her, for in
+the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not recognize her, though his
+shoulder actually touched hers.  He would have gone by, but she laughed
+delightedly; and he stopped short, startled.  Two boys, one chasing the other,
+swept between them, and Bibbs stood still, peering about him in deep
+perplexity.  She leaned toward him.
+
+"I knew YOU!" she said.
+
+"Good heavens!' cried Bibbs.  "I thouhgt it was your voice coming out of a
+star!"
+
+"There's only smoke overhead," said Mary, and laughed again. "There aren't any
+stars."
+
+"Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!"
+
+She took his arm, and they went on.  "I've come to walk home with you, Bibbs.
+I wanted to."
+
+"But were you here in the--"
+
+"In the dark?  Yes!  Waiting?  Yes!"
+
+Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness.  He began to scold her.
+
+"But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it.  You shouldn't have--You ought to
+know better.  What did--"
+
+"I only waited about twelve seconds," she laughed.  "I'd just got here."
+
+"But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--"
+
+"I was in this part of town already," she said.  "At least, I was only seven
+or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd have had to go
+home alone--and I preferred going home with you."
+
+"It's pretty beautiful for me," said Bibbs, with a deep breath.  "You'll never
+know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then to --to see you
+standing there! Oh, it was kike--it was like--How can I TELL you what it was
+like?"  They had passed beyond the crowd now, and a crossing-lamp shone upon
+them, which revealed the fact that again she was without her furs.  Here was a
+puzzle.  Why did that adorable little vanity of hers bring her out without
+them in the DARK?  But of course she had gone out long before dark.  For
+undefinable reasons this explanation was not quite satisfactory; however,
+allowing it to stand, his solicitude for her took another turn.  "I think you
+ought to have a car," he said, "especially when you want to be out after dark.
+You need one in winter, anyhow.  Have you ever asked your father for one?"
+
+"No," said Mary.  "I don't think I'd care for one particularly."
+
+"I wish you would."  Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled.  "I think in
+winter you--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, lightly.  "I don't need--"
+
+"But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon for
+me.  I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--"
+
+"A girl likes to walk, too," said Mary.  "Let me tell you where I've been this
+afternoon and how I happened to be near enought to make you take me home.
+I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke. He has a
+sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his mother and his
+wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy. I'd seen one of his
+pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see more of them, so he showed them
+to me.  He has almost everthing he ever painted; I don't suppose he's sold
+more than four or five pictures in his life.  He gives drawing-lessons to keep
+alive."
+
+"How do you mean he paints the smoke?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Literally.  He paints from his studio window and from the street-- anywhere.
+He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful."
+
+"The smoke?"
+
+"Wonderful!  He sees the sky through it, somehow.  He does the ugly roofs of
+cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and smoky
+sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow columns of smoke
+going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing with the hazy light in the
+distance; and he has others with the broken sky-line of down-town, all misted
+with the smoke and puffs and jets of vapor that have colors like an orchard in
+mid-April.  I'm going to take you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs."
+
+"You're showing me the town," he said.  "I didn't know what was in it at all."
+
+"There are workers in beauty here," she told him, gently.  "There are other
+painters more prosperous than my friend.  There are all sorts of things."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"No.  Since the town began growing so great that it called itself 'greater,'
+one could live here all one's life and know only the side of it that shows."
+
+"The beauty-workers seem buried very deep," said Bibbs.  "And I imagine that
+your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest of all.  My
+father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one of your friend's
+pictures.  He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples," but he wouldn't get one of those.
+He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he could use it for an
+advertisement."
+
+"Yes," she said, thoughtfully.  "And really he's the town.  They ARE buried
+pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs."
+
+"And yet it's all wonderful," he said.  "It's wonderful to me."
+
+"You mean the town is wonderful to you?"
+
+"Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend.  The city is
+only a rumble on the horizon for me.  It can't come any closer than the
+horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater all day
+long, helping me.  Mary--"  He stopped with a gasp.  "That's the first time
+I've called you 'Mary'!"
+
+"Yes."  She laughed, a little tremuously.  "Though I wanted you to!"
+
+"I said it without thinking.  It must be because you came there to walk home
+with me.  That must be it."     "Women like to have things said," Mary
+informed him, her tremulous laughter continuing.  "Were you glad I came for
+you?"
+
+"No--not 'glad.'  I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up and
+up--over the clouds.  I feel like that still.  I think I'm that way most of
+the time.  I wonder what I was like before I knew you.  The person I was then
+seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at all. It seems long,
+long ago.  I was gloomy and sickly--somebody else-- somebody I don't
+understand now, a coward afraid of shadows--afraid of things that didn't
+exist--afraid of my old zinc-eater!  And now I'm only afraid of what might
+change anything."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, "You're happy, Bibbs?" she asked.
+
+"Ah, don't you see?" he cried.  "I want it to last for a thousand, thousand
+years, just as it is!  You've made me so rich, I'm a miser.  I wouldn't have
+one thing different--nothing, nothing!"
+
+"Dear Bibbs!" she said, and laughed happily.
+
+
+Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream.  He had told Edith, after
+his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had decided that
+he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared to have relapsed to the
+retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he was far enough
+detached from membership now.  These were turbulent days in the New House, but
+Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he seemed an absent-minded
+stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware that he was present.  He
+would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of
+his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while Sheridan
+unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them.
+The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered
+out again unawakened.  He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for
+Edith and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+
+Sibyl was under Gurney's care.  Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night, not
+long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first days of
+Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her frequently, and
+to install a muscular nurse.  And whether he would or no, Gurney received from
+his hysterical patient a variety of pungent information which would have
+staggered anybody but a family physician. Among other things he was given to
+comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump
+in the operator's gizzard as of yore.
+
+Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and shrieking in
+pain.  Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting herself; her
+condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of that of a child after
+a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling mother all about the hurt
+and how it happened.  Sibyl babbled herself hoarse when Gurney withheld
+morphine.  She went from the beginning to the end in a breath.  No protest
+stopped her; nothing stopped her.
+
+"You ought to let me die!" she wailed.  "It's cruel not to let me die! What
+harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive? Just look at
+my life!  I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what that got
+me into!--look where I am now!  He brought me to this town, and what did I
+have in my life but his FAMILY?  And they didn't even know the right crowd!
+If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!  I had nothing--nothing--nothing in
+the world!  I wanted to have a good time --and how could I?  Where's any good
+time among these Sheridans?  They never even had wine on the table!  I thought
+I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read
+about, and travel, and go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these
+Sheridans!  I did the best I could; I did, indeed!  Oh, I DID!  I just tried
+to live.  Every woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess!
+Things were just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that
+frozen crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
+have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was getting
+him away from me.  She did it, too!  She got him!  A girl with money can do
+that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time!  And what could I do?  What
+can any woman do in my fix?  I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand it--and I
+couldn't stand it!  I went to that icicle--that Vertrees girl--and she could
+have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt her.  It wouldn't have done
+her any harm to help me THAT little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that
+she wouldn't even take the trouble to sweep out of her house!  Let her WAIT!"
+Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky whisper,
+though she strove to make it louder.  She struggled half upright, and the
+nurse restrained her. "I'd get up out of this bed to show her she can't do
+such things ot me!  I was absolutely ladylike, and she walked out and left me
+there alone! She'll SEE!  She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket was
+fairly underground, and she thinks she's landed that poor loon--but she'll
+see! She'll see!  If I'm ever able to walk across the street again I'll show
+her how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help!  It wouldn't
+have hurt her any--it wouldn't--it wouldn't.  And Edith needn't have told what
+she told Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone.  And HE told her I
+bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him.  He needn't have done it!  He
+needn't--needn't--"  Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion,
+though she would go over it all again as soon as her strength returned.  She
+lay panting.  Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway,
+"Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured.  "I don't want to see you."  And as he
+turned away she added, "I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe."
+
+Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she had
+the advantage of a mother for listener.  She had also the disadvantage of a
+mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp tutelage,
+proved an effective one.  Edith was reduced to telephoning Lamhorn from shops
+whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary distraction over a
+counter.
+
+Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion.  Her
+whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
+separated her from him.  She was in a state that could be altered by only the
+lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like legions
+of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly fuel by opposing
+to it an intolerable force.  He swore she should cool, and thus set her on
+fire.
+
+Edith planned neatly.  She fought hard, every other evening, with her father,
+and kept her bed between times to let him see what his violence had done to
+her.  Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing fast, she said
+pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she went away; it was
+impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not think always of him.
+Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.  She had written to a school
+friend, established quietly with an aunt in apartments--and a month or so of
+theaters and restaurants might bring peace.  Sheridan shouted with relief; he
+gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a Monday morning, wearing violets
+with her mourning and having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs.
+She might have kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her
+departure had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater,
+that evening, to find her gone.  "I suppose they'll be maried ther," he said,
+casually.
+
+Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up, fuming.
+"Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted.  "I don't want to
+be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you are!  She's through
+with that riff-raff;  all she needed was to be kept away from him a few weeks,
+and I KEPT her away, and it did the business. For Heaven's sake, go on out o'
+here!"
+
+Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged.  And the black silk sling
+was still round Sheridan's neck, but not word of Gurney's and no excruciating
+twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling.  The wounds, slight
+enough originally, had become infected the first time he had dislodged the
+bandages, and healing was long delayed.  Sheridan had the habit of gesture; he
+could not "take time to remember," he said, that he must be careful, and he
+had also a curious indignation with his hurt; he refused to pay it the
+compliment of admitting its existence.
+
+The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan Building
+to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which the doctor felt had
+become necessary.  But he was a little before the appointed time and was
+obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom-- there was a directors' meeting
+of some sort in Sheridan's office.  The door was slightly ajar, leaking
+cigar-smoke and oratory, the latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
+
+"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
+breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO!  Some o' you men make me sick! You'd
+lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his hind leg at
+you!  You say money's tight all over the country.  Well, what if it is?
+There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to keep OUR money
+tight!  You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a crack
+because some fool newspaper says the market's a little skeery!  You listen to
+every street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try to scare ME out
+of a big thing!  We're IN on this-- understand?  I tell you there never WAS
+better times.  These are good times and big times, and I won't stand for any
+other kind o' talk.  This country's on its feet as it never was before, and
+this city's on its feet and goin' to stay there!"  And Gurney heard a series
+of whacks and thumps upon the desk.  "'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with
+accompanying thumps.  "Rabbit talk!  These times are glorious, I tell you!
+We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there!  That's all,
+gentlemen. The loan goes!"
+
+The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened in. His
+guess was correct:  Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his right hand.
+The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage as best he might;
+and then he said what he had to say on the subject of Roscoe and Sibyl, his
+opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile reception. But the result of
+this conversation was that by telephonic command Roscoe awaited his father, an
+hour later, in the library at the New House.
+
+"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as he came
+in.
+
+"Yes."  Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude which
+had become his habit.  "Yes, she is."
+
+"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.
+
+"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!"  There was a bitter gibe in the father's voice, and
+he added: "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll stay there.  I
+shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you least of all!"
+
+"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe.  "You won't do any good."
+
+"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?"  Sheridan used a brisker,
+kinder tone.  "Three weeks since you showed up there at all.  When you goin'
+to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the foolishness and start
+in again?  You ought to be able to make up for a lot o' lost time and a lot o'
+spilt milk when that woman takes herself out o' the way and lets you and all
+the rest of us alone."
+
+"It's no use, father, I tell you.  I know what Gurney was going to say to you.
+I'm not going back to the office.  I'm DONE!"
+
+"Wait a minute before you talk that way!"  Sheridan began his sentry-go up and
+down the room.  "I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good men about
+sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin' right again,
+down in your office?"
+
+"They must be good men."  Roscoe nodded indifferently.  "I thought I was doing
+about eight men's work.  I'm glad you found two that could handle it."
+
+"Look here!  If I worked you it was for your own good.  There are plenty men
+drive harder 'n I do, and--"
+
+"Yes.  There are some that break down all the other men that work with 'em.
+They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use the rest of
+their lives.  The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by domestic
+difficulties'!"
+
+"You set there and tell me you give up?" Sheridan's voice shook, and so did
+the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the despondent
+figure.  "Don't do it, Roscoe!  Don't say it!  Say you'll come down there
+again and be a man!  This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any more.  The work
+ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry you, and you can get
+shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't fastened on you yet.  Don't
+say--"
+
+"It's no use on earth," Roscoe mumbled.  "No use on earth."
+
+"Look here!  If you want another month's vacation--"
+
+"I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?"
+
+"Gurney!"  Sheridan vociferated the name savagely.  "It's Gurney, Gurney,
+Gurney!  Always Gurney!  I don't know what the world's comin' to with
+everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The doctor
+says that'!  It makes me sick!  How's this country expect to get its Work done
+if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this blattin'--'Oh, oh!
+Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your NERVES!' So he says you got
+'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and emotional strain.'  They always
+got to stick the Work in if they see a chance!  I reckon you did have the
+'emotional strain,' and that's all's the matter with you.  You'll be over it
+soon's this woman's gone, and Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin'
+about her."
+
+"Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?"
+
+"Shut up!" Sheridan bellowed.  "I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel like
+shootin' anybody that says it to me!"  He fumed and chafed, swearing
+indistinctly, then came and stood before his son.  "Look here; do you think
+you're doin' the square thing by me?  Do you?  How much you worth?"
+
+"I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own, outside
+the salary.  That much is mine whether I work or not."
+
+"It is?  You could 'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at your
+age?"
+
+"No. But it's mine, and it's enough."
+
+"My Lord!  It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit there! I
+suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket, and all you have
+to do is lay back and wait!  You let me tell you right here, you'll never see
+one cent of it.  You go out o' business now, and what would you know about
+handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from now? Because I intend to STAY
+here a little while yet, my boy!  They'd either get it away from you or you'd
+sell for a nickel and let it be split up and --"  He whirled about, marched to
+the other end of the room, and stood silent a moment.  Then he said, solomnly:
+"Listen.  If you go out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's
+green earth to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is.  I've
+depended on you for it ALL since Jim died.  Now you've listened to that dam'
+doctor, and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and
+that certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more.  Now, that's all
+a lie.  Men don't break down that way at your age.  Look at ME!  And I tell
+you, you can shake this thing off.  All you need is a little GET-up and a
+little gumption.  Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING
+businesses like ours--they lose the strings.  And if you could, I won't let
+you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if you lay down
+you prove you ain't the man I thought you were."  He cleared his throat and
+finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take a month's vacation and come back and
+go to it?"
+
+"No," said Roscoe, listlessly.  "I'm through."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan.  He picked up the evening paper from a table, went
+to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.  "Good-by."
+
+Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes. "Best
+I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering.  "I figure it
+out a good deal like this," he said.  "I didn't KNOW my job was any strain,
+and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what I hear, I was just up to
+the limit of my nerves from overwork, and the-- the trouble at home was the
+extra strain that's fixed me the way I am.  I tried to brace, so I could stand
+the work and the trouble too, on whiskey --and that put the finish to me!
+I--I'm not hitting it as hard as I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon,
+if I can get to feeling a little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I
+don't know.  I'm all in--and the doctor says so.  I thought I was running
+along fine up to a few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and
+didn't know it.  Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
+I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your daughter-in-law
+and going to stay that way.  She didn't do anything wicked.  It was a shock to
+me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had done--encouraging that fellow to
+hang around her after he began trying to flirt with her, and losing her head
+over him the way she did.  I don't deny it was a shock and that it 'll always
+be a hurt inside of me I'll never get over.  But it was my fault; I didn't
+understand a woman's nature."  Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and
+desolate earnest.  "A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive
+people, and traveling.  Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can
+give her the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or New
+Orleans, the way she has, two, three times.  A woman has to have something in
+her life besides a business man.  And that's ALL I was.  I never understood
+till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I believe if you'd heard
+her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly about her; I believe you might
+have forgiven her like I have.  That's all.  I never cared anything for any
+girl but her in my life, but I was so busy with business I put it ahead of
+her.  I never THOUGHT about her, I was so busy thinking business.  Well, this
+is where it's brought us to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I
+feel the way you do when anybody talks about Gurney to you.  The word
+'business' makes me dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach.  I
+believe if I had to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall
+down on the floor, deathly sick.  You talk about a 'month's vacation'-- and I
+get just as sick.  I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't
+make any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
+I can--and stay.  We're going to Japan first, and if we--"
+
+His father rustled the paper.  "I said good-by, Roscoe."
+
+"Good-by," said Roscoe, listlessly.
+
+
+Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then he
+rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall.  Jackson appeared.
+
+"Has Bibbs got home from work?"
+
+"Mist' Bibbs?  No, suh."
+
+"Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes."
+
+"Yessuh."
+
+Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon the
+newspaper.  He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond their explanatory
+rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to concentrate his attention:
+
+       "Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides."
+       "Burglars Make Big Haul."  "Board Works Approve Big Car-line
+       Extension."  "Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull
+       Fractured."  "Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court."  "Plan New
+       Eighteen-story Structure."  "School-girl Meets Death under
+       Automobile."  "Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead."  "Life Crushed Out.
+       Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes Action by
+       Coroner."  "Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies
+       Protest to Governor in Church Rioting Case."  "Short $3,500 in
+       Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug."  "Found Frozen.
+       Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when Parents Return Home
+       from Seeking Work."  "Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures
+       on Big Future of Our City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short
+       Absence.  Says No European City Holds Candle."
+(Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
+
+Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly. "Well,
+father, did you want me?"
+
+"Yes.  Sit down."  Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire, holding
+out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
+
+"I came within seven of the shop record to-day," he said.  "I handled more
+strips thand any other workman has any day this month.  The nearest to me is
+sixteen behind."
+
+"There!" exclaimed his father, greatly pleased.  "What'd I tell you?  I'd like
+to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you there-- I would
+just like to hear him!  And you--ain't you ashamed of makin' such a fuss about
+it?  Ain't you?"
+
+"I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time," Bibbs said, smiling
+brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight.  "I didn't know the
+difference it meant to like a thing."
+
+"Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement.  I guess I
+HAVE!  I said the shop 'd be good for you, and it was.  I said it wouldn't
+hurt you, and it hasn't.  It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
+Ain't that so?"
+
+"Looks like it!" Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+
+"Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last!  Instead o'
+hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically.  You're a good inch
+taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am if you'd get some
+flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little.  Physically, it's started
+you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole family.  Now, then,
+mentally--that's different.  I don't say it unkindly, Bibbs, but you got to do
+something for yourself mentally, just like what's begun physically.  And I'm
+goin' to help you."
+
+Sheridan decided to sit down again.  He brought his chair close to his son's,
+and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially.  "I got plans for you,
+Bibbs," he said.
+
+Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed.  He drew back.  "I--I'm all right
+now, father."
+
+"Listen."  Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of a
+reasonable man reasoning.  "Listen here, Bibbs.  I had another blow to-day,
+and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been expectin' it
+some little time back.  Well, it's got to be met.  Now I'll be frank with you.
+As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever called you exactly strong.
+You been a little weak both ways, most of your life.  Not but what I think you
+GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to use it. You got will-power, I'll say that
+for you.  I never knew boy or man that could be stubborner--never one in my
+life!  Now, then, you've showed you could learn to run that machine best of
+any man in the shop, in no time at all.  That looks to me like you could learn
+to do other things.  I don't deny but what it's an encouragin' sign.  I don't
+deny that, at all.  Well, that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as
+it looks.  You're all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't as
+poor material as I thought.  Your tellin' me about comin' within seven strips
+of the shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin' information brought
+in at just about the right time.  Now, then, I'm goin' to give you a raise.  I
+wanted to send you straight on up through the shops--a year or two, maybe--
+but I can't do it.  I lost Jim, and now I've lost Roscoe.  He's quit. He's
+laid down on me.  If he ever comes back at all, he'll be a long time pickin'
+up the strings, and, anyway, he ain't the man I thought he was.  I can't count
+on him.  I got to have SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on.  And I'm down to this:
+you're my last chance.  Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got
+and see if we can't develop 'em a little.  Who knows? And I'm goin' to put my
+time in on it.  I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I won't be
+hard on you if you're a little slow at first.  And I'm goin' to do the big
+thing for you.  I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the big thing for me,
+in return.  I've vindicated my policy with you about the shop, and now I'm
+goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over ahead of where the other
+boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal to your ambition that 'll make
+you dizzy!"  He tapped his son on the knee again.  "Bibbs, I'm goin' to start
+you off this way: I'm goin' to make you a director in the Pump Works Company;
+I'm goin' to make you vice-president of the Realty Company and a
+vice-president of the Trust Company!"
+
+Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched.  "Oh no!" he cried.
+
+Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy.  "Yes, sir! And
+there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those vice-presidencies, and
+a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the directorship.  You thought I was
+pretty mean about the shop--oh, I know you did!--but you see the old man can
+play it both ways.  And so right now, the minute you've begun to make good the
+way I wanted you to, I deal from the new deck.  And I'll keep on handin' it
+out bigger and bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the
+hand I deal you.  I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!"
+
+"But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!" Bibbs stammered.
+
+"What 'd you say?"  Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+
+"I don't want it, father.  I thank you--I do thank you--"
+
+Sheridan looked perplexed.  "What's the matter with you?  Didn't you
+understand what I was tellin' you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You sure?  I reckon you didn't.  I offered--"
+
+"I know, I know!  But I can't take it."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"  Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
+"Your head feel funny?"
+
+"I've never been quite so sane in my life," said Bibbs, "as I have lately. And
+I've got just what I want.  I'm living exactly the right life.  I'm earning my
+daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it.  My wages are enough. I don't want any
+more money, and I don't deserve any--"
+
+"Damnation!"  Sheridan sprang up.  "You've turned Socialist!  You been
+listening to those fellows down there, and you--"
+
+"No, sir.  I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't it."
+
+Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially. "Then
+what is it?  What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," he son returned, nervously.  "Nothing--except that I'm content.  I
+don't want to change anything."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain.  "I'll tell you, father, if
+I can.  I know it may be hard to understand--"
+
+"Yes, I think it may be," said Sheridan, grimly.  "What you say usually is a
+LITTLE that way.  Go on!"
+
+Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at every
+possible disadvantage.  He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a rough hand
+stretched to shake him and waken him.  He went to a table and made vague
+drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his eyes lowered.
+"You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is, in one way you weren't,
+father."  He glanced up apprehensively.  Sheridan stood facing him,
+expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt. "That's difficult to
+explain," Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of
+his finger.  "I--I believe the shop might have done for me this time if I
+hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to-- oh, not only to bear it, but to be
+happy in it.  Well, I AM happy in it. I want to go on just as I am.  And of
+all things on earth that I don't want, I don't want to live a business life--I
+don't want to be drawn into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM
+living.  I have the healthful toil--and I can think.  In business as important
+as yours I couldn't think anything but business.  I don't--I don't think
+making money is worth while."
+
+"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+
+"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs.  "You think
+this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being rich and
+powerful?  They don't teach the children any more in the schools because the
+city is rich and powerful.  They teach them more than they used to because
+some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought the thoughts to teach
+the children.  And yet when you've been reading the paper I've heard you
+objecting to the children being taught anything except what would help them to
+make money.  You said it was wasting the taxes.  You want them taught to make
+a living, but not to live.  When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town;
+now it's hideous. What's the use of being big just to be hideous?  I mean I
+don't think all this has meant really going ahead--it's just been getting
+bigger and dirtier and noisier.  Wasn't the whole country happier and in many
+ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder?  I know you
+think I'm an utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and
+politics just the housekeeping part of life?  And wouldn't you despise a woman
+that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and
+dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it?  And
+supposed she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was
+always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep clean what
+she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house altogether
+unpeaceful and unlivable--"
+
+"Just one minute!"  Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy, "If
+you will permit me?  Have you ever been right about anything?"
+
+"I don't quite--"
+
+"I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything whatever
+in the course of your life?  Have you ever been right upon any subject or
+question you've thought about and talked about?  Can you mention one single
+time when you were proved to be right?"
+
+He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, "If
+I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm right about
+this.  It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring up my
+average."
+
+"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point.  And there's another you probably
+couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it.  You been balkin' all
+your life.  Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do, you'd let out SOME
+kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't seem to remember once when
+you didn't have to lay down and do what I said. But go on with your remarks
+about our city and the business of this country.  Go on!"
+
+"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.  "I
+want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now.  I couldn't, if I went down
+there with you.  I'd be swallowed into it.  I don't care for money enought
+to--"
+
+"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet.  "You've never had to
+earn a living.  Anybody could tell that by what you say.  Now, let me remind
+you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty fair food;
+you're wearin' pretty fine clothes.  Just suppose one o' these noisy
+housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own housekeepin'.
+May I ask what your proposition would be?"
+
+"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, sturdily.  "It's enough.  I
+shouldn't mind at all."
+
+"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"
+
+"My work!" Bibbs answered.  "And I've done so well on that clipping-machine I
+believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job.  I
+could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade
+than be in business--I should, infinitely!"
+
+"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!"  But Sheridan struggled
+with his temper and again was partially successful in controlling it.  "You
+better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're either goin' down with me to
+my office Monday morning--or--you can go to plumbing!"
+
+"All right," said Bibbs, gently.  "I can get along."
+
+Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer.  "O God," he said, "this
+boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a week, and now
+his money's gone to his head!  Can't You do nothin' for him?"  Then he flung
+his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of dismissal.  "Get out
+o' this room!  You got a skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's
+cracked spang all the way across!  You hated the machine-shop so bad when I
+sent you there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I
+offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the shop
+like a calf for its mammy!  You're cracked!  Oh, but I got a fine layout here!
+One son died, one quit, and one's a loon!  The loon's all I got left!  H. P.
+Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the
+house.  First morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar
+plate-glass window out into the yard.  He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty
+dandelion!'  That's what you're doin'!  You want to spend your life sayin',
+'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what
+you bust!  Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you
+are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn
+you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of you
+that's fit to be called a business man!  I'll keep at you while I'm able to
+stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin' at you till they
+get the embalmin'-fluid into me!  Now go on, and don't let me hear from you
+again till you can come and tell me you've waked up, you poor, pitiful,
+dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"
+
+Bibbs gave him a queer look.  There was something like reproach in it, for
+once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his father's
+last word.
+
+
+There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm nor
+that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the consciousness
+of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of Mary.  All was
+right in his world has he sat with her, reading Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine
+and Palomides.  The sorrowful light of the gas-jet might have been May morning
+sunshine flashing amber and rose through the glowing windows of the
+Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs.  And while the zinc-eater held
+out to bring him such golden nights as these, all the king's horses and all
+the king's men might not serve to break the spell.
+
+Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and
+Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to
+discover no fault.  It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever there
+was an opportunity.  It may be said, in truth, that while they were together,
+and it was light, she looked at him all the time.
+
+When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little
+while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said:  "There's
+something I want to read over.  This:
+
+       You would think I threw a window open on the dawn...She has a soul
+       that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like an
+       ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for
+       everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+       how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+       of it ...
+
+He stopped and looked at her.
+
+"You boy!" said Mary, not very clearly.
+
+"Oh yes," he returned.  "But it's true--especially my knees!"
+
+"You boy!" she murmured again, blushing charmingly.  "You might read another
+line over.  The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a
+mirror.  Do it again.  But you needn't read it--I can give it to you: "A
+little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!"
+
+"I!  I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one, unless I
+have to decide to study plumbing."
+
+"No."  She shook her head.  "You love and want what's beautiful and delicate
+and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always
+wanted.  You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever
+known, and that's what you were wistful for."
+
+Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two
+the matter seemed to clarify itself to him.  "Why, no," he said; "I wanted
+something else more than that.  I wanted you."
+
+"And here I am!" she laughed, completely understanding. "I think we're like
+those two in The Cloister and the Hearth.  I'm just the rough Burgundian
+cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that
+the devil was dead."
+
+"He isn't, though," said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began
+a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count.  "He gets into the
+clock whenever I'm with you."  And, sighing deeply, he rose to go.
+
+"You're always very prompt about leaving me."
+
+"I--I try to be," he said.  "It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+everything by giving myself a little more at a time.  If I ever saw you look
+tired--"
+
+"Have you ever?"
+
+"Not yet.  You always look--you always look--"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Care-free.  That's it.  Except when you feel sorry for me about something,
+you always have that splendid look.  It puts courage into people to see it.
+If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that look--and I'd never give
+up!  It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on
+your part, and yet I don't quite understand why it should be, either."  He
+smiled quizzically, looking down upon her.  "Mary, you haven't a 'secret
+sorrow,' have you?"
+
+For answer she only laughed.
+
+"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world.  I think that's
+why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in your own life,
+and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too.  But
+there's one little time in the twenty-four hours when I'm not happy.  It's
+now, when I have to say good night.  I feel dismal every time it comes--and
+then, when I've left the house, there's a bad little blankness, a black void,
+as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in
+my mind that I'm really beginning another day that's to end with YOU again.
+Then I cheer up.  But now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and
+so--good night."  And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little
+aware, "I hate it!"
+
+"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him.  But he stood
+motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+
+"Mary!  Your eyes are so--"  He stopped.
+
+"Yes?"  But she looked quickly away.
+
+"I don't know," he said.  "I thought just then--"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+understand--and didn't."
+
+She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly.  "My eyes are pleased,"
+she said.  "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go."
+
+"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he said.
+
+She inclined her head.  "Yes.  I'll--'let it'!"
+
+"Going to church," said Bibbs.  "It IS going to church when I go with you!"
+
+She went to the front door with him; she always went that far.  They had
+formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever speaking
+of it; but it was always the same.  She always stood in the doorway until he
+reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and looked back, and she
+waved her hand to him.  Then he went on, halfway to the New House, and looked
+back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but the door was open and the
+light shone.  It was as if she meant to tell him that she would never shut him
+out; he could always see that friendly light of the open doorway--as if it
+were open for him to come back, if he would.  He could see it until a wing of
+the New House came between, when he went up the path.  The open doorway seemed
+to him the beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol
+of herself and of her ineffable kindness.
+
+And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine snow
+swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn with
+tiny white stars.  His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was there,
+waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm touched her.
+When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she went into an unlit room
+across the hall from that in which they had spent the evening, and, looking
+from the window, watched him until he was out of sight.  The storm made that
+difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that
+stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back again.
+Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across
+the street.  They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed
+the front door and returned to her window.  A moment later two of the upper
+windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of
+one of them.  Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night she had seen
+those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.
+
+But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows.  He stopped for his
+last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already upon
+his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the sheltering
+wing of the New House.
+
+A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became aware of
+a paroxysm within the house.  Terrible sounds came from the library: Sheridan
+cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice rising to an agonized
+squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled detonations-- the
+outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood;  then Gurney, sharply
+imperious, "Keep your hand in that sling!  Keep your hand in that sling, I
+say!"
+
+"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a tragedy;
+and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he had first
+beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of Bibbs.  "Look
+at 'at lamidal statue!"
+
+Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine-- painted
+colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded and
+silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the spoil of a
+barbarians' battle.  There had been a massacre in the oasis --the Moor had
+been hurled headlong from his pedestal.
+
+"He hit 'at ole lamidal statue," said George.  "POW!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"YESshu!  POW! he hit 'er!  An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's I kin
+telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel.  He ain't takin' on
+'tall NOW.  He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago. You done miss'
+it, Mist' Bibbs.  Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what he was.  POW! he hit
+'er!  Yessuh!"  He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a crumpled telegraph form.
+"Here what come," he said.  "I pick 'er up when he done stompin' on 'er.  You
+read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn 'er ovuh to you soon's you come
+in."
+
+Bibbs read the telegram quickly.  It was from New York and addressed to Mrs.
+Sheridan.
+
+       Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+       health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+       this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure you
+       will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+       happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+       when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+       him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
+       Edith Lamhorn.
+
+George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
+thunder.  He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors of
+the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just then,
+would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father.  For that reason he
+was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade room, intending to keep
+out of sight, when he heard Sheridan vociferously demanding his presence.
+
+"Tell him to come in here!  He's out there.  I heard George just let him in.
+Now you'll SEE!"  And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into the hall,
+beckoned to her son.
+
+Bibbs went as far as the doorway.  Gurney sat winding a strip of white cotton,
+his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was striding up and
+down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that he seemed to be
+wearing a small boxing-glove.  His eyes were bloodshot; his forehead was
+heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken loose, and there were
+blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+
+"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared.  "THERE'S the hope
+o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy!  I want--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.
+
+Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl.  "For God's sake, sing
+another tune!" he cried.  "You said you 'came as a doctor but stay as a
+friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize ME --"
+
+"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally.  "What do you
+want Bibbs to say?"
+
+"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,' oh
+Lord!  You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'! You sat
+up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many another man you
+knew.  I just want you to hear THIS.  Now listen!"  He swung toward the quiet
+figure waiting in the doorway.  "Bibbs, will you come down-town with me Monday
+morning and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a directorship,
+stock, and salaries?  I ask you."
+
+"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+
+"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week, instead
+of takin' up my offer?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And I'd like the doctor to hear: What 'll you do if I decide you're too
+high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my shop?"
+
+"Find other work," said Bibbs.
+
+"There!  You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried.  "You hear what--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling!  Yes, I hear him."
+
+Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and broke,
+piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER!  He wants to be a
+PLUMBER!  He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he wants to
+be a plumber so he can THINK!"
+
+He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
+"There!  That's my son!  That's the only son I got now!  That's my chance to
+live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his throat.
+"That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway yonder!"
+
+Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding, and
+tossed it into the open bag.  "What's the matter with giving Bibbs a chance to
+live?" he said, coolly.  "I would if I were you.  You've had TWO that went
+into business."
+
+Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak.  "Joe Gurney," he
+said, when he could command himself so far, "are you accusin' me of the
+responsibility for the death of my son James?"
+
+"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor.  "But just once I'd like to have
+it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here, too."  He got
+up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind his back and
+smiling.  "Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable," he said.  "You were
+bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you and him, both, to
+understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at the risk of his life.
+Well, what did he do?  He said he wanted to go.  And he did go, and he's made
+good there.  Now, see: Isn't that enough?  Can't you let him off now?  He
+wants to write, and how do you know that he couldn't do it if you gave him a
+chance?  How do you know he hasn't some message-- something to say that might
+make the world just a little bit happier or wiser?  He MIGHT--in time--it's a
+possibility not to be denied.  Now he can't deliver any message if he goes
+down there with you, and he won't HAVE any to deliver.  I don't say going down
+with you is likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as
+the shop did, the first time.  I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow.  But I
+tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill something
+that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical body, and
+you'll kill it deader than a door-nail!  And so why not let it live?  You've
+about come to the end of your string, old fellow.  Why not stop this perpetual
+devilish fighting and give Bibbs his chance?"
+
+Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly.  "What 'fighting?'"
+
+"Yours--with nature."  Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
+antagonist equably.  "You don't seem to understand that you've been struggling
+against actual law."
+
+"What law?"
+
+"Natural law," said Gurney.  "What do you think beat you with Edith?  Did
+Edith, herself, beat you?  Didn't she obey without question something powerful
+that was against you?  EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't against HER,
+but you set yourself against the power that had her in its grip, and it shot
+out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk!  What's taken Roscoe from you?
+Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load
+across the broken bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked
+thing into standing.  Well, you couldn't! Now here's Bibbs.  There are
+thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he.  It
+wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business man as Jim
+and Roscoe put together."
+
+"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+
+"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has the kind
+and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in anything--if he
+ever wakes up!  Personally I should prefer him to remain asleep.  I like him
+that way.  But the thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead
+aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT to lead. Blindly, he's been
+fighting for the chance to lead it--he's obeying something that begs to stay
+alive within him; and, blindly, he knows you'll crush it out.  You've set your
+will to do it.  Let me tell you something more.  You don't know what you've
+become since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a
+bafflement stronger than your normal grief.  You're half mad with a consuming
+fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law
+that took Jim from you.  That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules.
+The very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
+beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.  The
+LAW beats you.  Haven't you been whipped enough?  But you want to whip the law
+--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and
+twist it--"
+
+The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout.  "Yes!  And by God,
+I will!"
+
+"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.
+
+"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely. "That's
+for chuldern and niggers.  It ain't twentieth century, let me tell you!
+"Defied the lighning,' did he, the jackass!  If he'd been half a man he'd 'a'
+got away with it.  WE don't go showin' off defyin' the lightning --we hitch it
+up and make it work for us like a black-steer!  A man nowadays would just as
+soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!"
+
+"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney.  "Will you be a really big man now
+and--"
+
+"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!"  Sheridan began to walk to and fro
+again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair.  He had shot his bolt
+the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target
+seemed unaware of the marksman.
+
+"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan went
+on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I don't!  I
+suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I mightn't need a son!
+Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"
+
+"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.
+
+There was a bronze inkstand upon the table.  Sheridan put his right hand in
+the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way
+across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail.  Mrs. Sheridan shrieked
+and sprang toward it.
+
+"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely.  "Let it lay!"  And, weeping, she obeyed.
+"Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put
+upon it.  "I got a spender for a son-in-law!  It's wonderful where property
+goes, sometimes.  There was ole man Tracy--you remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy,
+solid banker.  He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was
+president at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years
+more.  He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon
+the day before he died--over eighty!  Gilt edge, that bank?  It was diamond
+edge!  He used to eat a bag o' peanuts and and apple for lunch; but he wasn't
+stingy --he was just livin' in his business.  He didn't care for pie or
+automobiles--he had his bank.  It was an institution, and it come pretty near
+bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time.  Well, that ole man used to
+pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on
+the streets.  Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't.  Speak to him?  God! he
+wouldn't 'a' coughed on him!  He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at
+the bank!  Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd 'a'
+had him run off the street.  And yet all Tracy  was doin' every day of his
+life was workin' for that cigarette boy!  Tracy thought it was for the bank;
+he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood and the blood of his
+brain for the bank, but he wasn't.  It was every bit--from the time he went in
+at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick
+of it just slavin' for that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy.
+AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME!  He died, not ever havin' heard it,
+though he chased him off the front steps of his house once.  The day after
+Tracy died his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any
+Tracy bank any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a
+cigarette son-in-law!"
+
+Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and Sheridan
+once more returned it to the sling.
+
+"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on.  "That's good,
+and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be there next
+winter.  They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can be done
+in Florida by rich sons-in-law.  When Roscoe's woman got me to spend that much
+on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't give me a minute's rest till I
+turned over the same to her.  And she's got it, besides what I gave her to go
+East on.  It 'll be gone long before this time next year, and when she comes
+home and leaves the cigarette behind-- for good--she'll get some more.  MY
+name ain't Tracy, and there ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the
+Sheridan family.  And there ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and
+endowin' and trusteein', nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm
+gone!  Edith 'll be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through
+with that cigarette, but--"
+
+"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs
+warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?"
+
+Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and
+stopped her ears.  And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded hand,
+and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to catch and
+protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the bandage.  He
+hammered the table till it leaped.
+
+"Fool!" he panted, choking.  "If he's shown gumption enough to guess right the
+first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin' him on!"  And,
+struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs, thrusting forward his
+convulsed face, which was deathly pale.  "My name ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he
+screamed, hoarsely.  "You give in, you stubborn fool! I've had my way with you
+before, and I'll have my way with you now!"
+
+Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
+"splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage in a
+struggle, so that he would "never give  up."
+
+"No.  You can't have your way," he said.  And then, obeying a significant
+motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
+
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her husband's room
+at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the darkened chamber. At the
+"old" house they had shared a room, but the architect had chosen to separate
+them at the New, and they had not known how to formulate an objection,
+although to both of them something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new
+arrangement.
+
+Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the aperture when
+he spoke.
+
+"Oh, I'm, AWAKE!  Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."
+
+She came and sat by the bed.  "I woke up thinkin' about it," she explained.
+"And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I knew
+you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake, so-- well, you got plenty other
+troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it
+looks like."
+
+"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.
+
+"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she continued. "He's
+a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to say he
+seems right smart, too.  Now and then he'll say something sounds right bright.
+'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the time, when he says
+things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got company, because they'd think
+he didn't have any gumption at all.  Yet, look at the way he did when
+Jim--when Jim got hurt.  He took right hold o' things.  'Course he'd been sick
+himself so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind
+o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold,
+and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr.
+Gurney says he's got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right
+considerable of a man.  He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such
+a large practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways.  Well,
+what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
+amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about.  You heard
+him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs 'll be a bigger business man than what Jim and
+Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says.  Wasn't that exactly
+what he says?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.  "Gurney's
+crazier 'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was true--what of it?"
+
+"Listen, papa.  Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married. You
+know where he goes all the time--"
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!"  Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
+leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair.  "You better go
+back to sleep.  He runs over there--every minute she'll let him, I suppose.
+Go back to bed.  There's nothin' in it."
+
+"WHY ain't there?" she urged.  "I know better--there is, too!  You wait and
+see.  There's just one thing in the world that 'll wake the sleepiest young
+man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he is or how
+sound asleep it looks like he is.  That's when he takes it into his head to
+pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and chuldern of his own.
+THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll see.  I've known dozens o'
+cases, and so 've you--moony, no-'count young men, all notions and talk, goin'
+to be ministers, maybe or something; and there's just this one thing takes it
+out of 'em and brings 'em right down to business.  Well, I never could make
+out just what it is Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a
+minister exactly --he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I
+know this is goin' to get him right down to common sense.  Now, I don't say
+that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be talkin'
+that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on.
+But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him out.
+He will!  And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary and
+stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more.  That girl's
+the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give things to!  She's pretty
+and fine-lookin', and things look nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have
+'em about as well as the next.  And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days,
+either, and she'll be pretty ready for the change.  I saw her with her sleeves
+rolled up at the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday
+their cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one.  He
+says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now they're
+doin' the cookin,' too.  'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that unless she's told
+him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is
+too up in the clouds to notice anything like that for himself.  They've never
+asked him to a meal in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either-- he's
+kind of innocent.  Now I was thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly
+mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe
+if--"
+
+Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn. "You're
+barkin' up the wrong tree!  Go on back to bed, mamma!"
+
+"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly.  "Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?"
+
+"Because you are.  There's nothin' in it."
+
+"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church with her
+this morning.  What you want to bet?"
+
+"Go back to bed," he commanded.  "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
+nothin' in it, I tell you."
+
+She shook her head perplexedly.  "You think because--because Jim was runnin'
+so much with her it wouldn't look right?"
+
+"No.  Nothin' to do with it."
+
+"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"
+
+"Yes, I do," he grunted.  "Now go on.  Maybe I can get a little sleep.  I
+ain't had any yet!"
+
+"Well--"  She went to the door, her expression downcast.  "I thought
+maybe--but--"  She coughed prefatorily.  "Oh, papa, something else I wanted to
+tell you.  I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night when the
+telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants to come over
+this afternoon.  Roscoe says she has something she wants to say to us.  It 'll
+be the first time she's been out since she was able to sit up--and I reckon
+she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened. They expect to get off by
+the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to feel she's done what she could
+to kind o' make up.  Anyway, that's what he said.  I 'phoned him again about
+Edith, and he said it wouldn't disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it;
+she was sure all along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got
+all that foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick.  But what I
+thought was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a good
+deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.  You'll--you'll
+be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?"
+
+He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had pulled over
+his head.
+
+"What?" she said, timidly.  "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl all
+right when she comes, this afternoon.  You will, won't you, papa?"
+
+He threw the coverlet off furiously. "I presume so!" he roared.
+
+She departed guiltily.
+
+But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to church with
+Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost. Nevertheless, Bibbs
+and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's house with the purpose of
+going to church.  That was their intention, and they had no other.  They meant
+to go to church.
+
+But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation as
+they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and Bibbs
+was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with Mary's
+rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other at this time.
+It also happened that, though they were a little jostled among groups of
+people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this somewhat prominent
+edifice without being aware of their proximity to it, and they had gone an
+incredible number of blocks beyond it before they discovered their error.
+However, feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if they returned, they
+decided that a walk would make them as good.  It was a windless winter
+morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground.  So they walked, and for
+the most part they were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned
+back at noon, they began to be talkative again.
+
+"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"
+
+She laughed a little, then looked grave.  "Does your father say you are?"
+
+"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me.  Other times, other names.  He has
+quite a list."
+
+"You mustn't mind," she said, gently.  "He's been getting some pretty severe
+shocks.  What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs. I've always
+been sure he's very big."
+
+"Yes.  Big and--blind.  He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any
+consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow stronger.
+Stronger for what?  For nothing."
+
+"Are you sure, Bibbs?  It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
+something, even though he doesn't know what it is.  Perhaps what he and his
+kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it--so great
+none of us could see it."
+
+"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--"
+
+"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she finished for
+him, cheerily.
+
+"Into the smoke," said Bibbs.  "Look at the powder of coal-dust already
+dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday.  That's from the little
+pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday!  There's a fleck of soot on your
+cheek.  Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have thrown it on
+you.  It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his chance of my
+whipping him for it if I could."
+
+"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so rhetorically?
+IS there?"
+
+"Is there?  There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each.  One landed
+since I mentioned the first."
+
+She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
+transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric.  They were
+entirely matter-of-course about it.
+
+An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for the
+last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the soot. "There!"
+said the elderly wife.  "You're always wrong when you begin guessing about
+strangers.  Those two young people aren't honeymooners at all--they've been
+married for years.  A blind man could see that."
+
+"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up at the
+neighboring chimneys, as they went on.  "They arrest children for throwing
+snowballs at the street-cars, but--"
+
+"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the
+houses crooked every time they go by.  Nor for the uproar they make.  I wonder
+what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year. Yes, we pay the
+price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have money to pay or none."
+
+"Who is it gets the pay?" said Bibbs.
+
+"Not I!" she laughed.
+
+"Nobody gets it.  There isn't any pay; there's only money.  And only some of
+the men down-town get much of that.  That's what my father wants me to get."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling to him, and nodding.  "And you don't want it, and you
+don't need it."
+
+"But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?"  He had told her of his
+father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
+picturesqueness of their setting forth.  "You think I'm right?"
+
+"A thousand times!" she cried.  "There aren't so many happy people in this
+world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy.  If it's a
+dream--keep it!"
+
+"The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as I never
+hated the shop!" he said.  "I hate it!  And the city itself, the city that the
+money shuffle has made--just look at it!  Look at it in winter.  The snow's
+tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the ugliness is winning; it's
+making the snow hideous; the snow's getting dirty on top, and it's foul
+underneath with the dirt and disease of the unclean street.  And the dirt and
+the ugliness and the rush and the noise aren't the worst of it; it's what the
+dirt and ugliness and rush and noise MEAN--that's the worst!  The outward
+things are insufferable, but they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind
+enbryo of a spirit, not yet a soul--oh, just greed!  And this 'go ahead'
+nonsense!  Oughtn't it all to be a fellowship?  I shouldn't want to get ahead
+if I could--I'd want to help the other fellow to keep up with me."
+
+"I read something the other day and remembered it for you," said Mary. "It was
+something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: 'In the first
+picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city, full of all
+kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies leaning from the
+windows all down great lengths of street leading to the city walls; and there
+the gates are wide open, letting in a space of green field and cornfield in
+harvest; and all round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing
+from a lttle walled graveyard."
+
+"And if I painted," Bibbs returned, "I'd paint a lady walking in the street of
+a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life-- children being
+taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer, and ladies
+who'd given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the gates of the city
+wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all
+round this lady's head a great rain of swirling soot--"  He paused, adding,
+thoughtfully: "And yet I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek.  It was
+just as if I were your brother-- the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub
+it off for you.  Still, Edith never--"
+
+"Didn't she?" said Mary, as he paused again.
+
+"No.  And I--"  He contented himself with shaking his head instead of offering
+more definite information.  Then he realized that they were passing the New
+House, and he sighed profoundly.  "Mary, our walk's almost over."
+
+She looked as blank.  "So it is, Bibbs."
+
+They said no more until they came to her gate.  As they drifted slowly to a
+stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl, who
+was startlingly pale.  She seemed little enfeebled by her illness, however,
+walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not taking his arm.  The two
+crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her companion, and
+entering the New House, were lost to sight.  Mary gazed after them gravely,
+but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
+
+"Mary," he said, "you seem very serious.  Is anything bothering you?"
+
+"No, Bibbs."  And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly
+unreasonably happy.
+
+"I know you want to go in--" he began.
+
+"No.  I don't want to."
+
+"I mustn't keep you standing her, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I just
+wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning, grumbling about
+soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think it's been the very
+happiest of all the hours you've given me.  I do.  And --I don't know just
+why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd always remember.  And you," he
+added, falteringly, "you look so--so beautiful to-day!"
+
+"It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs."
+
+"Mary, will you tell me something?" he asked.
+
+"I think I will."
+
+"It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever just
+fits.  You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much colder, you
+don't--you never wear them at all any more.  Why don't you?"
+
+Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red.  Then she looked up gaily.
+"Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
+questions?"
+
+"Yes.  Why did you stop wearing them?"
+
+"Because I found I'd be warmer without them!"  She caught his hand quickly in
+her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.
+
+
+It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth
+will so often make even a ready-made library the actual "living-room" of a
+family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed.  Thus it was with
+Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and figures;
+who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting --when he
+was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.
+
+He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far end
+of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a
+solemnity.  His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the
+length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his
+expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the
+most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.
+
+Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at him,
+but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were nervously
+moving.  Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room. There was a
+deadly silence.
+
+But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was
+unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She
+spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to
+memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.
+
+"Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and
+I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I acted.
+I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I
+know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again,
+because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I
+hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed
+of again.  I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I
+haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in
+her new life.  I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a
+poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would
+feel a good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too.  I wish to promise not
+to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to
+make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enought to excuse it this
+time."
+
+He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him, never
+lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the agitation
+of her hands within the muff.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of heavy
+tears when the eyelids lifted.
+
+"Thank you," she said.  "There's something else--about something different--I
+want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it, too."
+
+"She's up-stairs in her room," said Sheridan.  "Roscoe--"
+
+Sibyl interrupted.  She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin to
+ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the chance for
+precisely the effect she wanted.
+
+"No, let me go," she said.  "I want to speak to her a minute first, anyway."
+
+And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see Bibbs
+enter his room and close the door.  Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his room, had
+overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter Edith,
+thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of the
+circumstance.  Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the recollection there
+had flashed the thought--out of her own experience-- that people are often
+much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by words directly
+addressed to them.  Sibyl intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to
+overhear.  She did not hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she
+believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was
+going to say.  Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
+girl who had affronted her.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room.  The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
+driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood, and
+she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again, in her
+presence, she would (as she thought of it) "have a fit right there."  She
+heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a
+mirror.
+
+"I was just coming down," she said, as the door opened.
+
+"Yes, he wants you to," said Sibyl.  "It's all right, mother Sheridan. He's
+forgiven me."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared.  She kissed her
+daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh, wiped
+her eyes, and applied powder.
+
+"And I hope Edith will be happy," Sibyl added, inciting more applications of
+Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured the good woman.  "We mustn't make the worst of things."
+
+"Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it,
+too," said Sibyl.  "We better go down, mother Sheridan."
+
+She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to a
+spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped.  "I want to tell you about it
+first," she said, abruptly.  "It isn't a secret, of course, in any way; it's
+something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole family knows
+it the better.  It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL not to
+understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.  But I want to just
+kind of go over it first with you; it 'll kind of help me to see I got it all
+stratight.  I haven't got any reason for saying it except the good of the
+family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of course, except for
+that.  I oughtn't to 've behaved the way I did that night, and it seems to me
+if there's anything I can do to help the family, I ought to, because it would
+help show I felt the right way.  Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's
+to keep the family from being made a fool of.  I don't want to see the family
+just made use of and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more
+heart than so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run
+as--as Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is.  I'll just tell
+you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way."
+
+Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil.  He
+wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to write.
+He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding
+Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before
+they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but
+gossamer.  Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could
+carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it-- he would venture it upon
+an editor.  For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor
+and thinking--he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for
+poems, to the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out
+of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.  His
+father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced the
+prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation.  He could find
+a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he
+would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays--on
+Sundays in the afternoon.  In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be
+interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his door
+for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to
+him.  He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of
+asking her to go away.  But, as she went on, he started violently, dropping
+manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+
+"I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan," she said, "but this old
+Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all THEY got out
+of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a little longer. Roscoe told
+me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the streets more 'n
+two years, tryin' to get a job he could call a 'position,' and couldn't land
+it.  You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?"
+
+"Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while back,"
+said Mrs. Sheridan.  "And now they're doin' the cookin', too."
+
+Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge.  "I hope they find
+something to cook!  She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!"
+
+Bibbs jumped up.  He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy-- of all
+the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last would have
+been what he heard now.  He felt that something incredible was happening, and
+that he was powerless to stop it.  It seemed to him that heavy blows were
+falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to him that he and Mary were
+being struck and beaten physically--and  that something hideous impended.  He
+wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand,
+swallowing and trembling.
+
+"What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this," said Sibyl,
+sharply.  "Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees started after
+Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!  They'd got a notion he
+might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was
+insane, the very first day Bibbs took the daughter out auto-riding!"  She
+paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan, but listening intently.  There was
+no sound from within the room.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+"It's the truth," Sibyl declared, loudly.  "Oh, of course we were all crazy
+about that girl at first.  We were pretty green when we moved up here, and we
+thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read her!  Her family
+were down and out when it came to money--and they had to go after it, one way
+or another, SOMEHOW!  So she started for Roscoe; but she found out pretty
+quick he was married, and she turned right around to Jim--and she landed him!
+There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and if he'd lived you'd had another
+daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God's
+truth about it!  Well--when Jim was left in the cemetery she was waiting out
+there to drive home with Bibbs! Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether
+Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys
+left.  She had to get him."
+
+The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not, in
+Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke with the
+rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+
+"What I feel about it is," she said, "it oughtn't to be allowed to go on. It's
+too mean!  I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made such a fool of,
+and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of!  I like poor Bibbs,
+but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to realize he isn't
+the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love with.  He's
+better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS--just kind of a long
+white rag in good clothes.  And girls like men with some SO to 'em--SOME sort
+of dashingness, anyhow!  Nobody ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and
+neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd tried both Roscoe and Jim first!  It
+was only when her and her family got desperate that she--"
+
+Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door. He
+stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her.  Both women screamed.
+
+"Oh, good heavens!" cried Sibyl.  "Were you in THERE?  Oh, I wouldn't--" She
+seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway.  "Come on, mother
+Sheridan!" she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl
+left a trail of noisy exclamations: "Good gracious!  Oh, I wouldn't--Too bad!
+I didn't DREAM he was there!  I wouldn't hurt his feelings!  Not for the
+world!  Of course he had to know SOME time!  But, good heavens--"
+
+She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the
+stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
+following; he had gone back into his room.
+
+"He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!" stammered Mrs. Sheridan.  "I--I wish--"
+
+"Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it," said Sibyl.  "I shouldn't
+wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened. Come on!"
+
+And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance to
+Roscoe and his father.  Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account of what
+had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the fact that it
+was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.
+
+"But as I told mother Sheridan," she said, in conclusion, "it might turn out
+for the very best that he did hear--just that way.  Don't you think so, father
+Sheridan?"
+
+He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of his
+head with his left hand and looking at the fire.  He had given no sign of
+being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's character;
+but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom she desired to
+impress, and she was content in that matter.
+
+"I'm sure it was all for the best," she said.  "It's over now, and he knows
+what she is.  In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a thing
+that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I haven't got any ax to
+grind except his own good and the good of the family."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward the
+stairway.  "I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin'," she said.  "He did look
+terrible bad.  It was like something had been done to him that was--I don't
+know what.  I never saw anybody look like he did.  He looked--so queer.  It
+was like you'd--"  She called down the hall, "George!"
+
+"Yes'm?"
+
+"Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?"
+
+"Yes,m.  He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate.  I done buil' him
+nice fiah.  I reckon he ain' feelin' so well.  Yes'm."  He departed.
+
+"What do you expect he wants a fire for?" she asked, turning toward her
+husband.  "The house is warm as can be,  I do wish I--"
+
+"Oh, quit frettin'!" said Sheridan.
+
+"Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl.  I know you meant it
+for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much harm if--"
+
+"Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the family?
+Why, she--"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," the troubled woman quavered.  "If he liked her
+it seems kind of a pity to spoil it.  He's so queer, and he hasn't ever taken
+much enjoyment.  And besides, I believe the way it was, there was more chance
+of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to.  If she wants to marry
+him--"
+
+Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh.  "She don't!" he said. "You're
+barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl.  She ain't that kind of a girl."
+
+"But, father Sheridan, didn't she--"
+
+He cut her short.  "That's enough.  You may mean all right, but you guess
+wrong.  So do you, mamma."
+
+Sibyl cried out, "Oh!  But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--"
+
+"She did not," he said, curtly.  "She wouldn't take Jim.  She turned him down
+cold."
+
+"But that's impossi--"
+
+"It's not.  I KNOW she did."
+
+Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+
+"And YOU needn't worry," he said, turning to his wife.  "This won't have any
+effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.  D' you
+think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take JIM?  She's
+a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her, but if she'd ever
+given him one sign of encouragement the way you women think, he wouldn't of
+acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at me long ago, beggin' me for
+some kind of a job he could support a wife on. There's nothin' in it--and I've
+got the same old fight with him on my hands I've had all his life--and the
+Lord knows what he won't do to balk me!  What's happened now 'll probably only
+make him twice as srubborn, but --"
+
+"SH!"  Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand.  "That's his
+step--he's comin' down-stairs."  She shrank away from the door as if she
+feared to have Bibbs see her.  "I--I wonder--" she said, almost in a
+whisper--"I wonder what he'd goin'--to do."
+
+Her timorousness had its effect upon the others.  Sheridan rose, frowning, but
+remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who stared
+uneasily at the open doorway.  They listened as the slow steps descended the
+stairs and came toward the library.
+
+Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked slowly
+from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his father.  Then he
+came and stood before him.
+
+"I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me," he said, gently.  "You won't,
+any more.  I'll take the job you offered me."
+
+Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs had
+left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he went as
+slowly as he came.  Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move.  She went nervously
+back to the doorway, and then out into the hall.  Bibbs had gone from the
+house.
+
+Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known before;
+it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her mourned for
+him uncomprehendingly.  She felt that an awful thing had been done to him,
+though she did not know what it was.  She went up to his room.
+
+The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick, charred
+ashes of paper.  The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large upper tray,
+which she remembered to have seen full of papers and note-books, was empty.
+And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up the mysterious vocation he
+had hoped to follow--and that he had given it up for ever.  She thought it was
+the wisest thing he could have done-- and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat
+upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.
+
+So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+
+
+As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage
+upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin
+young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and
+habitual eagerness.  He propelled a perambulator containing the third--and all
+three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's
+relatives.
+
+"How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?" the husband whispered.
+"He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now."
+
+The wife stared curiously at Bibbs.  "Well, I don't know," she returned. "He
+looks to me like he had his own troubles."
+
+"I expect he has, like anybody else," said the young husband, "but I guess we
+could stand a good deal if we had his money."
+
+"Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby 'll be as well fixed as
+the Sheridans.  You can't tell."  She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned
+north.  "He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like."
+
+"So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess," said the young
+husband, with bitter admiration.
+
+Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she started,
+clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm.  She met him at the door.
+
+"Bibbs!" she cried.  "What is the matter?  I saw something was terribly wrong
+when I--You look--"  She paused, and he came in, not lifting his eyes to hers.
+Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with his head up and his
+wistful gaze seeking hers.  "Ah, poor boy!" she said, with a gesture of
+understanding and pity.  "I know what it is!"
+
+He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a chair.
+
+"You needn't tell me," she said.  "They've made you give up.  Your father's
+won--you're going to do what he wants.  You've given up."
+
+Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+
+She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him.  "Bibbs," she
+said.  "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish.  I can be glad you
+came straight to me.  It's more to me than even if you'd come because you were
+happy."  She did not speak again for a little while; then she said:
+"Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about it?  Do you want to?"
+
+Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a
+question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his words.
+
+"Mary," he said, "could you marry me?"
+
+"What did you say, Bibbs?" she asked, quietly.
+
+His tone and attitude did not change.  "Will you marry me?"
+
+Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white. She rose
+slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first incredulously,
+then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in her wide eyes; it
+was like a spoken question.  The room filled with strangeness in the long
+silence--the two were so strange to each other. At last she said:
+
+"What made you say that?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Bibbs, look at me!"  Her voice was loud and clear.  "What made you say that?
+Look at me!"
+
+He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+
+"What was it that made you?" she said.  "I want you to tell me."
+
+She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that intensity
+of wonder.  "You've given up--to your father," she said, slowly, "and then you
+came to ask me--"  She broke off.  "Bibbs, do you want me to marry you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, just audibly.
+
+"No!" she cried.  "You do not.  Then what made you ask me?  What is it that's
+happened?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Wait," she said.  "Let me think.  It's something that happened since our walk
+this morning--yes, since you left me at noon.  Something happened that--"  She
+stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and dawning
+comprehension.  She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New House.
+
+Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want you to
+--marry me, if--if--you could."
+
+She looked at him, and slowly shook her head.  "Bibbs, do you--"  Her voice
+was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper.  "Do you think I'm --in
+love with you?"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did not
+seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it. "Why?"
+
+"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they weren't like
+that.  Sibyl said no girl could care about me."  He smiled faintly, though
+still he did not look at Mary.  "And when I first came home Edith told me
+Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME.  She meant it to
+express Sibyl's extremeity, you see.  But I hardly needed either of them to
+tell me.  I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as particularly
+captivating!"
+
+Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush.  "Those two!" she
+exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: "Lamhorn! That's
+like them!"  She turned away, went to the bare little black mantel, and stood
+leaning upon it.  Presently she asked: "WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan say that
+'no girl' could care about you?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+Mary drew a deep breath.  "I think I'm beginning to understand--a little."
+She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in her voice.
+"Answer me once more," she said.  "Bibbs, do you know now why I stopped
+wearing my furs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so!  Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?"
+
+"I--I heard her say--"
+
+"I think I know what happened, now."  Mary's breath came fast and her voice
+shook, but she spoke rapidly.  "You 'heard her say' more than that. You 'heard
+her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried first to
+marry your brother--and then--"  But now she faltered, and it was only after a
+convulsive effort that she was able to go on. "And then--that I tried to
+marry--you!  You 'heard her say' that-- and you believe that I don't care for
+you and that 'no girl' could care for you--but you think I am in such an
+'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you -- And so, not wanting me, and believing
+that I could not want you-- except for my 'extremity'--you took your father's
+offer and then came to ask me--to marry you!  What had I shown you of myself
+that could make you--"
+
+Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon the
+lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+
+"Mary, Mary!" he cried, helplessly.  "Oh NO--you--you don't understand."
+
+"I do, though!" she sobbed.  "I do!"
+
+He came and stood beside her.  "You kill me!" he said.  "I can't make it
+plain.  From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self.  It was
+always you that gave and I that took.  I was the dependent--I did nothing but
+lean on you.  We always talked of me, not of you.  It was all about my idiotic
+distresses and troubles.  I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that
+had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You seemed to lean
+down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me.  I never dreamed I could do
+anything for YOU!  I never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you
+by anybody.  And to-day I heard that--that you--"
+
+"You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money," she sobbed.
+"And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I had--"
+
+"No!" he said, quickly.  "I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for
+me--for that.  No, no, no!  I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except
+generously--to give.  I said I couldn't make it plain!" he cried,
+despairingly.
+
+"Wait!"  She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously, like
+a child.  "Help me up, Bibbs."  Then, when she was once more upon her feet,
+she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly,
+as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her.
+And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his
+own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
+
+"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said.  "You can't, because you
+can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle
+to say them.  Tell me, though, isn't it true?  You didn't believe that I'd
+tried to make you fall in love with me--"
+
+"Never!  Never for an instant!"
+
+"You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--"
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+"I believe it, Bibbs.  You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared
+for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.  But you thought
+that I might marry you without being in love with you because you did believe
+I had tried to marry your brother, and--"
+
+"Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--"
+
+"Were desperately poor," she said.  "You can't even say that!  Bibbs, it was
+true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me.  I did!"  And she sank down into
+the chair, weeping bitterly again.  Bibbs was agonized.
+
+"Mary," he groaned, "I didn't know you COULD cry!"
+
+"Listen," she said.  "Listen till I get through--I want you to understand.  We
+were poor, and we weren't fitted to be.  We never had been, and we didn't know
+what to do.  We'd been almost rich; there was plenty, but my father wanted to
+take advantage of the growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but
+instead--well, just about the time your father finished building next door we
+found we hadn't anything.  People say that, sometimes, meaning that they
+haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind, but we
+really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs!  And we couldn't DO
+anything.  You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I
+wonder myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the
+daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.'  It's curious!--as if a wave of
+the hand made you into a stenographer.  No, I'd been raised to be either
+married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry.  The
+poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--and I didn't know
+how to be a stenographer.  I didn't know how to be anything except a
+well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and I couldn't be a well-to-do old
+maid.  Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how to do.  I went out
+to be fascinating and be married.  I did it openly, at least, and with a kind
+of decent honesty.  I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that
+I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry
+him.  I think I did mean to mary him.  I had never cared for anybody, and I
+thought it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited
+fondness.  I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to marry him I
+never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage is--it's
+sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your
+sister-in-law, Sibyl.  She meant no harm--but she was horrible, and she put
+what I was doing into such horrible words--and they were the truth--oh! I SAW
+myself!  She was proposing a miserable compact with me--and I couldn't breathe
+the air of the same room with her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a
+right to assume that I WOULD.  But I couldn't!  I left her, and I wrote to
+your brother--just a quick scrawl.  I told him just what I'd done; I asked his
+pardon, and I said I would not marry him.  I posted the letter, but he never
+got it.  That was the afternoon he was killed.  That's all, Bibbs. Now you
+know what I did--and you know--ME!"  She pressed her clenched hands tightly
+against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
+
+Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her.  "Couldn't
+you--Isn't there--Won't you--" he stammered.  "Mary, I'm going with father.
+Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without --"
+
+She gave a choked little laugh.
+
+"You gave me something to live for," he said.  "You kept me alive, I think
+--and I've hurt you like this!"
+
+"Not you--oh no!"
+
+"You could forgive me, Mary?"
+
+"Oh, a thousand times!"  Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture, and
+just touched his own for an instant.  "But there's nothing to forgive."
+
+"And you can't--you can't--"
+
+"Can't what, Bibbs?"
+
+"You couldn't--"
+
+"Marry you?" she said for him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No, no, no!"  She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she did,
+she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a little.  "I
+can't, I can't!  Don't you SEE?"
+
+"Mary--"
+
+"No, no!  And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--"
+
+"MARY--"
+
+"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears.  "You mustn't come
+any more.  I can't see you, dear!  Never, never, never!"
+
+Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he got
+himself to the door and out of the house.
+
+
+Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to the New
+House.  He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but so that the
+others might hear.
+
+"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would be apt
+to care enough about me to marry me, you were right," he said.  "I thought
+perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me.  It proved what
+you said of me, and disproved what you said of her.  She refused."
+
+And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he had
+entered it.
+
+"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped.  "Who on earth would thought of his
+doin' THAT?"
+
+"I told you," said her husband, grimly.
+
+"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"
+
+"I told you she wouldn't have him.  I told you she wouldn't have JIM, didn't
+I?"
+
+Sibyl was altogether taken aback.  "Do you supose it's true?  Do you suppose
+she WOULDN'T?"
+
+"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed up
+fine with his girl," said Sheridan.  "Not to me, he didn't!"
+
+"But why would--"
+
+"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of a girl!  If you
+got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with, though I'd pretty
+near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about my dead boy's private
+affairs.  She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him, and it was a good, straight
+letter, too.  It came to Jim's office; he never saw it. She wrote it the
+afternoon he was hurt."
+
+"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon," said
+Roscoe.  "Don't you remember, Sibyl?  I told you about it--I was waiting for
+you while you were in there so long talking to her mother.  It was just before
+we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came and called me."
+
+Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered.  And she was not cast down, for,
+although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were dimmed
+by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after some further
+fragmentary discourse--visably elated.  After all, the guilty had not been
+exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely, that her injury
+had been copiously avenged.  She bestowed a contented glance upon the old
+house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the street.
+
+When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while she
+said, uneasily, "Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs about that
+letter?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, walking moodily to the window.  "I been thinkin'
+about it."  He came to a decision.  "I reckon I will."  And he went up to
+Bibbs's room.
+
+"Well, you goin' back on what you said?" he inquired, brusquely, as he opened
+the door.  "You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?"
+
+"No," said Bibbs.
+
+"Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that.  I don't know as
+you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord knows
+you've laid down on me enough.  You certainly have!"  Sheridan was baffled.
+This was not what he wished to say, but his words were unmanageable; he found
+himself unable to control them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of
+him.  "I can't say I expect much of you--not from the way you always been, up
+to now--unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to
+think you're goin' to do THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real
+GIT-up, I reckon the whole office 'll fall in a faint.  But if you're ever
+goin' to show any, you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show
+it to-morrow."
+
+"Yes--I'll try."
+
+"You better, if it's in you!"  Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed.  He ad always
+been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed bewitched.
+He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own angry
+astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold like a
+drudge-driver.  "You better come down there with your mind made up to hustle
+harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you, or you'll not get on
+very good with me, I tell you!  The way to get ahead--and you better set it
+down in your books--the way to get ahead is to do ten times the work of the
+hardest worker that works FOR you.  But you don't know what work is, yet.  All
+you've ever done was just stand around and feed a machine a child could
+handle, and then come home and take a bath and go callin'.  I tell you you're
+up against a mighty different proposition now, and if you're worth your
+salt--and you never showed any signs of it yet--not any signs that stuck out
+enough  to bang somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take
+notice--well, I want to say, right here and now--and you better listen,
+because I want to say just what I DO say.  I say--"
+
+He meandered to a full stop.  His mouth hung open, and his mind was a hopeless
+blank.
+
+Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look.  "Yes, father; I'm listening."
+
+"That's all," said Sheridan, frowning heavily.  "That's all I came to say, and
+you better see 't you remember it!"
+
+He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him with a
+crash.  However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure.  He stopped
+just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more.  Then abruptly he
+turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead liberally covered with
+perspiration.
+
+"Look here," he said, crossly.  "That girl over yonder wrote Jim a letter --"
+
+"I know," said Bibbs.  "She told me."
+
+"Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--"  The door closed
+on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence was
+nevertheless audible--"if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either."
+
+And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin' and
+not bother him with any more fool's errands.  She was about to inquire what
+Bibbs "said," but after a second thought she decided not to speak at all.  She
+merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal communication was given over
+between them for the rest of that afternoon.
+
+Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next morning, and
+she had a dreary day.  She missed Edith woefully, and she worried about what
+might be taking place in the Sheridan Building.  She felt that everything
+depended on how Bibbs "took hold," and upon her husband's return in the
+evening she seized upon the first opportunity to ask him how things had gone.
+He was non-committal.  What could anybody tell by the first day?  He'd seen
+plenty go at things well enough right at the start and then blow up.  Pretty
+near anybody could show up fair the first day or so.  There was a big job
+ahead.  This material, such as it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to
+handling the work Roscoe had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must
+take Jim's position in the Realty Company as well.  He told her to ask him
+again in a month.
+
+But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks of
+his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant where it
+had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this to be an
+encouraging sign.  Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the table, and
+her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
+
+She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business,
+although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the
+evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.  Usually Bibbs was
+silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the third
+week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently been the
+subject of previous argument.
+
+"I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
+father," he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him.  "Abercrombie
+agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him."
+
+"You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen," Sheridan returned, "but you
+can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing.  The roof fell because
+it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions.  I want
+that building put just the way Jim planned it."
+
+"You can't have it," said Bibbs.  "You can't, because Jim planned for the
+building to stand up, and it won't do it.  The other one--the one that didn't
+fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage. It won't
+stand weight.  There's only one thing to do: get both buildings down as
+quickly as we can, and build over.  Brick's the best and cheapest in the long
+run for that type."
+
+Sheridan looked sarcastic.  "Fine!  What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
+while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?"
+
+"Rent," Bibbs returned, promptly.  "We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter your
+attention after the roof fell.  You don't know what an amount of stuff they've
+got piled up on us over there.  We'd have to rent until we could patch up
+those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing Company's plant is empty,
+right across the street.  I took an option on it for us this morning."
+
+Sheridan's expression was queer.  "Look here!" he said, sharply.  "Did you go
+and do that without consulting me?"
+
+"It didn't cost anything," said Bibbs.  "It's only until to-morrow afternoon
+at two o'clock.  I undertook to convince you before then."
+
+"Oh, you did?"  Sheridan's tone was sardonic.  "Well, just suppose you
+couldn't convince me."
+
+"I can, though--and I intend to," said Bibbs, quietly.  "I don't think you
+understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up."
+
+"Now, see here," said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; "suppose I had my mind set
+about this.  JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was--well, kind of a
+matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right."
+
+Bibbs looked at him compassionately.  "I'm sorry if you have a sentiment about
+it, father," he said.  "But whether you have or not can't make a difference.
+You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and that won't do.
+And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want one that will stand.
+Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend sentiment in this particular
+kind of affair."
+
+"Oh, you don't?"
+
+"No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone.  "Why are you 'sorry'?" he asked,
+curiously.
+
+"Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon," said Bibbs, "and I
+had him condemn both those buildings."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid you'd see he
+lost his job.  But he can't un-condemn them--they've got to come down now."
+
+Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
+Finally he said, "How long did they give you on that option to convince me?"
+
+"Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan, not relaxing.  "I'm convinced."
+
+Bibbs jumped up.  "I thought you would be.  I'll telephone the Krivitch agent.
+He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle it this
+evening."
+
+Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his expression
+did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that startled his wife.
+It had been a long time since she had heard anything resembling a chuckle from
+him, and this sound--although it was grim and dry--bore that resemblance.
+
+She brightened eagerly.  "Looks like he was startin' right well, don't it,
+papa?"
+
+"Startin'?  Lord!  He got me on the hip!  Why, HE knew what I wanted-- that's
+why he had the inspector up there, so 't he'd have me beat before we even
+started to talk about it.  And did you hear him?  'Can't reasonably defend
+SENTIMENT!'  And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option for Us'!  'Stuff piled
+up on Us'!"
+
+There was always an alloy for Mrs. sheridan.  "I don't just like the way he
+looks, though, papa."
+
+"Oh, there's got to be something!  Only one chick left at home, so you start
+to frettin' about IT!"
+
+"No.  He's changed.  There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--"
+
+"I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then," said Sheridan.
+"You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I expect."
+
+"Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before.  And he'd
+begun to fill out some, but--"
+
+Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to her,
+patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being still heavily
+bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling.  "That's the way it is with you,
+mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you don't another!"
+
+"No.  He don't look well.  It ain't exactly the way he looked when he begun to
+get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some way."
+
+"Yes, he may 'a' lost something," said Sheridan.  "I expect he's lost a whole
+lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin' poetry
+and--"
+
+"No," his wife persisted.  "I mean he looks right peakid.  And yesterday, when
+he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window.  He wasn't readin'."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?"
+
+"He was lookin' over there.  He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
+believe."
+
+"Look, here!" said Sheridan.  "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there the
+rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did one big
+thing, anyway.  It woke him up out of his trance.  Well, he had to go and bust
+clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over there, and it stopped
+his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty fair pay for what he lost.
+I guess a good many young men have had to get over worries like his; they got
+to lose SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the procession
+nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a
+considerable long way ahead.  Why, a year from now I'll bet you he won't know
+there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he funny?  He wanted to stick
+to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant was, think about something
+useless.  Well, I guess he's keepin' his ming pretty occupied the other way
+these days.  Yes, sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his
+trance, but it certainly did the business."  He patted his wife's shoulder
+again, and then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous
+laugh.
+
+"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"
+
+
+And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers.  But no
+One came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness, and the
+changing of money was holy worship and true religion.  The priests wore that
+"settish" look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning to develop about his mouth
+and eyes--a wary look which she could not define, but it comes with service at
+the temple; and it was the more marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to
+the necessities of that servicce.
+
+He did as little "useless" thinking as possible, giving himself no time for
+it.  He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work when he
+came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his work.  But he
+did not sing at it.  He was often in the streets, and people were not allowed
+to sing in the streets.  They might make any manner of hideous uproar--they
+could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the thunder, deafen the deaf,
+and kill the sick with noise; or they could walk the streets or drive through
+them bawling, squawking, or screeching, as they chose, if the noise was
+traceably connected with business; though street musicians were not tolerated,
+being considered a nuisance and an interference.  A man or woman who went
+singing for pleasure through the streets--like a crazy Neopolitan--would have
+been stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen
+is allowed to do every outrageous thing that comes into his head.  The streets
+were dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing! and the Motor
+Federation issued public warnings declaring that the pedestrian's life was in
+his own hands, and giving directions how to proceed with the least peril.
+However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to sing in the streets, or anywhere. He
+had gone to his work with an energy that, for the start, at least, was bitter,
+and there was no song left in him.
+
+He began to know his active fellow-citizens.  Here and there among them he
+found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period of neighborliness,
+"pioneer stock," usually; and there were men--particularly among the merchants
+and manufacturers--"so honest they leaned backward"; reputations sometimes
+attested by stories of heroic sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some
+instances of generosity even nobler.  Here and there, too, were book-men, in
+their little leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men.  And these, with the
+others, worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake
+and for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the
+beneficence and glory of their god.
+
+To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in life,
+except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the dangerous
+illness of a wife or child.  In the way of "relaxation" some of the servers
+took golf; some took fishing; some took "shows"--a mixture of infantile and
+negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some took an occasional debauch; some
+took trips; some took cards; and some took nothing.  The high priests were
+vigilant to watch that no "relaxation" should affect the service.  When a man
+attended to anything outside his business, eyes were upon him; his credit was
+in danger--that is, his life was in danger.  And the old priests were as
+ardent as the young ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as the
+thousand; seventy was as busy as seventeen.  They stove mightily against one
+another, and the old priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the
+most dangerous. Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these--he must wear a
+thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
+
+And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves and
+sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but these were
+feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had a good guide to point
+them out to him.  They were useful sometimes, he learned, and many of them
+served as go-betweens in matters where business must touch politics.  He
+learned also how breweries and "traction" companies and banks and other
+institutions fought one another for the political control of the city.  The
+newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political influence,
+especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a skeptical humor,
+believing the journals either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else
+striving to forward the personal ambitions of their owners.  The control of
+the city lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of
+negroes gin-money, and by other largesses.  The revenues of the people were
+then distributed as fairly as possible among a great number of men who had
+assisted the winning side.  Names and titles of offices went with many of the
+prizes, and most of these title-holders were expected to present a busy
+appearance at times; and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and
+faithfully.
+
+Bibbs had been very ignorant.  All these simple things, so well known and
+customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment of forgetting
+that he was done with writing--he thought that if he had known them and
+written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation of them must have
+seemed!  Strangest of all to him was the vehement and sincere patriotism.  On
+every side he heard it--it was a permeation; the newest school-child caught
+it, though just from Hungary and learning to stammer a few words of the local
+language.  Everywhere the people shouted of the power, the size, the riches,
+and the growth of their city.  Not only that, they said that the people of
+their city were the greatest, the "finest," the strongest, the Biggest people
+on earth.  They cited no authorities, and felt the need of none, being
+themselves the people thus celebrated.  And if the thing was questioned, or if
+it was hinted that there might be one small virtue in which they were not
+perfect and supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what
+the critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for
+they were sensitive.  So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them,
+harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them.  For the
+voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+
+Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs, and the
+door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had established that
+intimacy.  One morning in February, when Bibbs was alone, Sheridan came in,
+some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his hand.
+
+"Bibbs," he said, "I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when I do
+I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have you been buying that
+ole busted inter-traction stock for?"
+
+Bibbs leaned back from his desk.  "For eleven hundred and fifty-five dollars.
+That's all it cost."
+
+"Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents.  You ought to know
+that.  I don't get your idea.  That stuff's deader 'n Adam's cat!"
+
+"It might be worth something--some day."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It mightn't be so dead--not if We went into it," said Bibbs, coolly.
+
+"Oh!"  Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, "Who'd you buy it
+from?"
+
+"A broker--Fansmith."
+
+"Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
+soaked with it.  Don't you know who owned it?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Ain't sayin', though?  That it?  What's the matter?"
+
+"It belonged to Mr. Vertrees," said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to his
+desk.
+
+"So!"  Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face.  "Excuse me," he said.
+"Your business."  And he went back to his own room.  But presently he looked
+in again.
+
+"I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day"--he was shuffling himself into
+his overcoat--"because I just thought I'd go up to the house and get THIS over
+with mamma."  He glanced apologetically toward his right hand as it emerged
+from the sleeve of the overcoat.  The bandages had been removed, finally, that
+morning, revealing but three fingers-- the forefinger and the finger next to
+it had been amputated.  "She's bound to make an awful fuss, and it better
+spoil her lunch than her dinner. I'll be back about two."
+
+But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately that
+Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from the lonely
+table when he came into the dining-room.  He had left his overcoat in the
+hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
+
+"What's the matter, papa?" she asked, quickly.  "Has anything gone wrong? You
+ain't sick?"
+
+"Me!"  He laughed loudly.  "Me SICK?"
+
+"You had lunch?"
+
+"Didn't want any to-day.  You can give me a cup o' coffe, though."
+
+She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn she
+said querulously, "I just know there's something wrong."
+
+"Nothin' in the world," he responed, heartily, taking a seat at the head of
+the table.  "I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you, that's all.
+It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's, anyhow."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--"
+
+"To look at your hand?  How's he say it's doin'?"
+
+"Fine!  Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically.  "I guess it's time you had him, too.  I
+KNEW Bibbs--"
+
+"Now, mamma, hold your horses!  I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
+anything's the matter.  You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances with
+BIBBS, do you?  Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole Gurney had a
+talk.  He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on me what he said
+about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up.  Then I thought he must want to
+get something out o' me, he go so flattering--for a minute!  'Bibbs couldn't
+help havin' business brains,' he says, 'bein' YOUR son.  Don't be surprised,'
+he says--'don't be surprised at his makin' a success,' he says.  'He couldn't
+get over his heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business success--once you got
+him into it.  It's in his blood.  Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH
+brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but it does
+need a special KIND o' brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire.  I mean,' he
+says, 'when a man's given a start.  If nobody gives him a start, why, course
+he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains.  The only miracle about
+Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind o' brains--the brains you
+made him quit usin' and throw away.'"
+
+"But what'd he say about his health?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, impatiently, as
+George placed a cup of coffee before her husband.  Sheridan helped himself to
+cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
+
+"I'm comin' to that," he returned, placidly.  "See how easy I manage this cup
+with my left hand, mamma?"
+
+"You been doin' that all winter.  What did--"
+
+"It's wonderful," he interrupted, admiringly, "what a fellow can do with his
+left hand.  I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could with my
+right.  It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I believe I RATHER
+sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write, anyway--just the
+signature.  Rest's all dictatin'."  He blew across the top of the cup
+unctuously.  "Good coffee, mamma!  Well, about Bibbs.  Ole Gurney says he
+believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o' mind he was in about
+the machine-shop--that is, if he could some way get to feelin' about business
+the way he felt about the shop--not the poetry and writin' part, but--"  He
+paused, supplementing his remarks with a motion of his head toward the old
+house next door.  "He says Bibbs is older and harder 'n what he was when he
+broke down that time, and besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was
+then--and I should say he AIN'T!  I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age
+that's any wider awake!  But he says Bibbs's health never need bother us again
+if--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shook her head.  "I don't see any help THAT way.  You know
+yourself she wouldn't have Jim."
+
+"Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody?  But, my Lord! she might let him LOOK
+at her!  She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that she won't
+let him come in the house any more.  He's a mighty funny boy, and some ways I
+reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the Bible, but Gurney kind o'
+got me in the way o' thinkin' that if she'd let him come back and set around
+with her an evening or two sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I
+just thought I'd see what YOU'D think of it.  There ain't any way to talk
+about it to Bibbs himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but I thought
+maybe you could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a
+little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land lays,
+and ask her --"
+
+"ME!"  Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened.  "No."  She shook
+her head decidedly.  "It wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You won't try it?"
+
+"I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house.  Some way, that's what I
+believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once.  No, I CAN'T--and,
+what's more, it 'd only make things worse.  If people find out you're runnin'
+after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as much for you as
+if you let 'em alone.  I don't believe it's any use, and I couldn't do it if
+it was."
+
+He sighed with resignation.  "All right, mamma.  That's all."  Then, in a
+livelier tone, he said: "Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
+morning.  All healed up.  Says I don't need 'em any more."
+
+"Why, that's splendid, papa!" she cried, beaming.  "I was afraid--Let's see."
+
+She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket. "Wait
+a minute," he said, smiling.  "Now it may give you just a teeny bit of a
+shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl came over
+here and made all that fuss about nothin'--it was the day after I got tired o'
+that statue when Edith's telegram came--"
+
+"Let me see your hand!" she cried.
+
+"Now wait!" he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand. "The
+truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning, when you
+wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd told me to, you
+see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything."  And he held out, for her
+inspection, the mutilated hand.  "You see, these days when it's all dictatin',
+anyhow, nobody 'd mind just a couple o'--"
+
+He had to jump for her--she went over backward.  For the second time in her
+life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+
+
+It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own room,
+still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat that the
+"fuss" she was making irked him far more than his physical loss.  He permitted
+her to think that he meant to return directly to his office, but when he came
+out to the open air he told the chauffeur in attendance to await him in front
+of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he himself proceeded on foot.
+
+Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as manna in the
+wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did not particularly
+question.  The broker informed him that "parties were interested in getting
+hold of the stock," and that later there might be a possible increase in the
+value of the large amount retained by his client. It might go "quite a ways
+up" within a year or so, he said, and he advised "sitting tight" with it.  Mr.
+Vertrees went home and prayed.
+
+He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own again.
+It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and his wife shared
+his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her piano, and as for
+furs--spring was on the way, she said.  But they paid the butcher, the baker,
+and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook once more. It was this servitress
+who opened the door for Sheridan and presently assured him that Miss Vertrees
+would "be down."
+
+He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed and
+beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the cook. She had
+a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second, but it vanished at
+the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes by a soft brilliance,
+while color rushed in her cheeks.
+
+"Don't be surprised," he said.  "Truth is, in a way it's sort of on business I
+looked in here.  It 'll only take a minute, I expect."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Mary.  "I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors."
+
+He chuckled.  "Neighbors!  Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+neighbors as they used to.  That is, I hear so--lately."
+
+"You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?"
+
+"I guess I could manage that much."  And they sat down, facing each other and
+not far apart.
+
+"Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly," he said, more gravely.
+"Not at all, I expect.  But there's something o' yours it seemed to me I ought
+to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it myself and explain
+how I happened to have it.  It's this--this letter you wrote my boy."  He
+extended the letter to her solomnly, in his left hand, and she took it gently
+from him.  "It was in his mail, after he was hurt.  You knew he never got it,
+I expect."
+
+"Yes," she said, in a low voice.
+
+He sighed.  "I'm glad he didn't.  Not," he added, quickly--"not but what you
+did just right to send it.  You did.  You couldn't acted any other way when it
+came right down TO it.  There ain't any blame comin' to you--you were
+above-board all through."
+
+Mary said, "Thank you," almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed low.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me for readin' it.  I had to take charge of all his
+mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it all-- once I
+got started."
+
+"I'm glad you did."
+
+"Well"--he leaned forward as if to rise--"I guess that's about all.  I just
+thought you ought to have it."
+
+"Thank you for bringing it."
+
+He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might have
+something more to say.  But she seemed not to be aware of this glance, and sat
+with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
+
+"Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office," he said, rising
+desperately.  "I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock, and I
+guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind time. I got
+to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days--with THAT fellow keepin'
+tabs on me!"
+
+Mary rose with him.  "I've always heard YOU were the hard driver."
+
+He guffawed derisively.  "Me?  I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine.  You
+couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end o'
+the job.  I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some day, and
+run the whole circus by himself.  You know how he is--once he goes AT a
+thing!"
+
+"No," she smiled.  "I didn't know you had a partner.  I'd always heard--"
+
+He laughed, looking away from her.  "It's just my way o' speakin' o' that boy
+o' mine, Bibbs."
+
+He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of careless
+geniality.  He felt that she certainly must at least say, "How   IS Bibbs?"
+but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the silence became
+embarrassing.
+
+"Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there," he said, at last.  "He might
+worry."
+
+"Good-by--and thank you," said Mary.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the letter."
+
+"Oh," he said, blankly.  "You're welcome.  Good-by."
+
+Mary put out her hand.  "Good-by."
+
+"You'll have to excuse my left hand," he said.  "I had a little accident to
+the other one."
+
+She gave a pitying cry as she saw.  "Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+"Nothin' at all!  Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow."  He laughed jovially.
+"Did anybody tell you how it happened?"
+
+"I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how."
+
+"It was this way," he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down again.
+"You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the youngest o' my
+boys--the one that used to come to see you sometimes, after Jim--that is, I
+mean Bibbs.  He's the one I spoke of as my partner; and the truth is that's
+what it's just about goin' to amount to, one o' these days--if his health
+holds out.  Well, you remember, I expect, I had him on a machine over at a
+plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd kind o' sneak in there and see how he was
+gettin' along.  Take a doctor with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so
+robust, you might say.  Ole Doc Gurney--I guess maybe you know him?  Tall,
+thin man; acts sleepy--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to show
+Bibbs how to run his machine.  He told me to look out, but I wouldn't listen,
+and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs
+how to do something he knew how to do and I didn't.  Made me so mad I just
+wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney
+had to take kind o' radical measures with me.  He's a right good doctor, too.
+Don't you think so, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes, he is so!"  Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip
+with all day on his hands.  "Take him on Bibbs's case.  I was talkin' about
+Bibbs's case with him this morning.  Well, you'd laugh to hear the way ole
+Gurney talks about THAT!  'Course he IS just as much a friend as he is
+doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the family.  He
+says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and he thinks he could stand the pace
+and get fat on it if--well, this is what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there,
+Miss Vertrees--honest it would!"  He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at
+her.  She was gazing straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted,
+and--visibly--she was breathing heavily and quickly.  He feared that she was
+growing furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went
+on, determined now to say it all.  He leaned forward and altered his voice to
+one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone
+which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only a joke he shared with
+her.  "Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed!  Why, that ole man thinks
+YOU got something to do with it.  You'll have to blame it on him, young lady,
+if it makes you feel like startin' out to whip somebody!  He's actually got
+THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to gettin' better while he worked over there at
+the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin' good.  And he says if you
+could manage to just stand him hangin' around a little-- maybe not much, but
+just SOMEtimes--again, he believed it 'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good.
+'Course, that's only what the doctor said.  Me, I don't know anything about
+that; but I can say this much--I never saw any such a MENTAL improvement in
+anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect you'd find him a good
+deal more entertaining than what he used to be--and I know it's a kind of
+embarrassing thing to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to
+ask you to stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc
+GURNEY, he's got you on his brain so bad--"
+
+Mary jumped.  "Mr. Sheridan!" she exclaimed.
+
+He sighed profoundly.  "There!  I noticed you were gettin' mad.  I didn't --"
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried.  "But I don't understand--and I think you don't.
+What is it you want me to do?"
+
+He sighed again, but this time with relief.  "Well, well!" he said. "You're
+right.  It 'll be easier to talk plain.  I ought to known I could with you,
+all the time.  I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you sometimes,
+once more.  Could you?"
+
+"You don't understand."  She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+gesture.  "Yes, we must talk plain.  Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make your
+oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me to
+marry him--because he was sorry for me.  And I CAN'T see him any more," she
+cried in distress.  "I CAN'T!"
+
+Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably.  "You mean because he thought that
+about you?"
+
+"No, no!  What he thought was TRUE!"
+
+"Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of you --"  The
+words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue; he seemed to be in
+doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he bravely
+repeated them.  "You mean he thought so much of you that you just couldn't
+stand him around?"
+
+"NO!  He was sorry for me.  He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
+respected me--too much!  In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and he'd
+have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he knew I
+would.  It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan," she said.  "But the cheap, bad things
+one has done seem always to come back--they wait, and pull you down when
+you're happiest.  Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn't 'in love' with me
+at all."
+
+"He wasn't?  Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to do-- it
+was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just threw it away
+and walked right up and took the job he swore he never would-- just for you.
+And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that must think quite a heap o' the
+girl he does it for!  You say it was only because he was sorry, but let me
+tell you there's only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!  Yes, sir!"
+
+"No, no," she said.  "Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything for
+anybody."
+
+Sheridan grinned.  "Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays," he said. "For
+instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in 'sentiment in
+business.'  But that's neither here nor there.  What he wanted was, just plain
+and simple, for you to marry him.  Well, I was afraid his thinkin' so much OF
+you had kind o' sickened you of him--the way it does sometimes.  But from the
+way you talk, I understand that ain't the trouble."  He coughed, and his voice
+trembled a little.  "Now here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell
+you--because you see things easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like
+this, but I had to make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for
+the sake o' my business and on his own account, too--and I expect you got some
+idea how it hurt him to give up.  Well, he's made good.  He didn't come in
+half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way!  But there isn't anything in it
+to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust
+in his mouth.  You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work
+FOR.  And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, and I believe
+--honest--that's what hurt him the worst.  Now you said we'd talk plain.  Why
+can't you let him come back?"
+
+She covered her face desperately with her hands.  "I can't!"
+
+He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+
+"Well, I mustn't press you," he said, gently.
+
+At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face. "Ah!
+He was only sorry for me!"
+
+He gazed at her intently.  Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty, and it
+confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless.  It was so clear that even
+Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it.  Then a change came over
+him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radient.
+
+"Don't!  Don't" she cried.  "You mustn't--"
+
+"I won't tell him," said Sheridan, from the doorway.  "I won't tell anybody
+anything!"
+
+
+There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
+sanctuary of the temple.  The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
+thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt, sulphurous
+acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men liked to breathe
+and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their wives and babies and
+sweethearts.  The growth of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise
+and the rush.  There was more smoke than there had been this day of February a
+year earlier; there was more noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker
+in spite of that.  The traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were
+independent--they retained some habits of the old market-town period, and
+would cross the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed
+more frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
+motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
+nervousness.  So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves were
+killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that
+they could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally
+perilous to go about their city.  It was strange, for there were probably no
+citizens of any length of residence who had not personally known either some
+one who had been killed or injured in an accident, or some one who had
+accidentally killed or injured others.  And yet, perhaps it was not strange,
+seeing the sharp preoccupation of the faces--the people had something on their
+minds; they could not stop to bother about dirt and danger.
+
+Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident until
+this afternoon.  She had come upon errands for her mother connected with a
+timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the department
+stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan Building.  From the
+street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like some monstrous
+geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly into the swimming
+heights of the smoke-mist.  It was gaunt and grimy and repellent; it had
+nothing but strength and size--but in that consciousness of Mary's the great
+structure may have partaken of beauty. Sheridan had made some of the things he
+said emphatic enought to remain with her.  She went over and over them--and
+they began to seem true: "Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!"
+"Gurney says he's got you on his brain so bad--"  The man's clumsy talk began
+to sing in her heart. The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
+
+She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the traffic
+to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the passage,
+darting and halting and dodging parlously.  Two men came from the crowd behind
+her, talking earnestly, and started across.  Both wore black; one was tall and
+broad and thick, and the other was taller, but noticeably slender.  And Mary
+caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and his father. They did not see her,
+and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's mellow voice, which had taken a crisper
+ring: "Sixty-eight thousand dollars?  Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!"  It
+startled her queerly, and as there was a glimpse of his profile she saw for
+the first time a resemblance to his father.
+
+She watched them.  In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead of his
+father, and the two were separated.  But the reckless passing of a truck,
+beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country women who were
+in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs, and shoved backward
+upon him violently.  To extricate himself from them he stepped back, directly
+in front of a moving trolley-car--no place for absent-mindedness, but Bibbs
+was still absorbed in thoughts concerned with what he had been saying to his
+father.  There were shrieks and yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and then
+Mary saw the heavy figure of Sheridan plunge straight forward in front of the
+car.  With absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like
+a football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed that they
+both went down together.  But that was all she could see--automobiles, trucks,
+and wagons closed in between.  She made out that the trolley-car stopped
+jerkily, and she saw a policeman breaking his way through the instantly
+condensing crowd, while the traffic came to a standstill, and people stood up
+in automobiles or climbed upon the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a
+chance of seeing anything horrible.
+
+Mary tried to get through; it was impossible.  Other policemen came to help
+the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again. The crowd
+became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon the ground, and no
+ambulance came.  But one of the policemen was detained by the clinging and
+beseeching of a gloved hand.
+
+"What IS the matter, lady?"
+
+"Where are they?" Mary cried.
+
+"Who? Ole man Sheridan?  I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!"
+
+"His SON--"
+
+"Was that who the other one was?  I seen him knock him--oh, he's not bad off,
+I guess, lady.  The ole man got him out of the way all right.  The fender
+shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook up. They both
+went on in the Sheridan Building without any help.  Excuse me, lady."
+
+Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator, ascending.
+"Whisk-broom up in the office," Sheridan was saying.  "You got to look out on
+those corners nowadays, I tell you.  I don't know I got any call to blow,
+though--because I tried to cross after you did.  That's how I happened to run
+into you.  Well, you want remember to look out after this.  We were talkin'
+about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand flat for that ninety-nine-year
+lease.  It's his lookout if he'd rather take it that way, and I don't know
+but--"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; "he won't get it. Not
+from Us, he won't, and I'll show you why.  I can convince you in five
+minutes."  He followed his father into the office anteroom--and convinced him.
+Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color, Bibbs went into his
+own room and closed the door.
+
+He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his side
+was sore where Sheridan had struck him.  He desired to be alone; he wanted to
+rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again. He knew that his
+father had not "happened" to run into him; he knew that Sheridan had
+instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own life of no account
+whatever compared to that of his son and heir.  Bibbs had been unable to speak
+of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan, just as instinctively, had swept
+the matter aside--as of no importance, since all was well--reverting
+immediately to business.
+
+Bibbs began to think intently of his father.  He perceived, as he had never
+perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and indomitable--and
+lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's very self; laughing at the
+lightning and at wounds and mutilation; conquering, irresistible--and blindly
+noble.  For the first time in his life Bibbs began to understand the meaning
+of being truly this man's son.
+
+He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said, Bibbs
+had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly.  He had given his
+word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary Vertrees in her need.
+And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking how he had gone to her to
+offer it, asking her to marry him--with his head on his breast in shameful
+fear that she would accept him!  He had not known her; the knowing had lost
+her to him, and this had been his real awakening; for he knew now how deep had
+been that slumber wherein he dreamily celebrated the superiority of
+"friendship"!  The sleep-walker had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and
+life, finding himself a failure in both.  He had made a burnt offering of his
+dreams, and the sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary.  All that was
+left for him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in
+that, though it was indeed no more than "dust in his mouth."  If there had
+been anything "to work for --"
+
+He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets below.
+He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms--and he looked across, over the
+roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast, foggy heart of the
+smoke.  Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly against it, chattering with
+steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while tiny figures of men walked on
+threads in the dull sky.  Buildings would overtop the Sheridan.  Bigness was
+being served.
+
+But what for?  The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair.  Here, where
+his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and how had the
+kind earth been despoiled and disfigured!  The pioneers had begun the work,
+but in their old age their orators had said for them that they had toiled and
+risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live in peace and wisdom,
+enjoying the fruits of the earth.  Well, their posterity was here--and there
+was only turmoil.  Where was the promised land?  It had been promised by the
+soldiers of all the wars; it had been promised to this generation by the
+pioneers; but here was the very posterity to whom it had been promised,
+toiling and risking and sacrificing in turn--for what?
+
+The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
+beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in it --a
+broken and irregular cadence.  It seemed to him that it was like a titanic
+voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of the god, Bigness.
+And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.
+
+"Come and work!" it seemed to yell.  "Come and work for Me, all men!  By your
+youth and your hope I summon you!  By your age and your despair I sommon you
+to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have.  By your love of
+home I summon you!  By your love of woman I summon you!  By your hope of
+children I summon you!
+
+"You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, you Master and
+Driver!  For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.  You shall give
+your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and worship of my
+ugliness!  You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your children shall
+perish knowing no other god!"
+
+And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's voice
+booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words, but the tone was
+exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed hand.  Bibbs guessed
+that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of Bigness to some visitor from
+out-of-town.
+
+And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness.  But with
+the old, old thought again,, "What for?" Bibbs caught a glimmer of far, faint
+light.  He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled and conquered, and
+must all his life go on struggling and inevitably conquering, as part of a
+vast impulse not his own.  Sheridan served blindly--but was the impulse blind?
+Bibbs asked himself if it was not he who had been in the greater hurry, after
+all.  The kiln must be fired before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was
+not crowned with marble in a day.
+
+Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of some hugh
+music struggling to be born of the turmoil.  "Ugly I am," it seemed to say to
+him, "but never forget that I AM a god!"  And the voice grew in sonorousness
+and in dignity.  "The highest should serve, but so long as you worship me for
+my own sake I will not serve you.  It is man who makes me ugly, by his worship
+of me.  If man would let me serve him, I should be beautiful!"
+
+Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in the vague
+contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a giganitc figure with feet
+pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders disappearing in the clouds,
+a colossus of steel and wholly blackened with soot.  But Bibbs carried his
+fancy further--for there was still a little poet lingering in the back of his
+head--and he thought that up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant
+labored with his hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what
+he made there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--"
+
+It was the telephone that called him from his vision.  It rang fiercely.
+
+He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice inside
+it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash.  He trembled violently as he
+picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had been mistaken--yet it
+was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly kind, too, and ineffably like
+the one he hungered most to hear.
+
+"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
+
+"Mary."
+
+He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: "IS IT?"
+
+There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"
+
+"Yes--Mary?"
+
+"I was looking when you were so nearly run over.  I saw it, Bibbs.  They said
+you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for myself."
+
+"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary.  It was father who came nearer it. He
+saved me."
+
+"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen.  I couldn't get through the crowd until you
+had gone.  And I wanted to KNOW."
+
+"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.
+
+There was a long interval before she answered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs?"
+
+"I don't know what to say," he cried.  "It's so wonderful to hear your voice
+again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything except that I
+AM talking to you!  It IS you--Mary?"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs!"
+
+"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since I --since
+then.  You looked--oh, how can I tell you?  It was like a man chained in a
+cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary.  Mary, won't you--let me see
+you again--near?  I think I could make you really forgive me--you'd have to--"
+
+"I DID--then."
+
+"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any more."
+
+"That wasn't the reason."  The voice was very low.
+
+"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you COULDN'T
+mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you-- care?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Mary?" he called, huskily.  "If you mean THAT--you'd let me see you--
+wouldn't you?"
+
+And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but if it
+did, the words were, "Yes, Bibbs--dear."
+
+But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so light, so
+almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came from the air.
+
+Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining eyes.  The
+door of his father's room had opened.
+
+Mary stood upon the threshold.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/old/old/turmo10.zip b/old/old/turmo10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2690590
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/turmo10.zip
diff --git a/old/old/turmo11.txt b/old/old/turmo11.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b25e020
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/turmo11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10695 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+The Turmoil, A Novel
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+December, 1997  [Etext #1098]
+[Date last updated: July 15, 2005]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+*****This file should be named turmo11.txt or turmo11.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, turmo11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, turmo10a.txt.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
+in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Lois Heiser, Bloomington, Indiana.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 100 billion Etexts given away.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+The Turmoil.  A novel by Booth Tarkington
+1915.
+
+To Laurel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty
+and wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke.  The
+stranger must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt
+will be upon him instantly.  It will be upon him and within him, since
+he must breathe it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth
+is here better loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not,
+the negligently tended streets incessantly press home the point, and
+so do the flecked and grimy citizens.  At a breeze he must smother in
+the whirlpools of dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale
+the smoke he has the meager alternative of suicide.
+
+The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
+riches.  He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
+prodigiously.  He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious
+trained to one tune:  "Wealth!  I will get Wealth!  I will make
+Wealth!  I will sell Wealth for more Wealth!  My house shall be dirty,
+my garment shall be dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he
+cannot be clean--but I will get Wealth!  There shall be no clean thing
+about me:  my wife shall be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I
+will get Wealth!"  And yet it is not wealth that he is so greedy for:
+what the giant really wants is hasty riches.  To get these he
+squanders wealth upon the four winds, for wealth is in the smoke.
+
+Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
+heaving, grimy city;  there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
+people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much
+of the same type.  It was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike,"
+it was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State
+Asylum for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery
+from a little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done.  The good
+burghers were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in
+surreys for a family drive on Sunday.  No one was very rich; few were
+very poor; the air was clean, and there was time to live.
+
+But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
+elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
+and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
+mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
+American hearts--Bigness.  And that god wrought the panting giant.
+
+In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound
+longing for size.  Year by year the longing increased until it became
+an accumulated force:  We must Grow!  We must be Big!  We must be
+Bigger!  Bigness means Money!  And the thing began to happen; their
+longing became a mighty Will.  We must be Bigger!  Bigger!  Bigger!
+Get people here!  Coax them here!  Bribe them!  Swindle them into
+coming, if you must, but get them!  Shout them into coming!  Deafen
+them into coming!  Any kind of people; all kinds of people!  We must
+be Bigger!  Blow!  Boost!  Brag!  Kill the fault-finder!  Scream and
+bellow to the Most High:  Bigness is patriotism and honor!  Bigness
+is love and life and happiness!  Bigness is Money!  We want Bigness!
+
+They got it.  From all the states the people came; thinly at first,
+and slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the
+quick years went by.  White people came, and black people and brown
+people and yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the
+thousands and thousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands
+faster than they could die.  From the four quarters of the earth the
+people came, the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild--
+Germans, Irish, Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French,
+Swiss, Swedes, Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians,
+Armenians, Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese,
+Turks, and every hybrid that these could propagate.  And if there
+were no Eskimos nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth
+might furnish failed to swim and bubble in this crucible?
+
+With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began
+to roar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn
+under the tread of hurrying multitudes.  The old, leisurely, quizzical
+look of the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a
+cockney type began to emerge discernibly--a cynical young mongrel
+barbaric of feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics
+fashioned apparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper
+comedians.  The female of his kind came with him--a pale girl, shoddy
+and a little rouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly
+insolences and elisions.  Nay, the common speech of the people showed
+change:  in place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean,
+and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors
+began to be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much
+fostered by the public journals.
+
+The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a
+nucleus, and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and
+in its vitals, like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in
+the body of a man, missions and refuges offered what resistance they
+might to the saloons and all the hells that cities house and shelter.
+Temptation and ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase
+by the venturesome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and
+sometimes killed; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk;
+while house-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality.
+Life itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it
+was in medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer
+was more like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath
+the wheels lay in ambush at every crossing.
+
+The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did
+not matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.
+Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.
+Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbidding
+dangerous speed.  More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding
+smoke!  They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes
+to smoke.  They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately;
+though sometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make
+new laws that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget both
+new and old.  Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes--or
+wherever it was too much to bother--it became a joke.  Influence was
+the law.
+
+So the place grew.  And it grew strong.
+
+Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
+
+  Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
+  Power to get more power!
+  Riches to get more riches!
+  Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
+  Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
+  O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And
+       there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust
+Company was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the
+biggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke.
+He had come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the
+growth, and he had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of
+that period; but each time he went down he rebounded a little higher,
+until finally, after a year of overwork and anxiety--the latter not
+decreased by a chance, remote but possible, of recuperation from
+the former in the penitentiary--he found himself on top, with solid
+substance under his feet; and thereafter "played it safe."  But his
+hunger to get was unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and
+grew fiercer.
+
+He was the city incarnate.  He loved it, calling it God's country, as
+he called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish.
+And when soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it.
+"It's good!  It's good!" he said, and smacked his lips in gusto.
+"Good, clean soot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!"  The smoke was
+one of his great enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive
+housewives who called to beg his aid against it.  "Smoke's what brings
+your husbands' money home on Saturday night," he told them, jovially.
+"Smoke may hurt your little shrubberies in the front yard some, but
+it's the catarrhal climate and the adenoids that starts your chuldern
+coughing.  Smoke makes the climate better.  Smoke means good health:
+it makes the people wash more.  They have to wash so much they wash
+off the microbes.  You go home and ask your husbands what smoke puts
+in their pockets out o' the pay-roll--and you'll come around next time
+to get me to turn out more smoke instead o' chokin' it off!"
+
+It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his
+reflection in it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich,
+strong, and unquenchably optimistic.  From the deepest of his inside
+all the way out he believed it was the finest city in the world.
+"Finest" was his word.  He thought of it as his city as he thought
+of his family as his family; and just as profoundly believed his city
+to be the finest city in the world, so did he believe his family to
+be--in spite of his son Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a
+matter of fact, he knew nothing worth knowing about either.
+
+Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and
+considered the failure--the "odd one"--of the family.  Born during
+that most dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother
+fretted and the father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby,
+and grew meagerly, only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood.  At
+his christening he was committed for life to "Bibbs" mainly through
+lack of imagination on his mother's part, for though it was her maiden
+name, she had no strong affection for it; but it was "her turn" to
+name the baby, and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of
+anything else she liked AT ALL!"  She offered this explanation one
+day when the sickly boy was nine and after a long fit of brooding had
+demanded some reason for his name's being Bibbs.  He requested then
+with unwonted vehemence to be allowed to exchange names with his older
+brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with the oldest, James Sheridan,
+Junior, and upon being refused went down into the cellar and remained
+there the rest of that day.  And the cook, descending toward dusk,
+reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he was in
+the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing.  Removed by
+force and carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing
+to utter a syllable of explanation, even under the lash.  This obvious
+thing was wholly a mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed,
+failed to trace and connect; and the father regarded his son as a
+stubborn and mysterious fool, an impression not effaced as the years
+went by.
+
+At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding
+of a man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked,
+long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired
+and dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at
+first sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for
+he seemed upon the point of tears.  But to a slightly longer gaze, not
+grief, but mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching
+scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he seemed about to burst
+out crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but
+it was impossible to decide which.  And Bibbs never, on any occasion
+of his life, either laughed aloud or wept.
+
+He was a "disappointment" to his father.  At least that was the
+parent's word--a confirmed and established word after his first
+attempt to make a "business man" of the boy.  He sent Bibbs to "begin
+at the bottom and learn from the ground up" in the machine-shop of the
+Sheridan Automatic Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family
+physician sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground
+up in a sanitarium.
+
+"You needn't worry, mamma," Sheridan told his wife.  "There's nothin'
+the matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick.
+I put him in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about
+as well as the next man.  Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty
+alarmists.  Does he think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh
+and blood?  He makes me tired!"
+
+Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite
+disease was incomprehensible to Sheridan.  He had a genuine
+conviction that lack of physical persistence in any task involving
+money must be due to some subtle weakness of character itself, to
+some profound shiftlessness or slyness.  He understood typhoid fever,
+pneumonia, and appendicitis--one had them, and either died or got over
+them and went back to work--but when the word "nervous" appeared in a
+diagnosis he became honestly suspicious: he had the feeling that there
+was something contemptible about it, that there was a nigger in the
+wood-pile somewhere.
+
+"Look at me," he said.  "Look at what I did at his age!  Why, when
+I was twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock
+choppin' wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire
+in a country grocery store?  And here Bibbs has to go and have a
+DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired!  If he'd gone at it
+like a man he wouldn't be sick."
+
+He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions
+--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating
+to his bedded spouse.  "My Lord!" he said.  "If a little, teeny bit
+o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything!
+It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I won't say
+it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put
+on!"
+
+"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan.  "It was when
+he was here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat
+anything.  Honey, you better come to bed."
+
+"Eat!" he snorted.  "Eat! It's work that makes men eat!  And it's
+imagination that keeps people from eatin'.  Busy men don't get time
+for that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice
+about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you
+Mrs.  Sheridan:  busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't
+GET sick.  You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine
+per cent. of the sick people you know are either women or loafers.
+Yes, ma'am!"
+
+"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."
+
+"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her.  "Look at Jim and
+Roscoe.  Look at how THEY work!  There isn't a shiftless bone in their
+bodies.  Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick.  Jim takes half the load
+off my shoulders already.  Right now there isn't a harder-workin',
+brighter business man in this city than Jim.  I've pushed him, but
+he give me something to push AGAINST.  You can't push 'nervous
+dyspepsia'!  And look at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that boy's done for
+himself, and barely twenty-seven years old--married, got a fine wife,
+and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I put up the
+New House for you and Edie."
+
+"Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet," she murmured.  "You
+better come to bed."
+
+"And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl," he continued,
+emphatically, "as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys.  She'll make some
+man a mighty good wife when the time comes.  She's the prettiest and
+talentedest girl in the United States!  Look at that poem she wrote
+when she was in school and took the prize with; it's the best poem I
+ever read in my life, and she'd never even tried to write one before.
+It's the finest thing I ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and
+I guess he's a good enough literary judge for me--turns out more
+advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city.  I tell you she's
+smart!  Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise the New
+House--and I guess you had your finger in that, too, mamma!  This old
+shack's good enough for me, but you and little Edie 'll have to have
+your way.  I'll get behind her and push her the same as I will Jim
+and Roscoe.  I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them three chuldern!  But
+Bibbs--"  He paused, shaking his head.  "Honest, mamma, when I talk
+to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth their salt, why,
+I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow.  "You did the
+best you could, papa," she said, impatiently, "so come to bed and quit
+reproachin' yourself for it."
+
+He glared at her indignantly.  "Reproachin' myself!" he snorted.
+"I ain't doin' anything of the kind!  What in the name o' goodness
+would I want to reproach myself for?  And it wasn't the 'best I
+could,' either.  It was the best ANYBODY could!  I was givin' him
+a chance to show what was in him and make a man of himself--and here
+he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia' on me!"
+
+He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light,
+and muttered his way morosely into bed.
+
+"What?" said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
+
+"More like hook-worm, I said," he explained, speaking louder.  "I
+don't know what to do with him!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
+course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the
+basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before
+he was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on
+a nurse and a cane.  These and subsequent months saw the planning,
+the building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that
+abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the
+nurse, was found sufficient to his support.
+
+Edith met him at the station.  "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he
+came slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from
+that train.  She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes
+after a quick glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage
+to the street.  "Do you think they ought to've let you come?  You
+certainly don't look well!"
+
+"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as
+his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak
+quickly he stammered.  "Up to about a month ago it took two people to
+see me.  They had to get me in a line between 'em!"
+
+Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her
+first quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a
+faint, troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by
+some obligation of business to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital.
+She was nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but
+a prettiness of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total
+impression close upon beauty.  Her movements were eager and restless:
+there was something about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very
+sweet; and there was something that was hurried and breathless.  This
+was new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change since he had last seen
+her, and he bent upon her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood
+at the curb, waiting for an automobile across the street to disengage
+itself from the traffic.
+
+"That's the new car," she said.  "Everything's new.  We've got four
+now, besides Jim's.  Roscoe's got two."
+
+"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
+
+"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
+his tone had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
+
+"You look--"  He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her
+trim brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of
+brown and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat
+in the mad mode--all suited to the October day.
+
+"How do I look?" she insisted.
+
+"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
+watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!"
+That was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint
+and preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
+glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
+intimacies.
+
+"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of
+his glance.  "Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an
+evening thing, for the theater--but my day wrist-watch is out of gear.
+Bobby Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes.
+Do you want Claus to help you in?"
+
+"Oh no," said Bibbs.  "I'm alive."  And after a fit of panting
+subsequent to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course,
+I have to TELL people!"
+
+"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to
+move rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.
+"Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month."
+
+"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he
+explained, gently.  "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't
+keep me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get
+in.  They told me to go home--and I didn't have any place else to go.
+It'll be all right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark
+every day."
+
+"Pshaw!"  She laughed nervously.  "Of course we're all of us glad to
+have you back."
+
+"Yes?" he said.  "Father?"
+
+"Of course!  Didn't he write and tell you to come home?"  She did not
+turn to him with the question.  All the while she rode with her face
+directly forward.
+
+"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
+
+She flushed a little.  "I expect I ought to've written sometime, or
+one of the boys--"
+
+"Oh no; that was all right."
+
+"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs.  I often
+planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would
+turn up.  And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and
+Roscoe.  Of course we knew mamma was writing often and--"
+
+"Of course!" he said, readily.  "There's a chunk of coal fallen on
+your glove, Edith.  Better flick it off before it smears.  My word!
+I'd almost forgotten how sooty it is here."
+
+"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us."  She
+blew the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
+
+He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun
+like a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for
+a decoration.  "Yes," said Bibbs.  "It's very gay."  A few moments
+later, as they passed a corner, "Aren't we going home?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes!  Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
+
+"No.  Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
+
+"No.  This is right.  We're going straight home."
+
+"But we've passed the corner.  We always turned--"
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried.  "Didn't you know we'd moved?  Didn't
+you know we were in the New House?"
+
+"Why, no!" said Bibbs.  "Are you?"
+
+"We've been there a month!  Good gracious!  Didn't you know--"  She
+broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily:  "Of course,
+mamma's never been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do
+anything but keep on the hop.  Mamma couldn't even come to the station
+to-day.  Papa's got some of his business friends and people from
+around the OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner
+and 'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all
+on her hands.  She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa
+would have her up again before--"
+
+"Of course," said Bibbs.  "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
+
+"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's
+the finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me!
+Papa bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil
+that's perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come
+in the front hall, and it's eleven feet long.  But he would have that
+old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the
+new dining-room.  You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced
+open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with
+two dead prairie-chickens on a chair?  He bought it at a furniture-
+store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any
+they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe.  But it's
+horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I
+caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too,
+with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being
+such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it
+where he wanted it.  She makes me tired!  Sibyl!"
+
+Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
+awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her
+full gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her
+denunciation of her sister-in-law.
+
+"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
+to strike fire on her lips.  "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't
+have married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good!
+He could have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now,
+and Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but
+instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink!  I met some
+awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic
+City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks!  Not even
+HEARD of 'em!"
+
+"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.
+
+"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
+vehemence.  "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
+lately--"
+
+"It's only lately?"
+
+"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly.  "Of course, I
+always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger
+about ROSCOE!"
+
+"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
+
+The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
+laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively:  "Why, she'd
+have married YOU!"
+
+"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
+
+"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed.  "I only meant--I didn't
+mean--"
+
+"Never mind, Edith," he consoled her.  "You see, she couldn't have
+married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
+mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever.  The head doctor
+even had to lend me the money for my ticket home."
+
+"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled.  "I only
+meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
+marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight."  And, perceiving that
+his sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set
+matters perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
+
+"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later.
+"Too lovely!  If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day,
+like a MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave
+herself!"
+
+"'Behave'?"
+
+"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically
+evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led,
+and in this not unique of her sex.
+
+Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture.  "Business
+is crawling up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand
+indicating a vasty structure in course of erection.  "The boarding-
+houses come first and then the--"
+
+"That isn't for shops," she informed him.  "That's a new investment
+of papa's--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
+
+"Well, well," he murmured.  "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well
+enough known here already."
+
+"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently.  "I guess
+there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't
+know who we are.  But we aren't in with the right people."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed.  "Who's all that?"
+
+"Who's all what?"
+
+"The 'right people.'"
+
+"You know what I mean:  the best people, the old families--the people
+that have the real social position in this town and that know they've
+got it."
+
+Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused.
+"I thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-
+call-it didn't know it," he said.  "I've always understood that it was
+very unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn't have
+it, and if you had it you didn't know it."
+
+"That's just bosh," she retorted.  "They know it in this town, all
+right!  I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think
+of building out in this direction.  The right people in this town
+aren't always the society-column ones, and they mix around with
+outsiders, and they don't all belong to any one club--they're taken
+in all sorts into all their clubs--but they're a clan, just the same;
+and they have the clan feeling and they're just as much We, Us and
+Company as any crowd you read about anywhere in the world.  Most of
+'em were here long before papa came, and the grandfathers of the girls
+of my age knew each other, and--"
+
+"I see," Bibbs interrupted, gravely.  "Their ancestors fled together
+from many a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins.
+I always understood the first house was built by an old party of the
+name of Vertrees who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried
+away to these parts because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd
+lent him."
+
+Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm.  "You mustn't repeat that
+story, Bibbs, even if it's true.  The Vertreeses are THE best family,
+and of course the very oldest here;  they were an old family even
+before Mary Vertrees's great-great-grandfather came west and founded
+this settlement.  He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have
+relatives there YET--some of the best people in Lynn!"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
+
+"And there are other old families like the Vertreeses," she went
+on, not heeding him; "the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the
+J. Palmerston Smiths--"
+
+"Strange names to me," he interrupted.  "Poor things!  None of them
+have my acquaintance."
+
+"No, that's just it!" she cried.  "And papa had never even heard the
+name of Vertrees!  Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee
+to see him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring
+home his wages from the pay-roll on Saturday night!  HE told us about
+it, and I thought I just couldn't live through the night, I was so
+ashamed!  Mr. Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn't
+know him, of course.  They're the stiffist, most elegant people in the
+whole town.  And to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to
+the old Vertrees country mansion--it's in the very heart of the best
+new residence district now, and that's where the New House is, right
+next door to them--and I must say it makes their place look rather
+shabby!  I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service
+Helpers, but she never did any more than just barely bow to me, and
+since papa's break I doubt if she'll do that!  They haven't called."
+
+"And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First
+stealing Dan'l Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--"
+
+"Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees.  I made him
+understand that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try
+and meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him.  It's just this way:  if we
+don't know THEM, it's practically no use in our having build the New
+House; and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right
+with the right people.  They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby
+Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her
+and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it;
+and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs
+Lamhorn'll never come.  That's ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage!  She
+SAID Bobby offered to bring his mother--"
+
+"You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Oh, he's a friend of the whole family," she returned, with a
+petulance which she made an effort to disguise.  "Roscoe and he got
+acquainted somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every
+other night.  Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps--"  She broke
+off with an angry little jerk of the head. "We can see the New House
+from the second corner ahead.  Roscoe has built straight across the
+street from us, you know.  Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake,
+sometimes--the way she pulls the wool over people's eyes!  She honeys
+up to papa and gets anything in the world she wants out of him, and
+then makes fun of him behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE
+can't see it!  She got him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch
+for their house after it was--"
+
+"Good heavens!" said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner
+and the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street.
+"Is that the New House?"
+
+"Yes.  What do you think of it?"
+
+"Well," he drawled, "I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a
+size bigger; I can't be certain till I measure."
+
+And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously:
+"But it's beautiful!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate.  An architect
+who loved the milder "Gothic motives" had built what he liked:  it was
+to be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had
+wrought a picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality.
+At the same time a landscape-designer had played so good a second,
+with ready-made accessories of screen, approach and vista, that
+already whatever look of newness remained upon the place was to its
+advantage, as showing at least one thing yet clean under the grimy
+sky.  For, though the smoke was thinner in this direction, and at this
+long distance from the heart of the town, it was not absent, and under
+tutelage of wind and weather could be malignant even here, where cows
+had wandered in the meadows and corn had been growing not ten years
+gone.
+
+Altogether, the New House was a success.  It was one of those
+architects' successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy;
+it revealed nothing of the people who lived in it save that they
+were rich.  There are houses that cannot be detached from their own
+people without protesting:  every inch of mortar seems to mourn the
+separation, and such a house--no matter what be done to it--is ever
+murmurous with regret, whispering the old name sadly to itself
+unceasingly.  But the New House was of a kind to change hands without
+emotion.  In our swelling cities, great places of its type are useful
+as financial gauges of the business tides; rich families, one after
+another, take title and occupy such houses as fortunes rise and fall
+--they mark the high tide.  It was impossible to imagine a child's toy
+wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New House, and yet it was
+--as Bibbs rightly called it--"beautiful."
+
+What the architect thought of the "Golfo di Napoli," which hung in
+its vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall,
+is to be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
+
+"Edith, did you say only eleven feet?" Bibbs panted, staring at it,
+as the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out
+of his overcoat.
+
+"Eleven without the frame," she explained.  "It's splendid, don't
+you think?  It lightens things up so.  The hall was kind of gloomy
+before."
+
+"No gloom now!" said Bibbs.
+
+"This statue in the corner is pretty, too," she remarked.  "Mamma and
+I bought that."  And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
+grove of tubbed palms, a "life-size," black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
+composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy.  Upon his
+chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-
+tipped spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and
+silver.
+
+"Hallelujah!" was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and
+Edith, saying she would "find mamma," left him blinking at the Moor.
+Presently, after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who
+stood waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand.  "What do YOU think
+of it?" Bibbs asked, solemnly.
+
+"Gran'!" replied the servitor.  "She mighty hard to dus'.  Dus' git
+in all 'em wrinkles.  Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'."
+
+"I expect she must be," said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
+to the black bull beard for a moment.  "Is there a place anywhere
+I could lie down?"
+
+"Yessuh.  We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh.  Right
+up staihs, suh.  Nice room."
+
+He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to
+rest, and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the
+exodus from the "old" house.  Maids and scrubwomen were at work under
+the patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was
+profoundly enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care.
+
+"Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,"
+Bibbs's guide explained, chuckling.  "Yessuh, we got big doin's
+to-night!  Big doin's!"
+
+The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished
+in every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
+pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed
+pleasant to him after his journey.  He stretched himself flat
+immediately, and having replied "Not now" to the attendant's offer
+to unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
+
+White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
+an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
+overseer--in the hall without.  Said the emerging one:  "He mighty
+shaky, Mist' Jackson.  Drop right down an' shet his eyes.  Eyelids all
+black.  Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else.  Anybody ast me if
+I change 'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh!  Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my
+black skin an' keep out the ground!"
+
+Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference.  "Yessuh, he look tuh me
+like somebody awready laid out," he concluded.  And upon the stairway
+landing, near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were
+likewise pessimistic.
+
+"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper.  "It give me a turn to see
+him go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish!  Mrs. Cronin, tell
+me:  d'it make ye kind o' sick to look at um?"
+
+"Sick?  No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"
+
+"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--"
+She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
+
+It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
+
+She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
+like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her.  Her
+husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her.  What intelligence
+she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
+two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
+absent-minded.  Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do;
+and Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long
+ago become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his.
+She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when
+she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the
+inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not
+comprehend it and partook of it only as a spectator.  They had known
+but one actual altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years
+past, in the early days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to
+enhance the favorable impression he believed himself to be making upon
+some capitalists, he had thought it necessary to accompany them to a
+performance of "The Black Crook."  But she had not once referred to
+this during the last ten years.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes
+rustled more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many
+at a time and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting
+a skirt down over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she
+opened Bibbs's door.
+
+At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
+withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and
+the rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
+
+"Don't go, mother," he said.  "I'm not asleep."  He swung his long
+legs over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his
+shoulder, restraining him; and he lay flat again.
+
+"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for
+a minute, but I want to see how you seem.  Edith said--"
+
+"Poor Edith!" he murmured.  "She couldn't look at me.  She--"
+
+"Nonsense!"  Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
+back to the bedside.  "You look a great deal better than what you did
+before you went to the sanitarium, anyway.  It's done you good; a body
+can see that right away.  You need fatting up, of course, and you
+haven't got much color--"
+
+"No," he said, "I haven't much color."
+
+"But you will have when you get your strength back."
+
+"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully.  "THEN I will."
+
+"You look a great deal better than what I expected."
+
+"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.
+
+"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her
+exaggerate a little.  What about your diet?"
+
+"That's all right.  They told me to eat anything."
+
+"Anything at all?"
+
+"Well--anything I could."
+
+"That's good," she said, nodding.  "They mean for you just to build up
+your strength.  That's what they told me the last time I went to see
+you at the sanitarium.  You look better than what you did then, and
+that's only a little time ago.  How long was it?"
+
+"Eight months, I think."
+
+"No, it couldn't be.  I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
+longer'n I thought.  And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
+even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
+along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
+Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept
+up pretty well on the home news."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up
+a little and take an interest in things.  That's what papa was sayin'
+this morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate
+your appetite, too.  He was talkin' over his plans for you--"
+
+"Plans?"  Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
+with his hand, so that he might see her better.  "What--"  He paused.
+"What plans is he making for me, mother?"
+
+She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
+"Well, you better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible
+nervousness.  "He better tell you himself.  I don't feel as if I had
+any call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now,
+anyway."  She came and stood by the bedside once more.  "But you must
+remember, Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best.  He loves his
+chuldern and wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always
+find he's right in the end."
+
+He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
+she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened
+it.  "You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for
+to-night."
+
+"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
+quickly.  Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked,
+quietly, "Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"
+
+"Well, I think he does," she answered.  "You see, it's the 'house-
+warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought
+to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks.  It's
+just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up.  You
+don't feel too bad to come down, do you?"
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Take a good look at me," he said.
+
+"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness.  "You're not so
+bad off as you think you are, Bibbs.  You're on the mend; and it won't
+do you any harm to please your--"
+
+"It isn't that," he interrupted.  "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
+spoil somebody's appetite.  Edith--"
+
+"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn.
+"You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody!  You look
+like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's
+all there is to it."
+
+"All right.  I'll come to the party.  If the rest of you can stand it,
+I can!"
+
+"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall.  "Now take
+a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to
+get dressed up before dinner.  You go to sleep right away, now,
+Bibbs!"
+
+Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed.  Something
+she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
+interminably.  "His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
+you--his plans for you--"  And then, taking the place of "his plans
+for you," after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice
+came back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear:  "He
+loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern"--
+"you'll find he's always right--you'll find he's always right--"
+Until at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and
+distorted realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great
+black wing that came out of the wall and stretched over his bed--it
+was a black wing within the room, and at the same time it was a black
+cloud crossing the sky, bridging the whole earth from pole to pole.
+It was a cloud of black smoke, and out of the heart of it came a
+flurried voice whispering over and over, "His plans for you--his plans
+for you--his plans for you--"  And then there was nothing.
+
+He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a
+care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and,
+getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade
+so that it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
+
+He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
+next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old
+Vertrees country mansion."  It stood in a broad lawn which was
+separated from the Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big,
+square, plain old box of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a
+cupola.  Paint had been spared for a long time, and no one could have
+put a name to the color of it, but in spite of that the place had no
+look of being out at heel, and the sward was as neatly trimmed as the
+Sheridans' own.
+
+The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing
+of the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and,
+directly opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so
+as to make a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic "summer-
+house."  It was almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty
+feet away; and it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of
+Vertreeses in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined
+by the juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the "summer-
+house" was pleasant and pretty in summer.  It had the look of a place
+wherein little girls had played for a generation or so with dolls
+and "housekeeping," or where a lovely old lady might come to read
+something dull on warm afternoons; but now in the thin light it was
+desolate, the color of dust, and hung with haggard vines which had
+lost their leaves.
+
+Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
+with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside
+the window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough
+inspection.  He looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly,
+but came in the end to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face.
+Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was profoundly impersonal;
+he had the air of an entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen,
+but finally he appeared to become pessimistic.  He shook his head
+solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and continued
+to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.
+
+"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.
+
+And at that he was instantly aware of an observer.  Turning quickly,
+he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic
+aperture of the "summer-house" and staring full into his window--
+straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
+a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
+Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner
+of her action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that
+she was in the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning
+and tending, and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there
+to be due to any other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on
+that account, she had allowed her attention to wander for one instant
+in the direction of things of which she was in reality unconscious.
+
+Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and
+at the same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of
+a Sheridan or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with
+maintained composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country
+mansion of the Vertreeses.  An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked,
+opened the door and came to meet her.
+
+"Are you ready, Mary?  I've been looking for you.  What were you
+doing?"
+
+"Nothing.  Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows," said Mary
+Vertrees.  "I got caught at it."
+
+"Mary!" cried her mother.  "Just as we were going to call!  Good
+heavens!"
+
+"We'll go, just the same," the daughter returned.  "I suppose those
+women would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the
+ground."
+
+"But WHO saw you?" insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
+
+"One of the sons, I suppose he was.  I believe he's insane, or
+something.  At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere,
+and never talk about him.  He was staring at himself in a mirror and
+talking to himself.  Then he looked out and caught me."
+
+"What did he--"
+
+"Nothing, of course."
+
+"How did he look?"
+
+"Like a ghost in a blue suit," said Miss Vertrees, moving toward
+the street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father,
+who was observing them from the window of his library.  "Rather tragic
+and altogether impossible.  Do come on, mother, and let's get it
+over!"
+
+And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter
+for their gracious assault upon the New House next door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man
+who had something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the
+window and began to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their
+return.  He was about sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine,
+a trim little sketch of an elderly dandy.  His lambrequin mustache
+--relic of a forgotten Anglomania--had been profoundly black, but
+now, like his smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer
+whiteness; and though his clothes were old, they had shapeliness
+and a flavor of mode.  And for greater spruceness there were some
+jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across the gray
+waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket, a fleck of color from a
+button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling him the descendant
+of patriot warriors.
+
+The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
+Vertrees was anxious and decorative.  Under a mantel of imitation
+black marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high
+and narrow "Eastlake" bookcases with long glass doors, and upon
+comfortable, incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless "woodwork"
+everywhere, and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and
+Mrs. Vertrees sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years
+of possession, as "very fine things."  They had been the first people
+in town to possess Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had
+rested, but they still had a feeling that in all such matters they
+were in the van; and when Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the
+walls of other people's houses he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted
+follower; and if he found an edition of Bulwer Lytton accompanying
+the Landseers as a final corroboration of culture, he would say,
+inevitably, "Those people know good pictures and they know good
+books."
+
+The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a
+millionaire, had ruined him because he had failed to understand it.
+When towns begin to grow they have whims, and the whims of a town
+always ruin somebody.  Mr. Vertrees had been most strikingly the
+somebody in this case.  At about the time he bought the Landseers,
+he owned, through inheritance, an office-building and a large house
+not far from it, where he spent the winter; and he had a country
+place--a farm of four hundred acres--where he went for the summers
+to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his home now, perforce,
+all the year round.  If he had known how to sit still and let things
+happen he would have prospered miraculously; but, strangely enough,
+the dainty little man was one of the first to fall down and worship
+Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the role of
+Juggernaut for his better education.  He was a true prophet of the
+prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and buying
+bad.  He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and
+read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained
+milkers milked her dry and then ate her.  He sold the office-building
+and the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb;
+then he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to
+pay the taxes on the suburban lots and to "keep them up."  The lots
+refused to stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his
+family up, so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully
+the next year) for "traction stock" that was paying dividends; and
+thereafter he ceased to buy and sell.  Thus he disappeared altogether
+from the commercial surface at about the time James Sheridan came out
+securely on top; and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him
+with her "anti-smoke" committee, had never heard the name.
+
+Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
+"managed somehow" on the dividends, though "managing" became more and
+more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less.
+But there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia
+took greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and
+not long after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees.
+In fact, there was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the "traction
+stock" henceforth was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house
+long ago to help "manage somehow" according to his conception of his
+"position in life"--one of his own old-fashioned phrases.  Six months
+before the completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had
+sold his horses and the worn Victoria and "station-wagon," to pay the
+arrears of his two servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's
+and butcher's--and a pair of elderly carriage-horses with such
+accoutrements are not very ample barter, in these days, for six
+months' food and fuel and service.  Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too,
+that there was no salary for him in all the buzzing city--he could do
+nothing.
+
+It may be said that he was at the end of his string.  Such times do
+come in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or
+craft, if his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall
+fail.
+
+The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
+closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed
+round about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the
+fan-shaped zone of firelight.  But as the mantel clock struck wheezily
+six there was the rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful
+peal of laughter went ringing through the house.  Thus cheerfully did
+Mary Vertrees herald her return with her mother from their expedition
+among the barbarians.
+
+She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair
+by the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes.
+Mrs. Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the
+contrary, she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something
+not quite certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
+
+"Papa!  Oh, oh!"  And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief
+upon her eyes.  "I'm SO glad you made us go!  I wouldn't have missed
+it--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees shook her head.  "I suppose I'm very dull," she said,
+gently. "I didn't see anything amusing.  They're most ordinary, and
+the house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--"
+
+"Papa!" Mary cried, breaking in.  "They asked us to DINNER!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"And I'm GOING!" she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
+"Think of it!  Never in their house before; never met any of them
+but the daughter--and just BARELY met her--"
+
+"What about you?" interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon
+his wife.
+
+She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten
+would not agree with her.  "I couldn't!" she said.  "I--"
+
+"Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!"
+cried Mary, choking.  "And then she--she realized it, and tried to
+turn it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like
+--like a squeal!"
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, "that Mary will have
+an uproarious time at my funeral.  She makes fun of--"
+
+Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
+and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of
+her shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
+
+"THEY didn't notice anything," she said.  "So far as they were
+concerned, mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed."
+
+"Who were 'they'?" asked her father.  "Whom did you see?"
+
+"Only the mother and daughter," Mary answered.  "Mrs. Sheridan is
+dumpy and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by
+the fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have their
+pictures in 'em.  She tutors the mother, but not very successfully--
+partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly because
+she began too late.  They've got an enormous Moor of painted plaster
+or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was to
+her credit that she selected it!"
+
+"They have oil-paintings, too," added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
+gentle price at the Landseers.  "I've always thought oil-paintings in
+a private house the worst of taste."
+
+"Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!" said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
+the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand.  "Go on,
+Mary.  None of the rest of them came in?  You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
+or--"  He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately
+with the poker.  "Or one of the sons?"
+
+Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter
+comprehension.  He turned instantly away, but she had begun to
+laugh again.
+
+"No," she said, "no one except the women, but mamma inquired about
+the sons thoroughly!"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.
+
+"Oh, most adroitly, too!" laughed the girl.  "Only she couldn't help
+unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!"
+
+"Mary Vertrees!"
+
+"Never mind, mamma!  Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
+could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
+same time!  They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
+oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior.  Mrs. Sheridan said his father
+is very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured
+me that 'Jim is right cultivated.'  Another of the sons, the youngest
+one, caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't
+seem to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs.
+Sheridan mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right
+sick,' and had been to some cure or other.  They seemed relieved to
+bring the subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me!
+The other brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns
+the new house across the street, where that young black-sheep of
+the Lamhorns, Robert, goes so often.  I saw a short, dark young man
+standing on the porch with Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I
+suppose that was Roscoe.  'Jim' still lurks in the mists, but I shall
+meet him to-night.  Papa--"  She stepped nearer to him so that he had
+to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he did.  There may have
+been a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their surface merry
+with laughter.  "Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and Bibbs
+--to the best of our information--is a lunatic.  Roscoe is married.
+Papa, does it have to be Jim?"
+
+"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply.  "You're outrageous!  That's
+a perfectly horrible way of talking!"
+
+"Well, I'm close to twenty-four," said Mary, turning to her.  "I
+haven't been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him,
+and maybe I never shall.  Until a year or so ago I've had everything
+I ever wanted in my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's
+about time I began to pay back.  Unfortunately, I don't know how to
+do anything--but something's got to be done."
+
+"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother,
+plaintively.  "It's not--it's not--"
+
+"No, it's not," said Mary.  "I know that!"
+
+"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired,
+uneasily.  "'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"
+
+"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it.  "We were so very cordial
+and easy!  I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as
+any kind old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss
+Sheridan who did it.  She played around it awhile; you could see she
+wanted to--she's in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied
+she had an idea it might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there
+to-night.  It's a sort of house-warming dinner, and they talked about
+it and talked about it--and then the girl got her courage up and
+blurted out the invitation.  And mamma--"  Here Mary was once more
+a victim to incorrigible merriment.  "Mamma tried to say yes, and
+COULDN'T!  She swallowed and squealed--I mean you coughed, dear!  And
+then, papa, she said that you and she had promised to go to a lecture
+at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her daughter would be delighted
+to come to the Big Show!  So there I am, and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan
+--and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!"
+
+And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a
+gesture of flying grace as she sped.
+
+When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
+the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
+the dark.  He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
+was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed.  But she smiled and
+nodded gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said.  "I LOOK rich,
+don't I, papa?"
+
+She did.  She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
+"regal."  A head taller than her father, she was as straight and
+jauntily poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown
+eyes were like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some
+stronger and livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
+
+"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.
+
+"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.
+
+"And my dress?"  She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a
+splendor of white and silver.  "Anything better at Nice next winter,
+do you think?"  She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the
+cloak again.  "Two years old, and no one would dream it!  I did it
+over."
+
+"You can do anything, Mary."
+
+There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
+significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic.  It was as if
+he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
+breath.
+
+And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he.  She
+lifted her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly,
+so that he should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
+
+"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely.  "I know exactly
+what you want me to do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because
+there was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long
+dining-room, and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were
+impelled to converse--necessarily at the tops of their voices.  The
+whole company of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the
+occasion by carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation,
+it seemed a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of
+crystal and silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and
+lilies and white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there
+were three marvelous, gleaming buildings:  one in the center and one
+at each end, white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in
+sculptural icing.  They were models in miniature, and they represented
+the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works.
+Nearly all the guests recognized them without having to be told what
+they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.
+
+The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial.  At the head sat
+the great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about
+him; then on each side came the neighbors of the "old" house, grading
+down to vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of
+departments, and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took
+her place as a consolation for the less important.  Here, too, among
+the thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering
+how anybody could look at him and eat.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
+wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
+for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
+devised by nature for that express purpose.  And besides, nobody
+looked at Bibbs.
+
+He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
+enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
+effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
+fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it.  So he felt relieved
+when each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his
+health, turned to seek livelier responses in other directions.  For the
+talk went on with the eating, incessantly.  It rose over the throbbing
+of the orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and
+glass, and there was a mighty babble.
+
+"Yes, sir!  Started without a dollar." ... "Yellow flounces on the
+overskirt--" ... "I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
+this year,' I says." ... "Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
+weeks." ... "One of the biggest men in the biggest--" ...  "The wife
+says she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--" ... "Say, did
+you see that statue of a Turk in the hall?  One of the finest things
+I ever--" ... "Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you
+get out o' me,' I says, and so he ups and--" ... "Yes, the baby makes
+four, they've lost now." ... "Well, they got their raise, and they
+went in big." ... "Yes, sir!  Not a dollar to his name, and look at
+what--" ... "You wait!  The population of this town's goin' to hit the
+million mark before she stops." ... "Well, if you can show me a bigger
+deal than--"
+
+And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
+continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
+sentence, "Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
+just what'll do it for my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass
+grow where one grew before!"  It was his familiar flourish, an old
+story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary
+Vertrees.
+
+It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave.  He
+sat there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and
+his big, smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will
+and with the simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity.  He was the
+picture of health, of good cheer, and of power on a holiday.  He had
+thirty teeth, none bought, and showed most of them when he laughed;
+his grizzled hair was thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his
+chest was deep and big beneath its vast facade of starched white
+linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling three large pearls;
+his hands were stubby and strong, and he used them freely in gestures
+of marked picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat at chin and
+waist and wrist, he had not lost the look of readiness and activity.
+
+He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries
+at every one.  His idea was that when people were having a good time
+they were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his
+pleasure, and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his
+guests.  Edith had discovered that he had very foggy notions of the
+difference between a band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear
+to him he had held out for a band until Edith threatened tears; but
+the size of the orchestra they hired consoled him, and he had now no
+regrets in the matter.
+
+He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on
+the table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his
+plate or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere
+with the real business of eating and shouting.
+
+"Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!" he would bellow down the length of
+the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the
+"Toreador" song, perhaps.  "Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy
+Lee'!"  And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in
+answer to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the "Toreador"
+continuing vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments
+of "Nancy Lee," naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that
+uxorious tribute.
+
+"Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away!
+"A sail-er's wife a sail-er's star should be!  Yo ho, oh, oh!
+"Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee!  Oh, Na-hancy Lee!"
+
+"HAY, there, old lady!" he would bellow.  "Tell 'em to play 'In the
+Gloaming.'  In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if
+they don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'?
+THAT'S good music!  That's the kind o' music I like!  Come on, now!
+Mrs. Callin, get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table.  What's
+the matter you folks down there, anyway?  Larboard watch, ahoy!"
+
+"What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals.  La-a-r-board
+watch, ahoy!"
+
+No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
+table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it
+than conviction, it bore none now; though "mineral waters" were
+copiously poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins,
+and proved wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests.  And
+certainly no wine could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in
+the host.  Not even Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for,
+as Mrs. Sheridan had said, he had "plans for Bibbs"--plans which were
+going to straighten out some things that had gone wrong.
+
+So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
+forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps,
+turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the
+table at his right, he would become autobiographical.  Gentlemen
+less naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who
+inspired the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her--it
+needed but the sight of her.
+
+The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the
+jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were
+the rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid
+court to each other, and everybody paid court to them.  Down near the
+sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and
+admiration.  "Wonder who that lady is--makin' such a hit with the old
+man."  "Must be some heiress."  "Heiress?  Golly, I guess I could
+stand it to marry rich, then!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl were radiant:  at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
+with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
+Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
+but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
+She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
+she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
+bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life.  It
+enchanted him.
+
+As he proclaimed to the table, she had "a way with her."  She had,
+indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after
+the feast began.  Since his marriage three years before, no lady had
+bestowed upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and,
+with the look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech
+to him--
+
+"I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and "Why?" was all he managed to say.
+
+She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
+mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table.
+No one, reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl
+who would "really flirt" with married men--she was obviously the
+"opposite of all that."  Edith defined her as a "thoroughbred,"
+a "nice girl"; and the look given to Roscoe was astounding.  Roscoe's
+wife saw it, too, and she was another whom it puzzled--though not
+because its recipient was married.
+
+"Because!" said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable.
+"And also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull
+times ahead for both of us if we don't get along."
+
+Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
+brought up to believe that when a man married he "married and settled
+down."  It was "all right," he felt, for a man as old as his father to
+pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but
+for himself--"a young married man"--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
+even be quite moral.  He knew that young married people might have
+friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
+"flirted"--they were always very matter-of-fact with each other.
+Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she
+hoped he was susceptible.
+
+"Yes--we're neighbors," he said, awkwardly.
+
+"Next-door neighbors in houses, too," she added.
+
+"No, not exactly.  I live across the street."
+
+"Why, no!" she exclaimed, and seemed startled.  "Your mother told me
+this afternoon that you lived at home."
+
+"Yes, of course I live at home.  I built that new house across the
+street."
+
+"But you--"  she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came
+into her cheek.  "But I understood--"
+
+"No," he said; "my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year,
+but that's all.  Edith and Jim live with them, of course."
+
+"I--I see," she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned
+from him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her
+left the name, "Mr. James Sheridan, Jr."  And from that moment Roscoe
+had little enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her
+disturbing coquetries.
+
+Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor
+to "get through with old Roscoe," as he thought of it, and give a
+bachelor a chance.  "Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always
+been the steady wheel-horse of the family.  Jim was "steady" enough,
+but was considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying
+much for Jim's liveliness.  As their father habitually boasted, both
+brothers were "capable, hard-working young business men," and the
+principal difference between them was merely that which resulted from
+Jim's being still a bachelor.  Physically they were of the same type:
+dark of eyes and of hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though
+Roscoe was several inches taller than Jim, neither was of the height,
+breadth, or depth of the father.  Both wore young business men's
+mustaches, and either could have sat for the tailor-shop lithographs
+of young business men wearing "rich suitings in dark mixtures."
+
+Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access
+of color, which increased his approbation.  "What's that old Roscoe
+saying to you, Miss Vertrees?" he asked.  "These young married men are
+mighty forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush."
+
+"Am I blushing?" she said.  "Are you sure?"  And with that she gave
+him ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look
+wasted upon Roscoe.  "I think you must be mistaken," she continued.
+"I think it's your brother who is blushing.  I've thrown him into
+confusion."
+
+"How?"
+
+She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone
+as confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar.
+"By trying to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!"
+
+This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was.  He supposed it
+a nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath.  He
+realized that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and
+he was instantly snared by that realization.
+
+"By George!" he said.  "I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
+anything--yes, and get away with it, too!"
+
+She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she
+was laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking;
+and she said:  "But you see I don't care whether I get away with it
+or not.  I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a change
+to get away with YOU?"
+
+"More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!" Jim was
+inspired to reply.  "Not one in the world, especially after beginning
+by making fun of me like that."
+
+"I mightn't be so much in fun as you think," she said, regarding him
+with sudden gravity.
+
+"Well," said Jim, in simple honesty, "you're a funny girl!"
+
+Her gravity continued an instant longer.  "I may not turn out to be
+funny for YOU."
+
+"So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
+manage to be satisfied."  And with that, to his own surprise, it was
+his turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
+
+"Yes," he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, "I can see
+you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man
+really means anything!"
+
+"'Laugh'!" she cried, gaily.  "Why, it might be a matter of life and
+death!  But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
+considering the mistake I made with your brother."
+
+Jim was dazed.  She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery
+and nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in
+it; he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
+consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
+lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him.  But he
+mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
+
+"Put what question?" he said, breathlessly.
+
+"As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family," she returned,
+speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, "I think it
+would be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking
+out with any young lady or not.  Mr. Sheridan, think well!  Are you
+spoken for?"
+
+"Not yet," he gasped.  "Are you?"
+
+"NO!" she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the
+pastime proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
+
+Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from
+a lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that
+Miss Vertrees was "starting rather picturesquely with Jim."  And he
+added, languidly, "Do you suppose she WOULD?"
+
+For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
+interested in the clasp of a long "rope" of pearls, a loop of which
+she was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the
+table and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum
+in the clasp at the end of the loop.  She wore many jewels.  She was
+pretty, but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too
+sumptuous accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they
+may emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
+
+"I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,"
+repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
+
+"I heard you."  There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
+eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
+now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen.  "Starting any
+stronger than you did with Edith?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, keep the peace!" he said, crossly.  "That's off, of course."
+
+"You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely," said
+Sibyl, looking at him steadily.  "You've talked to her for--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake," he begged, "keep the peace!"
+
+"Well, what have you just been doing?"
+
+"SH!" he said.  "Listen to your father-in-law."
+
+Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra
+having begun to play "The Rosary," to his vast content.
+
+"I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM," he roared, beating the
+measures with his fork.  "EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-
+TUM-DUM--What's the matter with all you folks?  Why'n't you SING?
+Miss Vertrees, I bet a thousand dollars YOU sing!  Why'n't--"
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim,
+"you don't know what you interrupted!  Your son isn't used to my
+rough ways, and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he
+was about to say something important."
+
+"I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!" the father
+threatened, more delighted with her than ever.  "By gosh! if I was
+his age--or a widower right NOW--"
+
+"Oh, wait!" cried Mary.  "If they'd only make less noise!  I want
+Mrs. Sheridan to hear."
+
+"She'd say the same," he shouted.  "She'd tell me I was mighty slow
+if I couldn't get ahead o' Jim.  Why, when I was his age--"
+
+"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim,
+who had grown red again.  "He's going to tell us how, when he was
+your age, he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and
+you could see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"
+
+At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped.  "Look here, young
+lady!" he roared.  "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--
+or I'm goin' to kiss you!"
+
+Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but
+Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
+
+"Both!" she cried. "Both!  The one to make me forget the other!"
+
+"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
+trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
+"Jim," he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll
+send you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!"
+
+And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
+watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a
+rich little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard.  He heard--and he knew
+what his father's plans were now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Mrs. Vertrees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
+after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
+Landseers.  Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come
+for her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor
+did the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted.  But Mrs. Vertrees
+had a long vigil of it.
+
+She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen
+her in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what
+they had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat
+through the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the
+gaslight in her own room, which was directly over the "front hall."
+There, book in hand, she employed the time in her own reminiscences,
+though it was her belief that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
+
+Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and
+the deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they
+brought her--and there is tragedy.  Like her husband, she thought
+backward because she did not dare think forward definitely.  What
+thinking forward this troubled couple ventured took the form of a
+slender hope which neither of them could have borne to hear put in
+words, and yet they had talked it over, day after day, from the very
+hour when they heard Sheridan was to build his New House next door.
+For--so quickly does any ideal of human behavior become an antique
+--their youth was of the innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding"
+and "gentility," and no craft had been more straitly trained upon
+them than that of talking about things without mentioning them.
+Herein was marked the most vital difference between Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees and their big new neighbor.  Sheridan, though his youth
+was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such matters.  He had been
+chopping wood for the morning fire in the country grocery while they
+were still dancing.
+
+It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the
+delicate clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening
+of the door, Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"
+
+The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
+of cold and bracing air into her mother's room.  "Yes," she said,
+before Mrs. Vertrees could speak, "he brought me home!"
+
+She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
+rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
+pat upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
+
+"Mamma!" Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that
+she had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold.  "Why don't you
+ask me?"
+
+This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable.  "I don't--"
+she faltered.  "Ask you what, Mary?"
+
+"How I got along and what he's like."
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary.  "And I got along so fast--"
+She broke off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went
+at it, of course.  We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her
+head plaintively.
+
+"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
+afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
+You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them
+while YOU pretend to run away!"
+
+"My dear, I don't know what to--"
+
+"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her.  "So that's all
+right!  Now I'll tell you all about it.  It was gorgeous and deafening
+and tee-total.  We could have lived a year on it.  I'm not good at
+figures, but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old
+Charlie and Ned and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could
+manage at least twice as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.'
+I think the orchids alone would have lasted us a couple of months.
+There they were, before me, but I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em,
+and so--well, so I did what I could!"
+
+She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother.
+"It seemed to be a success--what I could," she said, clasping her
+hands behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
+accompaniment to her narrative.  "The girl Edith and her sister-in-
+law, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things
+on me.  The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it.
+He's what he is.  I like him."  She paused reflectively, continuing,
+"Edith's 'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's good-looking and not
+stupid, but I think he's--"  She interrupted herself with a cheery
+outcry:  "Oh! I mustn't be calling him names!  If he's trying to make
+Edith like him, I ought to respect him as a colleague."
+
+"I don't understand a thing you're talking about," Mrs. Vertrees
+complained.
+
+"All the better!  Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's
+always known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that
+know.  He sat between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan.  SHE'S like
+those people you wondered about at the theater, the last time we
+went--dressed in ball-gowns; bound to show their clothes and jewels
+SOMEwhere!  She flatters the father, and so did I, for that matter--
+but not that way.  I treated him outrageously!"
+
+"Mary!"
+
+"That's what flattered him.  After dinner he made the whole regiment
+of us follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide
+on the Palatine.  He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin'
+of 'em listened as if they thought he intended to make them a present
+of the house.  What he was proudest of was the plumbing and that Bay
+of Naples panorama in the hall.  He made us look at all the plumbing
+--bath-rooms and everywhere else--and then he made us look at the Bay
+of Naples.  He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think
+it's more.  And he led us all into the  ready-made library to see a
+poem Edith had taken a prize with at school.   They'd had it printed
+in gold letters and framed in mother-of-pearl.  But the poem itself
+was rather simple and wistful and nice--he read it to us, though Edith
+tried to stop him.  She was modest about it, and said she'd never
+written anything else.  And then, after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
+asked me to come across the street to her house with them--her husband
+and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim Sheridan--"
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was shocked.  "'Jim'!" she exclaimed.  "Mary, PLEASE--"
+
+"Of course," said Mary.  "I'll make it as easy for you as I can,
+mamma.  Mr. James Sheridan, Junior.  We went over there, and Mrs.
+Roscoe explained that 'the men were all dying for a drink,' though
+I noticed that Mr. Lamhorn was the only one near death's door on that
+account.  Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said they knew I'd been bored at the
+dinner.  They were objectionably apologetic about it, and they seemed
+to think NOW we were going to have a 'good time' to make up for it.
+But I hadn't been bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and the 'good
+time' at Mrs. Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid."
+
+"But, Mary," her mother began, "is--is--"  And she seemed unable to
+complete the question.
+
+"Never mind, mamma.  I'll say it.  Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior,
+stupid?  I'm sure he's not at all stupid about business.  Otherwise
+--Oh, what right have I to be calling people 'stupid' because they're
+not exactly my kind?  On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing
+models of the Sheridan Building--"
+
+"Oh, no!" Mrs. Vertrees cried.  "Surely not!"
+
+"Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what.  But,
+after all, I wondered if they were so bad.  If I'd been at a dinner
+at a palace in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old
+silver pieces had referred to some great deed or achievement of the
+family, I shouldn't have felt superior; I'd have thought it
+picturesque and stately--I'd have been impressed.  And what's the
+real difference?  The icing is temporary, and that's much more modest,
+isn't it?  And why is it vulgar to feel important more on account of
+something you've done yourself than because of something one of your
+ancestors did?  Besides, if we go back a few generations, we've all
+got such hundreds of ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one
+or two to be proud of ourselves about.  Well, then, mamma, I managed
+not to feel superior to Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't
+see anything out of place in the Sheridan Building in sugar."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the
+conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head
+gravely.  "My dear, dear child," she said, "it seems to me--It looks
+--I'm afraid--"
+
+"Say as much of it as you can, mamma," said Mary, encouragingly.
+"I can get it, if you'll just give me one key-word."
+
+"Everything you say," Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, "seems to have
+the air of--it is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--"
+
+"Oh, I see!  You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself
+to like him."
+
+"Not exactly, Mary.  That wasn't quite what I meant," said Mrs.
+Vertrees, speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness.
+"But you said that--that you found the latter part of the evening
+at young Mrs. Sheridan's unentertaining--"
+
+"And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than
+at dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you
+think I--"  And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter
+understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
+
+"Well," she asked, gravely, "is there anything else I can do?  You
+and papa don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so,
+as this is the only thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to
+let it distress me.  That's all there is about it, isn't it?"
+
+"But nothing MUST distress you!" the mother cried.
+
+"That's what I say!" said Mary, cheerfully.  "And so it doesn't.
+It's all right."  She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to
+go to her own room.  But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood
+leaning against the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at
+her feet.  "Mother, you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't
+really matter whom a girl marries."
+
+"No, no!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.  "I never said such a--"
+
+"No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT.  It's true, isn't it, that
+marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'?  To
+get right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't
+she?  One man as well as another?"
+
+"Oh, my dear!  I'm sure your father and I--"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mary, indulgently.  "I don't mean you and papa.
+But isn't it propinquity that makes marriages?  So many people
+say so, there must be something in it."
+
+"Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that."  And Mrs. Vertrees
+lifted pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared.
+"It sounds--almost reckless!"
+
+Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily.  "Never
+fret, dear!  I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've
+always been too thorough-going a little pig!  And if it IS propinquity
+that does our choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world
+could ask for more than THAT!  How could there be any more propinquity
+than the very house next door?"
+
+She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the
+door this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob.
+"Oh, the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest
+one--"
+
+"Did he speak of it?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
+
+"No.  He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one.  I didn't
+meet him.  But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long
+intervals when he's not.  Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived
+at home when he was 'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid.
+He looks dreadfully ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me
+that if--if one were in the Sheridan family"--she laughed a little
+ruefully--"he might be interesting to talk to sometimes, when there
+was too much stocks and bonds.  I didn't see him after dinner."
+
+"There must be something wrong with him," said Mrs. Vertrees.
+"They'd have introduced him if there wasn't."
+
+"I don't know.  He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes
+people like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family.  His father
+spoke of sending him back to a machine-shop or some sort; I suppose
+he meant when the poor thing gets better.  I glanced at him just
+then, when Mr. Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking
+straight at me; and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but
+the most tragic change came over him.  He seemed just to die, right
+there at the table!"
+
+"You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling."
+
+"No," said Mary, thoughtfully, "I don't think he is; but he might be
+uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he
+once sets out to do.  But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor
+boy just then!  I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--"
+
+"I wouldn't."  Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there
+was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness.  "I'd keep my mind
+on pleasanter things, Mary."
+
+Mary laughed and nodded.  "Yes, indeed!  Plenty pleasant enough,
+and probably, if all were known, too good--even for me!"
+
+And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden
+were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Edith, glancing casually into the "ready-made" library, stopped
+abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone.  He was standing before the
+pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it.
+He read it:
+
+                  FUGITIVE
+
+  I will forget the things that sting:
+    The lashing look, the barbed word.
+  I know the very hands that fling
+    The stones at me had never stirred
+  To anger but for their own scars.
+    They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
+  I'll keep my heart among the stars
+    Where none shall hunt it out.  Oh, like
+  These wounded ones I must not be,
+    For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
+  So, none shall hurt me.  Far and free
+    Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
+
+"Bibbs!"  Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly
+as she came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more
+powerful than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the
+lapel of her coat.
+
+Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed
+by the poem.  "Pretty young, isn't it?" he said.  "There must have
+been something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't
+believe the poem did it."
+
+She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a
+low voice:  "I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at
+all, Bibbs.  I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business.
+I didn't want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit
+talking about it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go
+and read it aloud to the whole crowd of 'em!  And then they all wanted
+to know what other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and
+write some more, and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why
+that, till I thought I'd die of shame!"
+
+"You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp," Bibbs suggested.
+
+"I couldn't tell 'em anything!  I just choke with mortification every
+time anybody speaks of the thing."
+
+Bibbs looked grieved.  "The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith.  You see, you
+were only seventeen when you wrote it."
+
+"Oh, hush up!" she snapped.  "I wish it had burnt my fingers the first
+time I touched it.  Then I might have had sense enough to leave it
+where it was.  I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--"
+
+"No, no," he said, comfortingly.  "It was the very most flattering
+thing ever happen to me.  It was almost my last flight before I went
+to the machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it
+enough to--"
+
+"But I DON'T like it!" she exclaimed.  "I don't even understand it
+--and papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate
+it!  The truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize."
+
+"Maybe they expected father to endow the school," Bibbs murmured.
+
+"Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a
+LINE!  I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me
+about how I 'keep my heart among the stars.'  He makes it seem such
+a mushy kind of thing, the way he says it.  I hate it!"
+
+"You'll have to live it down, Edith.  Perhaps abroad and under
+another name you might find--"
+
+"Oh, hush up!  I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first
+chance I get."  She turned away petulantly, moving to the door.  "I'd
+like to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!"
+
+"Edith!" he called, as she went into the hall.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I want to ask you:  Do I really look better, or have you just got
+used to me?"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the
+threshold.
+
+"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
+impersonal way.  "But I've noticed you look at me lately.  I wondered
+if I'd--"
+
+"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully.
+"This month you've been here's done you no end of good.  It's the
+change."
+
+"Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change."
+
+"You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw," said Edith, with
+supreme candor.  "But I don't know much about it.  I've never seen a
+corpse in my life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly
+sick, so you mustn't judge by me.  I only know you do look better,
+I'm glad to say.  But you're right about my not being able to look
+at you at first.  You had a kind of whiteness that--Well, you're
+almost as thin, I suppose, but you've got more just ordinarily pale;
+not that ghastly look.  Anybody could look at you now, Bibbs, and
+no--not get--"
+
+"Sick?"
+
+"Well--almost that!" she laughed.  "And you're getting a better color
+every day, Bibbs; you really are.  You're getting along splendidly."
+
+"I--I'm afraid so," he said, ruefully.
+
+"'Afraid so'!  Well, if you aren't the queerest!  I suppose you mean
+father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.
+I heard him say something about it the night of the--"  The jingle of
+a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch.  "Bobby
+Lamhorn!  I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the
+country.  Afternoon, Bibbs!"
+
+When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf,
+his eye wandering among the titles of the books.  The library
+consisted almost entirely of handsome "uniform editions":  Irving,
+Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson,
+Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac,
+Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso.  There were
+shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of "famous
+classics," of "Oriental masterpieces," of "masterpieces of oratory,"
+and more shelves of "selected libraries" of "literature," of "the
+drama," and of "modern science."  They made an effective decoration
+for the room, all these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding
+here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames that crackled
+in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an impression that
+the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief, and that
+white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody else
+considered them at all.  Himself, he disturbed not one.
+
+There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house,
+and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.
+"Awready, Mist' Bibbs," he announced.  "You' ma say wrap up wawm
+f' you' ride, an' she cain' go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see
+you' pa at fo' 'clock.  Aw ready, suh."
+
+He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded;
+and in the manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way.
+In the hall they passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while
+white-jacket opened the door with a flourish and waved condescendingly
+to the chauffeur in the car which stood waiting in the driveway.
+
+"It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when
+I first came home, George," said Bibbs, thoughtfully.  "What did you
+tell me?"
+
+"Yessuh!" George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some
+unknown reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the
+Moor.  "You ast me when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day,
+an' mighty near ev'y day all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you
+ast me twicet."  He shook his head solemnly.  "Look to me mus' be
+somep'm might lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!"
+
+"Mighty what?"
+
+"Mighty lamiDAL!" George, burst out laughing.  "What DO 'at word
+mean, Mist' Bibbs?"
+
+"It's new to me, George.  Where did you hear it?"
+
+"I nev' DID hear it!" said George.  "I uz dess sittin' thinkum to
+myse'f an' she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at!  An' she
+soun' so good, seem like she GOTTA mean somep'm!"
+
+"Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something.  Why, yes--"
+
+"Do she?" cried George.  "WHAT she mean?"
+
+"It's exactly the word for the statue," said Bibbs, with conviction,
+as he climbed into the car.  "It's a lamiDAL statue."
+
+"Hiyi!" George exulted.  "Man! Man! Listen!  Well, suh, she mighty
+lamiDAL statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!"  "I
+expect she is!" said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a
+moment later he was swept from sight.
+
+George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently
+in the hallway.  "Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she
+is!'  Ev'y day he try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an'
+aw-ways, las' thing HE say, 'I expec' she is!'  You know, Mist'
+Jackson, if he git well, 'at young man go' be pride o' the family,
+Mist' Jackson.  Yes-suh, right now I pick 'im fo' firs' money!"
+
+"Look out with all 'at money, George!" Jackson warned the enthusiast.
+"White folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer'n you.  You the on'y
+man bettin' on 'im!"
+
+"I risk it!" cried George, merrily.  "I put her all on now--ev'y cent!
+'At boy's go' be flower o' the flock!"
+
+This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for
+the meaning of "lamiDAL," differed radically from another prediction
+concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some
+twenty minutes later.
+
+Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees
+beside him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon
+the highroad.  The two cars were going in opposite directions, and
+the occupants of Jim's had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting
+alone on the back seat--his white face startlingly white against cap
+and collar of black fur--but he flashed into recognition as Mary
+bowed to him.
+
+Jim waved his left hand carelessly.  "It's Bibbs, taking his
+constitutional," he explained.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Mary.  "I bowed to him, too, though I've never
+met him.  In fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice.  I hope he
+won't think I'm very bold, bowing to him."
+
+"I doubt if he noticed it," said honest Jim.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried.
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them."
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Jim.  "Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs
+is funny."
+
+"Is he?  How?" she asked.  "He strikes me as anything but funny."
+
+"Well, I'm his brother," Jim said, deprecatingly, "but I don't know
+what he's like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like
+I WAS his brother, the way I do Roscoe.  Bibbs never did seem more
+than half alive to me.  Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when
+we were boys we were too big to play with him, but he never played
+anyway, with boys his own age.  He'd rather just sit in the house and
+mope around by himself.  Nobody could ever get him to DO anything;
+you can't get him to do anything now.  He never had any LIFE in him;
+and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan
+is the laziest man God ever made!  Father put him in the machine-shop
+over at the Pump Works--best thing in the world for him--and he was
+just plain no account.  It made him sick!  If he'd had the right kind
+of energy--the kind father's got, for instance, or Roscoe, either--
+why, it wouldn't have made him sick.  And suppose it was either of
+them--yes, or me, either--do you think any of us would have stopped
+if we WERE sick?  Not much!  I hate to say it, but Bibbs Sheridan'll
+never amount to anything as long as he lives."
+
+Mary looked thoughtful.  "Is there any particular reason why he
+should?" she asked.
+
+"Good gracious!" he exclaimed.  "You don't mean that, do you?  Don't
+you believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how
+much money his father's got?  Hasn't the business of this world got
+to be carried on by everybody in it?  Are we going to lay back on
+what we've got and see other fellows get ahead of us?  If we've got
+big things already, isn't it every man's business to go ahead and
+make 'em bigger?  Isn't it his duty?  Don't we always want to get
+bigger and bigger?"
+
+"Ye-es--I don't know.  But I feel rather sorry for your brother.
+He looked so lonely--and sick."
+
+"He's gettin' better every day," Jim said.  "Dr. Gurney says so.
+There's nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths
+imaginary.  'Nerves'!  People that are willing to be busy don't have
+nervous diseases, because they don't have time to imagine 'em."
+
+"You mean his trouble is really mental?"
+
+"Oh, he's not a lunatic," said Jim.  "He's just queer.  Sometimes
+he'll say something right bright, but half the time what he says is
+'way off the subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all.
+For instance, the other day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies
+in the hall.  The darky asked him what time he wanted the car for his
+drive, and anybody else in the world would have just said what time
+they DID want it, and that would have been all there was to it; but
+here's what Bibbs says, and I heard him with my own ears.  'What time
+do I want the car?' he says.  'Well, now, that depends--that depends,'
+he says.  He talks slow like that, you know.  'I'll tell you what time
+I want the car, George,' he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think
+of this statue!'  That's exactly his words!  Asked the darky what he
+thought of that Arab Edith and mother bought for the hall!"
+
+Mary pondered upon this.  "He might have been in fun, perhaps," she
+suggested.
+
+"Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work of
+art!  Where on earth would be the fun of that?  No, you're just
+kind-hearted--and that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!" she laughed.
+
+"See here!" he cried.  "Isn't there any way for us to get over this
+Mister and Miss thing?  A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've
+managed to be with you a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and
+I think you know how I feel by this time--"
+
+She looked panic-stricken immediately.  "Oh, no," she protested,
+quickly. "No, I don't, and--"
+
+"Yes, you do," he said, and his voice shook a little.  "You couldn't
+help knowing."
+
+"But I do!" she denied, hurriedly.  "I do help knowing.  I mean--Oh,
+wait!"
+
+"What for?  You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly
+WANTED me to feel that way--or else pretended--"
+
+"Now, now!" she lamented.  "You're spoiling such a cheerful
+afternoon!"
+
+"'Spoilin' it!'"  He slowed down the car and turned his face to her
+squarely.  "See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--"
+
+"Stop!  Stop the car a minute."  And when he had complied she faced
+him as squarely as he evidently desired her to face him.  "Listen.
+I don't want you to go on, to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You mean it's just a whim?"
+
+"I don't know," she repeated.  Her voice was low and troubled and
+honest, and she kept her clear eyes upon his.
+
+"Will you tell me something?"
+
+"Almost anything."
+
+"Have you ever told any man you loved him?"
+
+And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous.
+"No," she said.  "And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that
+--or ever know what it means.  I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan."
+
+"Then you--you've just been flirting with me!"  Poor Jim looked both
+furious and crestfallen.
+
+"Not one bit!" she cried.  "Not one word!  Not one syllable!  I've
+meant every single thing!"
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"Of course you don't!" she said.  "Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to
+start the car.  Now!  Thank you.  Slowly, till I finish what I have
+to say.  I have not flirted with you.  I have deliberately courted
+you.  One thing more, and then I want you to take me straight home,
+talking about the weather all the way.  I said that I do not believe
+I shall ever 'care' for any man, and that is true.  I doubt the
+existence of the kind of 'caring' we hear about in poems and plays
+and novels.  I think it must be just a kind of emotional TALK--most
+of it.  At all events, I don't feel it.  Now, we can go faster,
+please."
+
+"Just where does that let me out?" he demanded.  "How does that
+excuse you for--"
+
+"It isn't an excuse," she said, gently, and gave him one final look,
+wholly desolate.  "I haven't said I should never marry."
+
+"What?" Jim gasped.
+
+She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
+unfathomably sorrowful.
+
+"I promise nothing," she said, faintly.
+
+"You needn't!" shouted Jim, radiant and exultant.  "You needn't!  By
+George!  I know you're square; that's enough for me!  You wait and
+promise whenever you're ready!"
+
+"Don't forget what I asked," she begged him.
+
+"Talk about the weather?  I will!  God bless the old weather!" cried
+the happy Jim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields
+and sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean
+air beneath a glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so
+maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible
+for men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.
+
+Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
+resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its
+phantom.  How largely this apparition may have been the work of the
+wind upon his face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt
+it was partly the result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal
+introduction than the circumstance of his having caught her looking
+into his window a month before.  She had bowed definitely; she had
+bowed charmingly.  And it seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant
+to convey her forgiveness.
+
+There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
+his experience, and he rode the warmer for it.  Nor did he lack the
+impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her:
+her veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind
+--and that look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose
+in carnival.
+
+By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then
+backed and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the
+south and the smoke.  Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon
+the horizon, that nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted
+like an engine shrouded in its own steam.  But to Bibbs, who had
+now to go to the very heart of it, for a commanded interview with
+his father, the distant cloud was like an implacable genius issuing
+thunderously in smoke from his enchanted bottle, and irresistibly
+drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
+
+They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of
+November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city;
+and here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to
+gray; the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there,
+nevertheless--impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke.
+And then, as the car drove on, the chimneys and stacks of factories
+came swimming up into view like miles of steamers advancing abreast,
+every funnel with its vast plume, savage and black, sweeping to the
+horizon, dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation over league on
+league already rich and vile with grime.
+
+The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air;
+and a roar and clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears.
+And now the car passed two great blocks of long brick buildings,
+hideous in all ways possible to make them hideous; doorways showing
+dark one moment and lurid the next with the leap of some virulent
+interior flame, revealing blackened giants, half naked, in passionate
+action, struggling with formless things in the hot illumination.
+And big as these shops were, they were growing bigger, spreading over
+a third block, where two new structures were mushrooming to completion
+in some hasty cement process of a stability not over-reassuring.
+Bibbs pulled the rug closer about him, and not even the phantom of
+color was left upon his cheeks as he passed this place, for he knew
+it too well.  Across the face of one of the buildings there was an
+enormous sign:  "Sheridan Automatic Pump Co., Inc."
+
+Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and
+adding their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden
+houses of a thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on
+narrow lots and nudging one another crossly, shutting out the stingy
+sunlight from one another; bad neighbors who would destroy one another
+root and branch some night when the right wind blew.  They were only
+waiting for that wind and a cigarette, and then they would all be gone
+together--a pinch of incense burned upon the tripod of the god.
+
+Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there
+a forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying.  Some
+people said it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some
+were sure that asphalt and "improving" the streets did it; but Bigness
+was in too Big a hurry to bother much about trees.  He had telegraph-
+poles and telephone-poles and electric-light-poles and trolley-poles
+by the thousand to take their places.  So he let the trees die and
+put up his poles.  They were hideous, but nobody minded that; and
+sometimes the wires fell and killed people--but not often enough to
+matter at all.
+
+Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the
+town where the few solid old houses not already demolished were in
+transition:  some, with their fronts torn away, were being made into
+segments of apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into
+trade, brazenly putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors,
+seeming to mean it for a joke; one or two with unaltered facades
+peeped humorously over the tops of temporary office buildings of one
+story erected in the old front yards.  Altogether, the town here was
+like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the old
+ingredients were discernible.
+
+This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs
+reached the roaring holy of holies itself.  The car must stop at
+every crossing while the dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms
+of dust, hurried before it.  Magnificent new buildings, already dingy,
+loomed hundreds of feet above him; newer ones, more magnificent, were
+rising beside them, rising higher; old buildings were coming down;
+middle-aged buildings were coming down; the streets were laid open
+to their entrails and men worked underground between palisades, and
+overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders in the sky.  Trolley-cars and
+long interurban cars, built to split the wind like torpedo-boats,
+clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners; motor-cars
+of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings and
+frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage;
+steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic tentacle and claw;
+riveters rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook to the thunder
+of gigantic trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was the sound
+of earthquake playing accompaniments for battle and sudden death.  On
+one of the new steel buildings no work was being done that afternoon.
+The building had killed a man in the morning--and the steel-workers
+always stop for the day when that "happens."
+
+And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the
+brobdingnagian camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers
+and the pagan women--there would be work to-day and dancing to-night.
+For the Puritan's dry voice is but the crackling of a leaf underfoot
+in the rush and roar of the coming of the new Egypt.
+
+Bibbs was on time.  He knew it must be "to the minute" or his father
+would consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's
+office marked four precisely when Bibbs walked in.  Coincidentally
+with his entrance five people who had been at work in the office,
+under Sheridan's direction, walked out.  They departed upon no visible
+or audible suggestion, and with a promptness that seemed ominous to
+the new-comer.  As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly
+stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that
+they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a
+disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been
+summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly
+what they understood.
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan.
+
+It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried
+fathers to place delinquents in the sitting-posture.  Bibbs sat.
+
+Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of
+silence, then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it,
+his big hands, loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back.
+They were soiled, as were all other hands down-town, except such as
+might be still damp from a basin.
+
+"Well, Bibbs," he said at last, not altering his attitude, "do you
+know what I'm goin' to do with you?"
+
+Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon
+the ceiling.  "I heard you tell Jim," he began, in his slow way.  "You
+said you'd send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose
+to Miss Vertrees.  So I suppose that must be your plan for me.  But--"
+
+"But what?" said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
+
+"Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?"
+
+That brought his father sharply round to face him.  "You beat the
+devil!  Bibbs, what IS the matter with you?  Why can't you be like
+anybody else?"
+
+"Liver, maybe," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+"Boh!  Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you
+organically.  No.  You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter,
+and that's ALL the matter.  Oh, not one o' these BIG dreamers that put
+through the big deals!  No, sir!  You're the kind o' dreamer that
+just sets out on the back fence and thinks about how much trouble
+there must be in the  world!  That ain't the kind that builds the
+bridges, Bibbs; it's the kind that borrows fifteen cents from his
+wife's uncle's brother-in-law to get ten cent's worth o' plug tobacco
+and a nickel's worth o' quinine!"
+
+He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned
+again to the window.
+
+"Look out there!" he bade his son.  "Look out o' that window!  Look at
+the life and energy down there!  I should think ANY young man's blood
+would tingle to get into it and be part of it.  Look at the big things
+young men are doin' in this town!"  He swung about, coming to the
+mahogany desk in the middle of the room.  "Look at what I was doin' at
+your age!  Look at what your own brothers are doin'!  Look at Roscoe!
+Yes, and look at Jim!  I made Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty
+Company last New-Year's, with charge of every inch o' ground and every
+brick and every shingle and stick o' wood we own; and it's an example
+to any young man--or ole man, either--the way he took ahold of it.
+Last July we found out we wanted two more big warehouses at the Pump
+Works--wanted 'em quick.  Contractors said it couldn't be done; said
+nine or ten months at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way.
+What'd Jim do?  Took the contract himself; found a fellow with a new
+cement and concrete process; kept men on the job night and day, and
+stayed on it night and day himself--and, by George! we begin to USE
+them warehouses next week!  Four months and a half, and every inch
+fireproof!  I tell you Jim's one o' these fellers that make miracles
+happen!  Now, I don't say every young man can be like Jim, because
+there's mighty few got his ability, but every young man can go in and
+do his share.  This town is God's own country, and there's opportunity
+for anybody with a pound of energy and an ounce o' gumption.  I tell
+you these young business men I watch just do my heart good!  THEY
+don't set around on the back fence--no, sir!  They take enough
+exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball game once
+or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they're raisin' nice families,
+with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the work--because
+the work's got to go ON!  They're puttin' their life-blood into it, I
+tell you, and that's why we're gettin' bigger every  minute, and why
+THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin' to keep ON gettin'
+bigger!"
+
+He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then,
+observing  that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with
+his eyes still fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat
+plaintive, Sheridan was impelled to groan.  "Oh, Lord!" he said.
+"This is the way you always were.  I don't believe you understood a
+darn word I been sayin'!  You don't LOOK as if you did.  By George!
+it's discouraging!"
+
+"I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger," said Bibbs,
+bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively.  "I don't
+see just why--"
+
+"WHAT?" Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
+staring across it incredulously at his son.
+
+"I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?"
+
+"Great God!" shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
+clenched fist.  "A son of mine asks me that!  You go out and ask the
+poorest day-laborer you can find!  Ask him that question--"
+
+"I did once," Bibbs interrupted; "when I was in the machine-shop.
+I--"
+
+"Wha'd he say?"
+
+"He said, 'Oh, hell!'" answered Bibbs, mildly.
+
+"Yes, I reckon he would!" Sheridan swung away from the desk.  "I
+reckon he certainly would!  And I got plenty sympathy with him right
+now, myself!"
+
+"It's the same answer, then?"  Bibbs's voice was serious, almost
+tremulous.
+
+"Damnation!" Sheridan roared.  "Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,
+you ninny?  Did you ever hear the word Ambition?  Did you ever hear
+the word PROGRESS?"
+
+He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest
+surging, his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences.  "Now
+then," he said,  huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated,
+"what do you want to do?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What do you WANT to do, I said."
+
+Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered.  "What--what do--I--what--"
+
+"If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you
+do?"
+
+Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound
+shyness.  He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe
+of his shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit
+called to the desk in school.
+
+"What would you do?  Loaf?"
+
+"No, sir."  Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound
+it made was unquestionably a guilty sound.  "I suppose I'd--I'd--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose I'd try to--to write."
+
+"Write what?"
+
+"Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I see," said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
+putting upon himself.  "That is, you want to write, but you don't want
+to write anything of any account."
+
+"You think--"
+
+Sheridan got up again.  "I take my hat off to the man that can write
+a good ad," he said, emphatically.  "The best writin' talent in this
+country is right spang in the ad business to-day.  You buy a magazine
+for good writin'--look on the back of it!  Let me tell you I pay money
+for that kind o' writin'.  Maybe you think it's easy.  Just try it!
+I've tried it, and I can't do it.  I tell you an ad's got to be
+written so it makes people do the hardest thing in this world to GET
+'em to do:  it's got to make 'em give up their MONEY!  You talk about
+'poems and essays.'  I tell you when it comes to the actual skill
+o' puttin' words together so as to make things HAPPEN, R. T. Bloss,
+right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo
+Emerson ever knew in his whole life!"
+
+"You--you may be--" Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered
+in a cough.
+
+"Of COURSE I'm right!  And if it ain't just like you to want to take
+up with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is!  'Poems and
+essays'!  My Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work!  You can't pick up a
+newspaper without havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper
+on 'Jane Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club.  And
+'poetry'!  Why, look at Edith!  I expect that poem o' hers would set
+a pretty high-water mark for you, young man, and it's the only one
+she's ever managed to write in her whole LIFE!  When I wanted her to
+go on and write some more she said it took too much time.  Said it
+took months and months.  And Edith's a smart girl; she's got more
+energy in her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in
+your whole body, Bibbs.  Now look at the facts:  say she could turn
+out four or five poems a year and you could turn out maybe two.  That
+medal she got was worth about fifteen dollars, so there's your income
+--thirty dollars a year!  That's a fine success to make of your life!
+I'm not sayin' a word against poetry.  I wouldn't take ten thousand
+dollars right now for that poem of Edith's; and poetry's all right
+enough in its place--but you leave it to the girls.  A man's got to
+do a man's work in this world!"
+
+He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over,
+tapped Bibbs confidentially on the knee.  "This city's got the
+greatest future in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by
+themselves they're goin' to have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty
+fair share.  I love this town.  It's God's own footstool, and it's
+made money for me every day right along, I don't know how many years.
+I love it like I do my own  business, and I'd fight for it as quick
+as I'd fight for my own family.  It's a beautiful town.  Look at our
+wholesale district; look at any  district you want to; look at the
+park system we're puttin' through, and the boulevards and the public
+statuary.  And she grows.  God! how she grows!"  He had become
+intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity.  "Now, Bibbs, I can't take
+any of it--nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds--away with
+me in my shroud when I have to go.  But I want to leave my share in
+it to my boys.  I've worked for it; I've been a builder and a maker;
+and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever
+I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to grow.  I've built big,
+and I want the buildin' to go on.  And when my last hour comes I want
+to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're fit to
+take charge and go ON with it.  Bibbs, when that hour comes I want
+to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big things.
+Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made
+mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my
+boys."
+
+He leaned back, deeply moved.  "There!" he said, huskily.  "I've never
+spoken more what was in my heart in my life.  I do it because I want
+you to understand--and not think me a mean father.  I never had to
+talk that way to Jim and Roscoe.  They understood without any talk,
+Bibbs."
+
+"I see," said Bibbs.  "At least I think I do.  But--"
+
+"Wait a minute!"  Sheridan raised his hand.  "If you see the least bit
+in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son
+set here and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries.
+And you must understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys
+and have him come  back on me the way you did, and have to be sent
+to a sanitarium because he couldn't stand work.  Now, let's get right
+down to it, Bibbs.  I've had a whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney
+about you, one time another, and I reckon I understand your case just
+about as well as he does, anyway!  Now here, I'll be frank with you.
+I started you in harder than what I did the other boys, and that was
+for your own good, because I saw you needed to be shook up more'n
+they did.  You were always kind of moody and mopish--and you needed
+work that'd keep you on the jump.  Now, why did it make you sick
+instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of
+done?  I pinned ole Gurney down to it.  I says, 'Look here, ain't it
+really because he just plain hated it?'  'Yes,' he says, 'that's it.
+If he'd enjoyed it, it wouldn't 'a' hurt him.  He loathes it, and
+that affects his nervous system.  The more he tries it, the more he
+hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.'
+That ain't quite his words, but it's what he meant.  And that's about
+the way it is."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "that's about the way it is."
+
+"Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but
+to make you like it!"
+
+Bibbs shivered.  And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
+ghostly.  "I can't," he said, in a low voice.  "I can't."
+
+"Can't go back to the shop?"
+
+"No.  Can't like it.  I can't."
+
+Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone.  To his own view, he had
+reasoned exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than
+a father should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and
+mysterious stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic
+from childhood.  "By George, you will!" he cried.  "You'll go back
+there and you'll like it!  Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like
+it, and he says it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks
+as if it was about up to you not to hate it.  Well, Gurney's a fool!
+Hatin' work doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you,
+whether you hate it or not.  I've never made a mistake in a serious
+matter in my life, and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the
+first place.  And I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back
+there and vindicate my judgment.  Gurney says it's all 'mental
+attitude.'  Well, you're goin' to learn the right one!  He says in a
+couple more months this fool thing that's been the matter with you'll
+be disappeared completely and you'll be back in as good or better
+condition than you were before you ever went into the shop.  And right
+then is when you begin over--right in that same shop!  Nobody can call
+me a hard man or a mean father.  I do the best I can for my chuldern,
+and I take full responsibility for bringin' my sons up to be men.
+Now, so far, I've failed with you.  But I'm not goin' to keep ON
+failin'.  I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and I'm not
+goin' to begin with my own son.  I'm goin' to make a MAN of you.  By
+God! I am!"
+
+Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned.  "You say
+you give me a couple of months?" he said.
+
+Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk.  "Gurney said two months
+more would put you back where you were.  You go home and begin to get
+yourself in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are
+up!  Good-by!"
+
+"Good-by, sir," said Bibbs, meekly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the
+"lamidal" George had shown him upon his return, still bore the
+appearance of temporary quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no
+clear conception of himself as a permanent incumbent.  However,
+he had set upon the mantelpiece the two photographs that he owned:
+one, a "group" twenty years old--his father and mother, with Jim
+and Roscoe as boys--and the other a "cabinet" of Edith at sixteen.
+And upon a table were the books he had taken from his trunk:  Sartor
+Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque,  Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles.
+There were some other books in the trunk--a large one, which remained
+unremoved at the foot of the bed, adding to the general impression
+of transiency.  It contained nearly all the possessions as well as
+the secret life of Bibbs Sheridan, and Bibbs sat beside it, the day
+after his interview with his father, raking over a small collection
+of manuscripts in the top tray.  Some of these he glanced through
+dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but one made him smile.
+Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully began to read it.
+It was written on paper stamped "Hood Sanitarium," and bore the title,
+"Leisure."
+
+  A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if
+  he is running the train.  Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful
+  quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to
+  recommend him to the approbation of his superiors.  For a profession
+  adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness in thinking, I would
+  choose that of an invalid:  his money is time and he may spend it on
+  Olympus.  It will not suffice to be an amateur invalid.  To my way
+  of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all outward
+  purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
+  life.  His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he
+  must lie serene in his long chair in the sunshine.  The world must
+  be on the other side of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and
+  so high that he cannot hear the roaring of the furnace fires and the
+  screaming of the whistles.  Peace--
+
+Having read so far as the word "peace," Bibbs suffered an interruption
+interesting as a coincidence of contrast.  High voices sounded in the
+hall just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's
+quarrel was in progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's
+room, and continuing it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
+
+"Yes, you BETTER go home!" Bibbs heard his sister vociferating,
+shrilly.  "You better go home and keep your mind a little more on
+your HUSBAND!"
+
+"Edie, Edie!" he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
+
+"You see here!"  This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and
+tremulous.  "Don't you talk to me that way!  I came here to tell
+Mother Sheridan what I'd heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan
+if she thought she ought to, and I did it for your own good."
+
+"Yes, you did!"  And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly.  "Yes,
+you did!  YOU didn't have any other reason!  OH no!  YOU don't want
+to break it up between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--"
+
+"Edie, Edie!  Now, now!"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma!  I'd like to know, then, if she says her new
+friends tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come
+here, what about his not going to HER house.  How--"
+
+"I've explained that to Mother Sheridan."  Sibyl's voice indicated
+that she was descending the stairs.  "Married people are not the same.
+Some things that should be shielded from a young girl--"
+
+This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith.  "'Shielded
+from a young girl'!" she shrilled.  "You seem pretty willing to be
+the shield!  You look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield
+you are!"
+
+Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts
+at pacification were renewed.  "Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for
+your good, and you'd oughtn't to--"
+
+"Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone!  If you dare tell papa--"
+
+"Now, now!  I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--"
+
+"You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!" the girl cried,
+passionately.
+
+"Well, we'll see.  You just come back in your own room, and we'll--"
+
+"No!  I WON'T 'talk it over'!  Stop pulling me!  Let me ALONE!"  And
+Edith, flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open,
+swung round it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw
+herself, face down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she
+had no perception of Bibbs's presence in the room.  Gasping and
+sobbing in a passion of tears, she beat the coverlet and pillows
+with her clenched fists.  "Sneak!" she babbled aloud.  "Sneak!
+Snake-in-the-grass!  Cat!"
+
+Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly
+toward the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him;
+but some sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled,
+facing him.
+
+"Bibbs!  I thought I saw you go out awhile ago."
+
+"Yes.  I came back, though.  I'm sorry--"
+
+"Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?"
+
+"Only what you said in the hall.  You lie down again, Edith.  I'm
+going out."
+
+"No; don't go."  She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a
+sob, and repeated her request.  "Don't go.  I don't mind you; you're
+quiet, anyhow.  Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere.  I don't
+mind you at all, but I wish you'd sit down."
+
+"All right."  And he returned to his chair beside the trunk.  "Go
+ahead and cry all you want, Edith," he said.  "No harm in that!"
+
+"Sibyl told mamma--OH!" she began, choking.  "Mary Vertrees had mamma
+and Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had
+some women there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just
+laid herself out to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after
+'em ever since, and now she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby
+Lamhorn is so bad that, even though they like his family, none of the
+nice people in town would let him in their houses.  In the first
+place, it's a falsehood, and I don't believe a word of it; and in the
+second place I know the reason she did it, and, what's more, she KNOWS
+I know it!  I won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and all of
+you would think I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool
+he'd probably quit speaking to me.  But it's true!  Just you watch
+her; that's all I ask.  Just you watch that woman.  You'll see!"
+
+As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching "that woman."  Glancing
+from the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the
+old house next door.  She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked
+quickly up the path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of
+calling.  But he did not mention this to his sister, who, after
+delivering herself of a rather vague jeremiad upon the subject of her
+sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her own chamber, leaving him
+to his speculations.  The chief of these concerned the social
+elasticities of women.  Sibyl had just been a participant in a violent
+scene; she had suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to
+set her quivering  with resentment; and yet she elected to betake
+herself to the presence of people whom she knew no more than
+"formally."  Bibbs marveled.  Surely, he reflected, some traces of
+emotion must linger upon Sibyl's face or in her manner; she could not
+have ironed it all quite out in the three or four minutes it took her
+to reach the Vertreeses' door.
+
+And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
+wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving
+to master.  But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to
+exhibit anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the
+manner of a casual caller.  She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the
+sudden purpose that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious
+than she was finely intelligent.  For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a
+type Scriptural in its antiquity.  She was merely the idle and half-
+educated intriguer who may and does delude men, of course, and the
+best and dullest of her own sex as well, finding invariably strong
+supporters among these latter.  It is a type that has wrought some
+damage in the world and would have wrought greater, save for the
+check put upon its power by intelligent women and by its own "lack
+of perspective," for it is a type that never sees itself.  Sibyl
+followed her impulses with no reflection or question--it was like
+a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback.  She had not even
+the instinct to stop and consider her effect.  If she wished to make
+a certain impression she believed that she made it.  She believed
+that she was believed.
+
+"My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come
+down," Mary said, when they were seated.
+
+Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had
+been brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark
+addressed to her by any person with whom she was not on familiar
+terms.  It was intended partly as a courtesy and partly as the
+foundation for an impression of sweetness.
+
+"Just thought I'd fly in a minute," she said, continuing the cooing to
+relieve the last doubt of her gentiality.  "I thought I'd just behave
+like REAL country neighbors.  We are almost out in the country, so far
+from down-town, aren't we?  And it seemed such a LOVELY day!  I wanted
+to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that
+afternoon.  You see, coming here a bride and never having lived here
+before, I've had to depend on my husband's friends almost entirely,
+and I really've known scarcely anybody.  Mr. Sheridan has been so
+engrossed in business ever since he was a mere boy, why, of course--"
+
+She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
+
+"Of course," said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
+
+"Yes.  I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that
+afternoon," Sibyl went on.  "They're really delightful people.
+Indeed they are!  Yes--"
+
+She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
+another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite
+errand.  Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of
+abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the
+errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected
+with the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of
+cheerful ease.  There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness
+of hands.
+
+"Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some to the
+people here in town the other day," said Sibyl, repeating the cooing
+and protracting it.  "They said something that took ME by surprise!
+We were talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--"
+
+Mary interrupted her promptly.  "Do you mean 'mutual' to include my
+mother and me?" she asked.
+
+"Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean."
+
+"No," said Mary.  "We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend
+of ours."
+
+To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased.  "That's
+just the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!" she cried, with a vehemence that
+made Mary stare.  "Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families
+here speak of him!"
+
+Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her
+composure.  "I had the impression he was a friend of yours," she
+said; adding, hastily, "and your husband's."
+
+"Oh yes," said the caller, absently.  "He is, certainly.  A man's
+reputation for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to
+married people, of course.  It's where young girls are in question.
+THEN it may be very, very dangerous.  There are a great many things
+safe and proper for married people that might be awf'ly imprudent
+for a young girl.  Don't you agree, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"I don't know," returned the frank Mary.  "Do you mean that you intend
+to remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's
+doing so?"
+
+"That's it exactly!" was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl.
+"What I feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all
+suitable for Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it.
+I tell you," she cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, "her father
+ought to put his foot down!"
+
+Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and
+then retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one
+might catch a glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back
+into hiding under a bush.
+
+"Of course," said Sibyl, much more composedly, "I hardly need say
+that it's entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this.
+I'm as fond of Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help
+fretting about it.  It would break my heart to have Edith's life
+spoiled."
+
+This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear.  Sibyl tried to sing with
+pathos, but she flatted.
+
+And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the
+stress of some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not
+uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect
+obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the
+other flawed.  In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect
+consciousness of Mary.  The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely
+something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose--a Mary Vertrees
+who was incapable of penetrating that purpose.  Sibyl sat there
+believing that she was projecting the image of herself that she
+desired to project, never dreaming that with every word, every look,
+and every gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable
+truth to the clear eyes of Mary.  And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an
+overdressed woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as
+a pan, but possessed by emotions that appeared to be strong--perhaps
+even violent.  What those emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she
+began to suspect.
+
+"And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled," Sibyl continued.  "It would be a
+dreadful thing for the whole family.  She's the very apple of Father
+Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe.
+It would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like
+Robert Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if
+somebody doesn't tell him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might
+get his consent and hurry on the wedding before he finds out, and then
+it would be too late.  You see, Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for
+me to decide just what it's my duty to do."
+
+"I see," said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, "Does Miss Sheridan
+seem to--to care very much about him?"
+
+"He's deliberately fascinated her," returned the visitor, beginning
+to breathe quickly and heavily.  "Oh, she wasn't difficult!  She knew
+she wasn't in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people
+that were, and she thought he was one of 'em.  But that was only the
+start that made it easy for him--and he didn't need it.  He could have
+done it, anyway!"  Sibyl was launched now; her eyes were furious and
+her voice shook.  "He went after her deliberately, the way he does
+everything; he's as cold-blooded as a fish.  All he cares about is his
+own pleasure, and lately he's decided it would be pleasant to get hold
+of a piece of real money--and there was Edith!  And he'll marry her!
+Nothing on earth can stop him unless he finds out she won't HAVE any
+money if she marries him, and the only person that could make him
+understand that is Father Sheridan.  Somehow, that's got to be
+managed, because Lamhorn is going to hurry it on as fast as he can.
+He told me so last night.  He said he was going to marry her the first
+minute he could persuade her to it--and little Edith's all ready to be
+persuaded!"  Sibyl's eyes flashed green again.  "And he swore he'd do
+it," she panted.  "He swore he'd marry Edith Sheridan, and nothing on
+earth could stop him!"
+
+And then Mary understood.  Her lips parted and she stared at the
+babbling creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind,
+a canvas of unconscious Sibyl's painting.  Mary beheld it with pity
+and horror:  she saw Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a
+whisper, perhaps--for Roscoe might have been in the house, or servants
+might have heard.  She saw Sibyl entreating, beseeching, threatening
+despairingly, and Lamhorn--tired of her--first evasive, then brutally
+letting her have the truth; and at last, infuriated, "swearing" to
+marry her rival.  If Sibyl had not babbled out the word "swore" it
+might have been less plain.
+
+The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what she had confessed.
+"You see," she said, more quietly, "whatever's going to be done ought
+to be done right away.  I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd
+heard about Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard!  I told her right
+before Edith.  I think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness,
+because nobody can say it isn't for the girl's own good and what her
+best friend would do.  But Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and
+she's afraid to ever come right out with anything.  Father Sheridan's
+different.  Edith can get anything she wants out of him in the way of
+money or ordinary indulgence, but when it comes to a matter like this
+he'd be a steel rock.  If it's a question of his will against anybody
+else's he'd make his will rule if it killed 'em both!  Now, he'd never
+in the world let Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew his
+reputation.  So, you see, somebody's got to tell him.  It isn't a very
+easy position for me, is it, Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"No," said Mary, gravely.
+
+"Well, to be frank," said Sibyl, smiling, "that's why I've come
+to you."
+
+"To ME!"  Mary frowned.
+
+Sibyl rippled and cooed again.  "There isn't ANYBODY ever made such
+a hit with Father Sheridan in his life as you have.  And of course
+we ALL hope you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs
+of the family!"  (This sally with another and louder effect of
+laughter).  "And if it's MY duty, why, in a way, I think it might be
+thought yours, too."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Mary, sharply.
+
+"Listen," said Sibyl.  "Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with
+this story, and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn
+has a good reputation and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip,
+or suppose (what's most likely) she loses her temper and says I
+invented it, then what am I going to do?  Father Sheridan doesn't
+know Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter, and they're out of the question,
+anyway.  But suppose I could say:  'All right, if you want proof,
+ask Miss Vertrees.  She came with me, and she's waiting in the next
+room right now, to--"
+
+"No, no," said Mary, quickly.  "You mustn't--"
+
+"Listen just a minute more," Sibyl urged, confidingly.  She was on
+easy ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success.
+"You naturally don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel,
+but if YOU take part in it, it won't be one.  You don't know yourself
+what weight you carry over there, and no one would have the right
+to say you did it except out of the purest kindness.  Don't you see
+that Jim and his father would admire you all the more for it?  Miss
+Vertrees, listen!  Don't you see we OUGHT to do it, you and I?  Do you
+suppose Robert Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her?  Do you
+suppose a man like him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for
+the money?"  And again Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface.  "I tell
+you he's after nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old
+man's money-pile, over there, next door!  He'd marry ANYBODY to do it.
+Marry Edith?" she cried.  "I tell you he'd marry their nigger cook for
+THAT!"
+
+She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too
+vehement, but a glance at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that
+she had produced the effect she wished.  Mary was not looking at her;
+she was staring straight before her at the wall, her eyes wide and
+shining.  She became visibly a little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
+
+"After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's
+money-pile, over there, next door!"  The voice was vulgar, the words
+were vulgar--and the plain truth was vulgar!  How it rang in Mary
+Vertrees's ears!  The clear mirror had caught its own image clearly
+in the flawed one at last.
+
+Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter.  She offered her
+bargain.  "Now don't you worry," she said, sunnily, "about this
+setting Edith against you.  She'll get over it after a while, anyway,
+but if she tried to be spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you
+when you drop in over there, or managed so as to sort of leave you
+out, why, I've got a house, and Jim likes to come there.  I don't
+THINK Edith WOULD be that way; she's too crazy to have you take her
+around with the smart crowd, but if she DID, you needn't worry.
+And another thing--I guess you won't mind Jim's own sister-in-law
+speaking of it.  Of course, I don't know just how matters stand
+between you and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about as much alike as
+two brothers can be, and Roscoe was very slow making up his mind;
+sometimes I used to think he actually never WOULD.  Now, what I mean
+is, sisters-in-law can do lots of things to help matters on like
+that.  There's lots of little things can be said, and lots--"
+
+She stopped, puzzled.  Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet,
+and now, still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of
+explanation, or any other kind of word, and walked slowly to the
+open door and out of the room.
+
+Sibyl was a little taken aback.  She supposed Mary had remembered
+something neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant,
+and that she would return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess
+of absent-mindedness not to have excused herself, especially as her
+guest was talking.  And, Mary's return being delayed, Sibyl found
+time to think this unprefaced exit odder and ruder than she had first
+considered it.  There might have been more excuse for it, she thought,
+had she been speaking of matters less important--offering to do the
+girl all the kindness in her power, too!
+
+Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of
+her shoe; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory
+of the furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and
+engravings.  Then she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a
+window and stood looking out upon the brown lawn, then came back to
+the chair she had abandoned, and sat again.  There was no sound in
+the house.
+
+A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her
+face, and slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears.
+She looked at her watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed
+since she had looked at it before.
+
+She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she
+let herself softly out of the front door, and went across the street
+to her own house.
+
+Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily.  "Saw you from the
+window," he explained.  "You must find a lot to say to that old
+lady."
+
+"What old lady?"
+
+"Mrs. Vertrees.  I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the
+daughter come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then
+walk on up the street.  Don't stand out on the porch," he said,
+crossly.  "Come in here.  There's something it's come time I'll
+have to talk to you about.  Come in!"
+
+But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house
+and started.  He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting
+sun, staring fixedly.  "Something's the matter over there," he
+muttered, and  then, more loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he
+said, "What's the matter over there?"
+
+Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its highest
+speed, and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of
+calamity, and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street.
+Edith had followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be
+seen that she was crying bitterly.  She lifted both arms to Roscoe,
+summoning him.
+
+"By George!" gasped Roscoe.  "I believe somebody's dead!"
+
+And he started for the New House at a run.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon,
+and at about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from
+foreign parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with
+Sheridan and his colleagues.  Herr Favre, in spite of his French name,
+was a gentleman of Bavaria.  It was his first visit to our country,
+and Sheridan took pleasure in showing him the sights of the country's
+finest city.  They got into an open car at the main entrance of the
+Sheridan Building, and were driven first, slowly and momentously,
+through the wholesale district and the retail district; then more
+rapidly they inspected the packing-houses and the stock-yards; then
+skirmished over the "park system" and "boulevards"; and after that
+whizzed through the "residence section" on their way to the factories
+and foundries.
+
+"All cray," observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
+
+"'Cray'?" echoed Sheridan.  "I don't know what you mean.  'Cray'?"
+
+"No white," said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the long
+rows of houses on both sides of the street.  "No white lace window-
+curtains;  all cray lace window-curtains."
+
+"Oh.  I see!"  Sheridan laughed indulgently.  "You mean 'GRAY.'
+No, they ain't, they're white.  I never saw any gray ones."
+
+Herr Favre shook his head, much amused.  "There are NO white ones,"
+he said.  "There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white window-
+curtains, no white house, no white peeble!"  He pointed upward.
+"Smoke!"  Then he sniffed the air and clasped his nose between
+forefinger and thumb.  "Smoke!  Smoke ef'rywhere.  Smoke in your
+insites."  He tapped his chest.  "Smoke in your lunks!"
+
+"Oh! SMOKE!"  Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath
+and patently finding it delicious.  "You BET we got smoke!"
+
+"Exbensif!" said Herr Favre.  "Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics.  Maybe
+in summer it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it."
+
+Sheridan laughed uproariously.  "They know it means new spring hats
+for 'em!"
+
+"They must need many, too!" said the visitor.  "New hats, new all
+things, but nothing white.  In Munchen we could not do it; we are
+a safing peeble."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"In Munchen.  You say 'Munich.'"
+
+"Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip,
+and I tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was
+mighty dirty and mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel.
+Now comin' right down TO it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here
+in this town than in Munich?  I know you got more enterprise up there
+than the part of the old country I saw, and I know YOU'RE a live
+business man and you're associated with others like you, but when it
+comes to LIVIN' in a place, wouldn't you heap rather be here than over
+there?"
+
+"For me," said Herr Favre, "no.  Here I should not think I was living.
+It would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing
+else."
+
+"We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world.
+THEY like it."
+
+"Oh yes."  And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly.  "The first
+generation, they bring their Germany with them; then, after that,
+they are Americans, like you."  He tapped his host's big knee
+genially.  "You are patriot; so are they."
+
+"Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
+Farver!" Sheridan exclaimed, gaily.  "You certainly stand up for your
+own town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you
+would here.  Yes, SIR!  You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after
+you've seen our city!  It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I
+kind of admire you for it; every man ought to stick up for his own,
+even when he sees the other fellow's got the goods on him.  Yet I
+expect way down deep in your heart, Mr. Farver, you'd rather live
+right here than any place else in the world, if you had your choice.
+Man alive! this is God's country, Mr. Farver, and a blind man couldn't
+help seein' it!  You couldn't stand where you do in a business way and
+NOT see it.  Soho, boy!  Here we are.  This is the big works, and I'll
+show you something now that'll make your eyes stick out!"
+
+They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was
+personally conducted and personally instructed by the founder and
+president, the buzzing queen bee of those buzzing hives.
+
+"Now I'll take you for a spin in the country," said Sheridan, when
+at last they came out to the car again.  "We'll take a breezer."
+But, with his foot on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man
+who came out of the office smiling a greeting.  "Hello, young fellow!"
+Sheridan said, heartily.  "On the job, are you, Jimmie?  Ha! They
+don't catch you OFF of it very often, I guess, though I do hear you go
+automobile-ridin' in the country sometimes with a mighty fine-lookin'
+girl settin' up beside you!"  He roared with laughter, clapping his
+son upon the shoulder.  "That's all right with me--if it is with HER!
+So, Jimmie?  Well, when we goin' to move into your new warehouses?
+Monday?"
+
+"Sunday, if you want to," said Jim.
+
+"No!" cried his father, delighted.  "Don't tell me you're goin' to
+keep your word about dates!  That's no way to do contractin'!  Never
+heard of a contractor yet didn't want more time."
+
+"They'll be all ready for you on the minute," said Jim.  "I'm going
+over both of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof.
+I guess they'll pass inspection, too!"
+
+"Well, then, when you get through with that," said his father, "you
+go and take your girl out ridin'.  By George! you've earned it!  You
+tell her you stand high with ME!"  He stepped into the car, waving a
+waggish farewell, and when the wheels were in motion again, he turned
+upon his companion a broad face literally shining with pride.  "That's
+my boy Jimmie!" he said.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," said Herr Favre.
+
+"I got two o' the finest boys," said Sheridan, "I got two o' the
+finest boys God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver!  Jim's
+the oldest, and I tell you they got to get up the day before if they
+expect to catch HIM in bed!  My other boy, Roscoe, he's always to
+the good, too, but Jim's a wizard.  You saw them two new-process
+warehouses, just about finished?  Well, JIM built 'em.  I'll tell you
+about that, Mr. Farver."  And he recited this history, describing the
+new process at length; in fact, he had such pride in Jim's achievement
+that he told Herr Favre all about it more than once.
+
+"Fine young man, yes," repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters
+of an hour later.  They were many miles out in the open country by
+this time.
+
+"He is that!" said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially:  "I got
+a fine family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern.  I got a daughter now; you
+take her and put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY
+of 'em.  There's culture and refinement and society in this town by
+the car-load, and here lately she's been gettin' right in the thick
+of it--her and my daughter-in-law, both.  I got a mighty fine
+daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver.  I'm goin' to get you up for a meal with
+us before you leave town, and you'll see--and, well, sir, from all I
+hear the two of 'em been holdin' their own with the best.  Myself, I
+and the wife never had time for much o' that kind o' doin's, but it's
+all right and good for the chuldern; and my daughter she's always kind
+of taken to it.  I'll read you a poem she wrote when I get you up at
+the house.  She wrote it in school and took the first prize for poetry
+with it.  I tell you they don't make 'em any smarter'n that girl, Mr.
+Farver.  Yes, sir; take us all round, we're a pretty happy family;
+yes, sir.  Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet, and I haven't ever
+spoke to him and his wife about it--it's kind of a delicate matter--
+but it's about time the wife and I saw some gran'-chuldern growin' up
+around us.  I certainly do hanker for about four or five little curly-
+headed rascals to take on my knee.  Boys, I hope, o' course; that's
+only natural.  Jim's got his eye on a mighty splendid-lookin' girl;
+lives right next door to us.  I expect you heard me joshin' him about
+it back yonder.  She's one of the ole blue-bloods here, and I guess
+it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER!  She's one these girls that
+stand right up and look at you!  And pretty?  She's the prettiest
+thing you ever saw!  Good size, too; good health and good sense.
+Jim'll be just right if he gets her.  I must say it tickles ME to
+think o' the way that boy took ahold o' that job back yonder.  Four
+months and a half!  Yes, sir--"
+
+He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain
+the stranger throughout the long drive.  Darkness had fallen before
+they reached the city on their return, and it was after five when
+Sheridan allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where
+boys were shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
+
+"Now, good night, Mr. Farver," said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
+shake hands with his guest.  "Don't forget I'm goin' to come around
+and take you up to--Go on away, boy!"
+
+A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, "Extry!
+Secon' Extry.  Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT.  Extry!"
+
+"Get out!" laughed Sheridan.  "Who wants to read about accidents?
+Get out!"
+
+The boy moved away philosophically.  "Extry!  Extry!" he shrilled.
+"Three men killed!  Extry!  Millionaire killed!  Two other men killed!
+Extry!  Extry!"
+
+"Don't forget, Mr. Farver," Sheridan completed his interrupted
+farewells.  "I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner.
+I'll be here for you about half-past five to-morrow afternoon.  Hope
+you 'njoyed the drive much as I have.  Good night--good night!"  He
+leaned back, speaking to the chauffer.  "Now you can take me around
+to the Central City barber-shop, boy.  I want to get a shave 'fore
+I go up home."
+
+"Extry!  Extry!" screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds
+like bats in the dusk.  "Extry!  All about the horrable acciDENT!
+Extry!"  It struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many
+"Extras"; they printed "Extras" for all sorts of petty crimes and
+casualties.  It was a mistake, he decided, critically.  Crying "Wolf!"
+too often wouldn't sell the goods; it was bad business.  The papers
+would "make more in the long run," he was sure, if they published an
+"Extra" only when something of real importance happened.
+
+"Extry!  All about the hor'ble AX'nt!  Extry!" a boy squawked under
+his nose, as he descended from the car.
+
+"Go on away!" said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled.  He liked
+to see the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
+
+But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
+barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had
+thus cried his wares.
+
+"Say, Yallern," said this second, hoarse with awe, "'n't chew know
+who that IS?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It's SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Jeest!" cried the first, staring insanely.
+
+At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
+and Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
+barber.  The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was
+their habit to give him a "reception," his entrance being always
+the signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general
+excesses of briskness and gaiety.  But it was not so this evening.
+
+The shop was crowded.  Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men
+waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment.  "Extras" lay
+upon vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
+
+There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
+patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
+the door.  His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
+of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
+turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of
+amazing silence in the shop.
+
+The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau.
+His left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic
+section of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung
+poised above it, the razor motionless.  And then, roused from trance
+by the door's closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence.
+The barber remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or
+just after it--under which a man does not need to be shaved.
+
+He stepped forward, profoundly grave.  "I be through with this man
+in the chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone.
+"Yessuh."  And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly,
+"You goin' RESIGN?" he demanded in a fierce undertone.  "You goin'
+take Mist' Sheridan's coat?"  He sent an angry look round the shop,
+and the barbers, taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to
+work, the murmur of subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
+
+"You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan," said the head barber,
+gently.  "I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in."
+
+"Never mind," said Sheridan.  "Go on get through with your man."
+
+"Yessuh."  And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed
+by Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
+
+Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently.  Sheridan did not
+know what to make of it.  Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious
+demand for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had
+been imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by
+the odd look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
+
+Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of
+the shop, and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching
+quickly  shifted, furtive glances here and there.  He made this brief
+survey after wondering if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that
+day, or the night before; but there was no vacancy in either line.
+
+The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of
+the "Extra" there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it.
+The first of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
+
+  Fatally Faulty.  New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to
+  Death with Inventor.  Seven Escape When Crash Comes.  Death Claims--
+
+Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering
+the print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before
+him, pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
+
+"I've come for you, father," said Bibbs.  "Here's the boy with your
+coat and hat.  Put them on and come home."
+
+And even then Sheridan did not understand.  So secure was he in the
+strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
+calamity had befallen him.  But he was frightened.
+
+Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,
+but as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his
+son's sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood
+face to face.
+
+"What--what--"  His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it,
+he was so frightened.
+
+"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face.  "Young North Side
+millionaire insuntly killed!  Extry!"
+
+"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
+
+Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
+
+"And YOU come to tell me that?"
+
+Sheridan did not know what he said.  But in those first words and
+in the first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the
+unuttered cry of accusation:
+
+"Why wasn't it you?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
+days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
+in his mind:  the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and
+Bibbs wondered how many million times that had happened since men
+first made a word to name the sons of one mother.  Almost literally
+he had buried his strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces
+when he saw his dead son.  He had nothing to help him meet the shock,
+neither definite religion nor "philosophy" definite or indefinite.
+He could only beat his forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed
+with an ax, while his wife was helpless except to entreat him not to
+"take on," herself adding a continuous lamentation.  Edith, weeping,
+made truce with Sibyl and saw to it that the mourning garments were
+beyond criticism.  Roscoe was dazed, and he shirked, justifying
+himself curiously by saying he "never had any experience in such
+matters."  So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who became, during
+this dreadful little time, the master of the house; for as strange
+a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a death.  He met
+the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time for
+the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and he
+selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other
+things.  Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the
+rites with a picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs
+wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection--
+he divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely
+a consolation, but a satisfaction to his father.  So the Knights led
+the procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way
+to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines,
+plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the
+carriages pass between.
+
+"Mighty fine-lookin' men," said Sheridan, brokenly.  "They all--all
+liked him.  He was--"  His breath caught in a sob and choked him.
+"He was--a Grand Supreme Herald."
+
+Bibbs had divined aright.
+
+"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
+Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot.  All of the black group
+shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust."  Bibbs stood
+passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as
+a familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long,
+long time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation
+between himself and dust.  The machine-shop had brought him very
+close, and if he had to go back it would probably bring him closer
+still; so close--as Dr. Gurney predicted--that no one would be able
+to tell the difference between dust and himself.  And Sheridan, if
+Bibbs read him truly, would be all the more determined to "make a
+man" of him, now that there was a man less in the family.  To Bibbs's
+knowledge, no one and nothing had ever prevented his father from
+carrying through his plans, once he had determined upon them; and
+Sheridan was incapable of believing that any plan of his would not
+work out according to his calculations.  His nature unfitted him to
+accept failure.  He had the gift of terrible persistence, and with
+unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would hold to
+that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who understood very well, in his
+passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might make,
+not a man, but dust of him.  But he had no shudder for the thought.
+
+He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought.  The
+truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted:  he had
+so thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings
+that no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some
+of them, especially those which concerned himself.  But he had not
+hidden his feelings about his father where they could not be found.
+He was strange to his father, but his father was not strange to him.
+He knew that Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief
+that they would bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and
+whatever the result was to be, the son had no bitterness.  Far
+otherwise, for as he looked at the big, woeful figure, shaking and
+tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid hands upon Bibbs's throat.
+Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering; Edith wept audibly; Mrs.
+Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her husband; but Bibbs knew
+that his father was the one who cared.
+
+It was over.  Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels,
+and Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward
+the line of waiting carriages.  Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay
+and see the grave filled; the rest were to go.  The groups began
+to move away over the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive;
+and one by one the carriages filled and departed, the horses setting
+off at a walk.  Bibbs gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that
+his father kept looking back as he went toward the carriage, and that
+was a thing he did not want to see.  But after a little while there
+were no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing
+up, saw that every one had gone.  A coupe had been left for him,
+the driver dozing patiently.
+
+The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about
+it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood
+looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-
+seeming hillock beneath the darkening November sky.  "It's too bad!"
+he half whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was
+that it was too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go.
+For this was his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw
+Mary Vertrees standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.
+
+She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on
+a slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude
+of the barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our
+graveyards:  urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-
+carved angels and shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts,
+all lifting--in unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the
+sky.  Against such a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his
+figure, in black, so long and slender, and his face so long and thin
+and white; nor was the undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the
+shabby driver dozing on the box and the shaggy horses standing
+patiently in attitudes without hope and without regret.  But for
+Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting--she was a vivid, living
+creature of a beautiful world.  And a graveyard is not the place for
+people to look charming.
+
+She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and
+confused than Bibbs.  In "Edith's" poem he had declared his intention
+of hiding his heart "among the stars"; and in his boyhood one day he
+had successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile.  He had been no
+comrade of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent
+period were only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood
+Sanitarium.  All his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself--he was
+but a shy onlooker in the world.  Nevertheless, the startled gaze he
+bent upon the unexpected lady before him had causes other than his
+shyness and her unexpectedness.  For Mary Vertrees had been a shining
+figure in the little world of late given to the view of this humble
+and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts
+beating faster than those of the actors in the spectacle.  Thus with
+Bibbs now.  He started and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible
+awkwardness, his fingers fumbling at his forehead before they found
+the brim.
+
+"Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, "I'm afraid you'll have to take me home
+with you.  I--"  She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness
+of her own.
+
+"Why--why--yes," Bibbs stammered.  "I'll--I'll be de--Won't you get
+in?"
+
+In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words.
+Then Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed,
+closing the door.
+
+"You're very kind," she said, somewhat breathlessly.  "I should have
+had to walk, and it's beginning to get dark.  It's three miles, I
+think."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs.  "It--it is beginning to get dark.  I--I noticed
+that."
+
+"I ought to tell you--I--" Mary began, confusedly.  She bit her lip,
+sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure.  "It must seem odd,
+my--"
+
+"No, no!" Bibbs protested, earnestly.  "Not in the--in the least."
+
+"It does, though," said Mary.  "I had not intended to come to the
+cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house
+came and whispered to me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your
+sister sent him.  So I came.  But when we reached here I--oh, I felt
+that perhaps I--"
+
+Bibbs nodded gravely.  "Yes, yes," he murmured.
+
+"I got out on the opposite side of the carriage," she continued.
+"I mean opposite from--from where all of you were.  And I wandered
+off over in the other direction; and I didn't realize how little time
+it takes.  From where I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at
+least I didn't notice them.  So when I got back, just now, you were
+the only one here.  I didn't know the other people in the carriage
+I came in, and of course they didn't think to wait for me.  That's
+why--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, "I--"  And that seemed all he had to say just then.
+
+Mary looked out through the dusty window.  "I think we'd better be
+going home, if you please," she said.
+
+"Yes," Bibbs agreed, not moving.  "It will be dark before we get
+there."
+
+She gave him a quick little glance.  "I think you must be very tired,
+Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be," she said, gently.
+"If you'll let me, I'll--"  And without explaining her purpose she
+opened the door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
+
+Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
+
+"Driver!" she called, in her clear voice, loudly.  "Driver!  We'd
+like to start, please!  Driver!  Stop at the house just north of Mr.
+Sheridan's, please."  The wheels began to move, and she leaned back
+beside Bibbs once more.  "I noticed that he was asleep when we got
+in," she said.  "I suppose they have a great deal of night work."
+
+Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice.
+"I've never been able to apologize quickly," he said, with his
+accustomed slowness, "because if I try to I stammer.  My brother
+Roscoe whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his
+slate-pencil.  It took me so long to tell him it was an accident,
+he finished before I did."
+
+Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling,
+gentle voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the
+motionless state of their vehicle was an "accident."  She had formed
+a casual impression of him, not without sympathy, but at once she
+discovered that he was unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings
+of him.  And suddenly she saw a picture he had not intended to paint
+for sympathy:  a sturdy boy hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the
+sickly boy unresentful.  Not that picture alone; others flashed before
+her.  Instantaneously she had a glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his
+life.  She had a queer feeling, new to her experience, of knowing him
+instantly.  It startled her a little; and then, with some surprise,
+she realized that she was glad he had sat so long, after getting into
+the coupe, before he noticed that it had not started.  What she did
+not realize, however, was that she had made no response to his
+apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates, neither having
+spoken again.
+
+Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was
+silence.  The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled
+with a rich presence for him; and presently it was so dark that
+neither of the two could see the other, nor did even their garments
+touch.  But neither had any sense of being alone.  The wheels creaked
+steadily, rumbling  presently on paved streets; there were the
+sounds, as from a distance, of the plod-plod of the horses; and
+sometimes the driver became audible, coughing asthmatically, or
+saying, "You, JOE!" with a spiritless flap of the whip upon an
+unresponsive back.  Oblongs of light from the lamps at street-corners
+came swimming into the interior of the coupe and, thinning rapidly to
+lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness.  And yet neither of
+these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan's funeral broke the
+silence.
+
+It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late.  Abruptly
+she realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of
+her companion and not talking to him.  "Mr. Sheridan," she began, not
+knowing what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as
+she realized the queerness of this drive--"Mr. Sheridan, I--"
+
+The coupe stopped.  "You, JOE!" said the driver, reproachfully,
+and climbed down and opened the door.
+
+"What's the trouble?" Bibbs inquired.
+
+"Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir."
+
+Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it
+mustn't be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
+
+"What?" Bibbs demanded.
+
+"We're there, sir," said the driver, sympathetically.  "Next house
+north of Mr. Sheridan's."
+
+Bibbs descended to the curb.  "Why, yes," he said.  "Yes, you seem to
+be right."  And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front
+windows of Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
+
+"Let me help you," said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and
+she was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
+
+"Oh no," she murmured.  "I think I can--"  She meant that she could
+get out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had
+already accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the
+sentence.
+
+"You, JOE!" cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box.  And he
+rumbled away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
+
+"Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, stiffly.
+She did not offer her hand.  "Good night."
+
+"Good night," Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked
+beside her to the door.  Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran.
+Realization of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her,
+beginning to shock her; she stepped aside from the light that fell
+through the glass panels of the door and withheld her hand as it
+touched the old-fashioned bell-handle.
+
+"I'm quite safe, thank you," she said, with a little emphasis.
+"Good night."
+
+"Good night," said Bibbs, and went obediently.  When he reached the
+street he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
+
+Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out
+from the pavement to cross the street.  They were Roscoe and his wife.
+
+"Where are your eyes, Bibbs?" demanded Roscoe.  "Sleep-walking, as
+usual?"
+
+But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm.  "Come over to our house for
+a little while, Bibbs," she urged.  "I want to--"
+
+"No, I'd better--"
+
+"Yes.  I want you to.  Your father's gone to bed, and they're all
+quiet over there--all worn out.  Just come for a minute."
+
+He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with
+real feeling:  "'All worn out!'  Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs!
+And I don't wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it.  You
+mustn't get down sick again.  I'm going to make you take a little
+brandy."
+
+He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and
+was grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the
+decanters on the sideboard.  Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much
+heavier libation in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl
+leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and
+recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths.  She pressed
+Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted,
+she went with him to the front door.  He opened it, and she said:
+
+"Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you.
+How did you happen to be there?"
+
+"I had only been to the door," he said.  "Good night, Sibyl."
+
+"Wait," she insisted.  "We saw you coming out."
+
+"I wasn't," he explained, moving to depart.  "I'd just brought Miss
+Vertrees home."
+
+"What?" she cried.
+
+"Yes," he said, and stepped out upon the porch, "that was it.  Good
+night, Sibyl."
+
+"Wait!" she said, following him across the threshold.  "How did that
+happen?  I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the--
+the--"  She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
+
+"I did wait.  Miss Vertrees was there," he said, reluctantly.  "She
+had walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were
+leaving.  When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one
+left."
+
+Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes.  She spoke with a slow
+breathlessness.  "And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!"
+
+Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand
+ineffectually over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the
+house, hurling the door shut behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Bibbs went home pondering.  He did not understand why Sibyl had
+laughed.  The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond
+suspicion, but it seemed to him that she had only affected the effort
+to suppress it and that she wished it to be significant.  Significant
+of what?  And why had she wished to impress upon him the fact of her
+overwhelming amusement?  He found no answer, but she had succeeded in
+disturbing him, and he wished that he had not encountered her.
+
+At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering
+about the house, several mournfully admiring the "Bay of Naples,"
+and others occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited
+for trains.  Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness,
+but Bibbs interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives
+summoned to the dining-room for food.  One great-uncle, old Gideon
+Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search
+of him.  He ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at
+last by accident.  Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs
+heard a murmurous sound, and paused to listen.  The sound proved to be
+a quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
+
+"The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away!  We got to remember
+that; we got to remember that!  I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-
+gittin' along, and I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son
+the Lord give me, and He has taken all away.  For the Lo-ord givuth
+and the Lo-ord takuth away!  Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite,
+James.  Bildad the Shuhite says, 'He shall have neither son nor nephew
+among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings.'  Bildad the
+Shuhite--"
+
+Bibbs opened the door softly.  His father was lying upon the bed,
+in his underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by,
+swinging backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long
+white beard and gazing at the ceiling as he talked.  Bibbs beckoned
+him urgently, but Uncle Gideon paid no attention.
+
+"Bildad the Shuhite spake and his says, 'If thy children have sinned
+against Him and He have cast them away--'"
+
+There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows
+rattled.  The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move,
+but Uncle Gideon leaped from his chair.  "My God!" he cried.
+"What's that?"
+
+There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall.
+Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down,
+discovered the source of the disturbance.  Gideon's grandson, a boy
+of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking
+"flash-lights" of the Moor.  Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's
+explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad
+the Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument
+persuaded him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed,
+after closing the door of his father's room.
+
+He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing
+several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs;
+and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile
+was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.
+They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing
+to his own room.
+
+He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went
+to the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where
+Mary Vertrees lived.  Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small
+note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to
+write:
+
+  Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at
+  anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the
+  cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
+  out of hearing, it strikes up, "Darktown is Out To-night."  That
+  is natural--but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
+  of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
+  something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of
+  it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it
+  does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not
+  out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a
+  man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look
+  beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
+  liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
+  if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would
+  she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or
+  timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
+  drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to
+  listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence
+  is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
+  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.
+
+  Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
+  inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising
+  from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
+  than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady--
+  but there ARE!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
+  be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a
+  great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that
+  one should begin to speak.
+
+  No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
+  the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful
+  you do not understand how the dead COULD die.  How could they let
+  themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.
+  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
+  Silence CAN be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world
+  should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
+  of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
+  miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
+  Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
+  heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
+  even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
+  irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
+  to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
+  sounds, if he only barked.  If he did not even try, but sat every
+  step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
+  frozen fish.  And she might be right.  She might be right if she
+  thought him about as pleasant a companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
+
+Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk.  Then, after a
+period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-
+gown and slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's
+door.  Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier
+in the evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food
+was untouched.  Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several
+minutes.  There came no sound from within, and he went back to his
+own room and to bed.
+
+In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
+experience.  Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little
+pause--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun.  It is
+a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person
+experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or
+sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation.  It is the
+moment, as we say, before we "remember"; and for the first time in
+Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a vague happiness.  He woke to a
+sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday.
+But when the next moment  brought him his memory, he found nothing
+that could explain his exhilaration.  On the contrary, under the
+circumstances it seemed grotesquely unwarranted.  However, it was a
+brief visitation and was gone before he had finished dressing.  It
+left a little trail, the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle
+of it, which remained unsolved.  And, in fact, waking happily in the
+morning is not usually the result of a drive home from a funeral.
+No wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs Sheridan!
+
+His father had gone when he came down-stairs.  "Went on down to 's
+office, jes' same," Jackson informed him.  "Came sat breakfas'-table,
+all by 'mself; eat nothin'.  George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n'
+eat a thing.  Yessuh, went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do.
+Yessuh, I reckon putty much ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta
+do."
+
+It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right.  The day passed as other days
+had passed.  Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan
+cried a little, now and then, but no other external difference was to
+be seen.  Edith was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch
+proved herself able to argue with her mother upon the propriety of
+receiving calls in the earliest stages of "mourning."  Lunch was as
+usual--for Jim and his father had always lunched down-town--and the
+afternoon was as usual.  Bibbs went for his drive, and his mother
+went with him, as she sometimes did when the weather was pleasant.
+Altogether, the usualness of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
+
+During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's
+childhood.  "But you wouldn't remember about that," she said, after
+narrating an episode.  "You were too little.  He was always a good
+boy, just like that.  And he'd save whatever papa gave him, and put
+it in the bank.  I reckon it'll just about kill your father to put
+somebody in his place as president of the Realty Company, Bibbs.  I
+know he can't move Roscoe over; he told me last week he'd already put
+as much on Roscoe as any one man could handle and not go crazy.  Oh,
+it's a pity--"  She stopped to wipe her eyes.  "It's a pity you didn't
+run more with Jim, Bibbs, and kind o' pick up his ways.  Think what
+it'd meant to papa now!  You never  did run with either Roscoe or Jim
+any, even before you got sick.  Of course, you were younger; but it
+always DID seem queer--and you three bein' brothers like that.  I
+don't believe I ever saw you and Jim sit down together for a good talk
+in my life."
+
+"Mother, I've been away so long," Bibbs returned, gently.  "And since
+I came home I--"
+
+"Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs," she said.  "Jim ain't been home
+much of an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin'
+and goin' to the theater and places, and often not even at the house
+for dinner.  Right the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner
+at some miser'ble rest'rant down by the Pump Works, he was so set on
+overseein' the night work and gettin' everything finished up right to
+the minute he told papa he would.  I reckon you might 'a' put in more
+time with Jim if there'd been more opportunity, Bibbs.  I expect you
+feel almost as if you scarcely really knew him right well."
+
+"I suppose I really didn't, mother.  He was busy, you see, and I
+hadn't much to say about the things that interested him, because I
+don't know much about them."
+
+"It's a pity!  Oh, it's a pity!" she moaned.  "And you'll have to
+learn to know about 'em NOW, Bibbs!  I haven't said much to you,
+because I felt it was all between your father and you, but I honestly
+do believe it will just kill him if he has to have any more trouble
+on top of all this!  You mustn't LET him, Bibbs--you mustn't!  You
+don't know how he's grieved over you, and now he can't stand any more
+--he just can't!  Whatever he says for you to do, you DO it, Bibbs,
+you DO it!  I want you to promise  me you will."
+
+"I would if I could," he said, sorrowfully.
+
+"No, no!  Why can't you?" she cried, clutching his arm.  "He wants
+you to go back to the machine-shop and--"
+
+"And--'like it'!" said Bibbs.
+
+"Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit.  Dr. Gurney said it
+wouldn't hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said
+that himself, Bibbs.  So why can't you do it?  Can't you do that much
+for your father?  You ought to think what he's done for YOU.  You got
+a beautiful house to live in; you got automobiles to ride in; you got
+fur coats and warm clothes; you been taken care of all your life.  And
+you don't KNOW how he worked for the money to give all these things
+to you!  You don't DREAM what he had to go through and what he risked
+when we were startin' out in life; and you never WILL know!  And now
+this blow has fallen on him out of a clear sky, and you make it out to
+be a hardship to do like he wants you to!  And all on earth he asks is
+for you to go back to the work in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt
+you!  That's all he asks.  Look, Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home,
+but before we get there I want you to promise me that you'll do what
+he asks you to.  Promise me!"
+
+In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see
+him better, and it blew out on the smoky wind.  He readjusted it for
+her before he spoke.
+
+"I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother," he said.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, satisfied.  "That's a good boy!  That's all
+I wanted you to say."
+
+"Don't give me any credit," he said, ruefully.  "There isn't anything
+else for me to do."
+
+"Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!"
+
+"No, no," he soothed her.  "We'll have to begin to make the spirit
+a cheerful one.  We may--"  They were turning into their own driveway
+as he spoke, and he glanced at the old house next door.  Mary
+Vertrees was visible in the twilight, standing upon the front steps,
+bareheaded, the door open behind her.  She bowed gravely.
+
+"'We may'--what?" asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+"You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'."
+
+"Did I?" said Bibbs, blankly.  "Well, what WERE we saying?"
+
+"Of all the queer boys!" she cried.  "You always were.  Always!
+You haven't forgot what you just promised me, have you?"
+
+"No," he answered, as the car stopped.  "No, the spirit will be as
+cheerful as the flesh will let it, mother.  It won't do to behave
+like--"
+
+His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she
+failed to here his final words.
+
+"Behave like who, Bibbs?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+But she was fretful in her grief.  "You said it wouldn't do to behave
+like SOMEBODY.  Behave like WHO?"
+
+"It was just nonsense," he explained, turning to go in.  "An obscure
+person I don't think much of lately."
+
+"Behave like WHO?" she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
+insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell
+Dr. Gurney about it.
+
+"Like Bildad the Shuhite!" was what Bibbs said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The outward usualness of things continued after dinner.  It was
+Sheridan's custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the
+library, while his wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old
+habit) or allowed herself to be repeatedly baffled by one of the
+simpler forms of solitaire.  To-night she did neither, but sat in
+her customary chair, gazing at the fire, while Sheridan let the
+unfolded paper rest upon his lap, though now and then he lifted it,
+as if to read, and let it fall back upon his knees again.  Bibbs
+came in noiselessly and sat in a corner, doing nothing; and from a
+"reception-room" across the hall an indistinct vocal murmur became
+just audible at intervals.  Once, when this murmur grew louder,
+under stress of some irrepressible merriment, Edith's voice could be
+heard--"Bobby, aren't you awful!" and Sheridan glanced across at his
+wife appealingly.
+
+She rose at once and went into the "reception-room"; there was a
+flurry of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith
+and her suitor changing quarters to a more distant room.  Mrs.
+Sheridan returned to her chair in the library.
+
+"They won't bother you any more, papa," she said, in a comforting
+voice.  "She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this
+evening, and I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she
+said she'd already told him he could."  She paused, then added, rather
+guiltily:  "I got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much
+as he used to.  Maybe--maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa."  And as
+Sheridan nodded solemnly, she concluded, in haste:  "Don't say I said
+to.  I might be wrong about it, anyway."
+
+He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
+Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
+brought tears.  "That Miss Vertrees was a good girl," she said.  "SHE
+was all right."
+
+Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of
+thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
+
+"Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?" she
+faltered.  "Did you--"
+
+He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.
+"I fixed it," he said, in a husky voice.  "I moved Cantwell up, and
+put Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among
+the four men with salaries high enough to take it."  He went to her,
+put his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous
+breath.  "It's my bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up."  He dropped the hand
+from her shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door
+he stopped and spoke again, without turning to look at her.  "The
+Realty Company'll go right on just the same," he said.  "It's like--
+it's like sand, mamma.  It puts me in mind of chuldern playin' in a
+sand-pile.  One of 'em sticks  his finger in the sand and makes a
+hole, and another of 'em'll pat the place with his hand, and all the
+little grains of sand run in and fill it up and settle against one
+another; and then, right away it's flat on top again, and you can't
+tell there ever was a hole there.  The Realty Company'll go on all
+right, mamma.  There ain't anything anywhere, I reckon, that wouldn't
+go right on--just the same."
+
+And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy
+tread upon the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
+"It's so forlone," she said, chokingly.  "That's the first time he
+spoke since he came in the house this evening.  I know it must 'a'
+hurt him to hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn.  She'd oughtn't to
+let him come, right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't
+to done it!  She just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares
+me.  You heard what Sibyl said the other day, and--and you heard
+what--what--"
+
+"What Edith said to Sibyl?"  Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
+
+"We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!" she wailed.  "Oh, it looks
+as if movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck!
+It scares me!"  She put both her hands over her face.  "Oh, Bibbs,
+Bibbs!  if you only wasn't so QUEER!  If you could only been a kind
+of dependable son!  I don't know what we're all comin' to!"  And,
+weeping, she followed her husband.
+
+Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man
+who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called
+"the smoking-room"--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn.  They looked up
+in no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to
+a less conspicuous adjacency.
+
+"Good evening," said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a
+leather easy-chair near them.
+
+"What is it?" asked Edith, plainly astonished.
+
+"Nothing," he returned, smiling.
+
+She frowned.  "Did you want something?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing in the world.  Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I
+sha'n't be going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be
+anybody left for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn."
+
+"'CHAT with'!" she echoed, incredulously.
+
+"I can talk about almost anything," said Bibbs with an air of genial
+politeness.  "It doesn't matter to ME.  I don't know much about
+business--if that's what you happened to be talking about.  But you
+aren't in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn?"
+
+"Not now," returned Lamhorn, shortly.
+
+"I'm not, either," said Bibbs.  "It was getting cloudier than usual,
+I noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest.
+Rain to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of
+which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he
+sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as
+if implying that it was their turn to speak.  Edith returned his
+gaze with a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr.
+Lamhorn was obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate
+as possible in presenting the weather as a topic.  Bibbs had
+perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in his mind at any time except
+"personalities"--he could talk about people and he could make love.
+Bibbs, wishing to be courteous, offered the weather.
+
+Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude
+in the leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent
+fixture for the rest of the evening.  There was not reason to hope
+that he would move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking
+silly.
+
+"I was just going," he said, rising.
+
+"Oh NO!" Edith cried, sharply.
+
+"Yes.  Good night!  I think I--"
+
+"Too bad," said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
+while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall.  She
+heard Bibbs offering to "help" Lamhorn with his overcoat and the
+latter rather curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure
+being followed by the closing of the outer door.  She ran into the
+hall.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" she cried, furiously.  "What do you
+MEAN?  How did you dare come in there when you knew--"
+
+Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up
+the stairs, sobbing.  She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs
+came up, a few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
+
+"Oh, Bibbs," she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't
+to distress your sister!  She says you drove that young man right
+out of the house.  You'd ought to been more considerate."
+
+Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
+naive shadow motionless across its threshold.  "Yes," he said.  "He
+doesn't appear to be much of a 'man's man.'  He ran at just a glimpse
+of one."
+
+Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: "You call yourself
+one?"
+
+"No, no," he answered.  "I said, 'just a glimpse of one.'  I didn't
+claim--"  But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
+
+"There," he said, sighing.  "That's almost the first time in my life
+I ever tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly
+in what I tried to do.  As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!"
+
+"You hurt her feelin's," she groaned.  "You must 'a' gone at it too
+rough, Bibbs."
+
+He looked upon her wanly.  "That's my trouble, mother," he murmured.
+"I'm a plain, blunt fellow.  I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man."
+
+For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness.  "Hush your
+nonsense!" she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
+appearing.  "You go to bed."
+
+He kissed her and obeyed.
+
+
+Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-
+table.
+
+"You mustn't do that under a misapprehension," he warned her, when
+they were alone in the dining-room.
+
+"Do what under a what?" she asked.
+
+"Speak to me.  I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'"
+he told her, gravely.  "I have a prejudice against that young man."
+
+She laughed.  "I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
+prejudices against!"  In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
+implores.  "Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR
+influence with papa against him!"  And she laughed louder.
+
+"Listen," he said, with peculiar earnestness.  "I'll tell you now,
+because--because I've decided I'm one of the family."  And then,
+as if the earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further,
+he continued, in his usual tone, "I'm drunk with power, Edith."
+
+"What do you want to tell me?" she demanded, brusquely.
+
+"Lamhorn made love to Sibyl," he said.
+
+Edith hooted. "SHE did to HIM!  And because you overheard that spat
+between us the other day when I the same as accused her of it, and
+said something like that to you afterward--"
+
+"No," he said, gravely.  "I KNOW."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
+Lamhorn--"
+
+Edith screamed with laughter.  "You were with ROSCOE--and you heard
+Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!"
+
+"No.  I heard them quarreling."
+
+"You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!" she cried.  "You say he made love
+to her because you heard them quarreling!"
+
+"That's it.  If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by
+the way they quarrel."
+
+"You'll kill me, Bibbs!  What were they quarreling about?"
+
+"Nothing.  That's how I knew.  People who quarrel over nothing!--it's
+always certain--"
+
+Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery.  "You
+ought to know.  You've had so much experience, yourself!"
+
+"I haven't any, Edith," he said.  "My life has been about as exciting
+as an incubator chicken's.  But I look out through the glass at
+things."
+
+"Well, then," she said, "if you look out through the glass you must
+know what effect such stuff would have upon ME!"  She rose, visibly
+agitated.  "What if it WAS true?" she demanded, bitterly.  "What if
+it was true a hundred times over?  You sit there with your silly face
+half ready to giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories
+like that, about Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to
+death, and you think it matters to ME?  What if I already KNEW all
+about their 'quarreling'?  What if I understood WHY she--"  She broke
+off with a violent gesture, a sweep of her arm extended at full
+length, as if she hurled something to the ground.  "Do you think
+a girl that really cared for a man would pay any attention to THAT?
+Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!"
+
+He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.
+She met it with unwavering pride.  Finally he nodded slowly, as if she
+had spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said.  "I won't come into the smoking-room again.  I'm
+sorry, Edith.  Nobody can make you see anything now.  You'll never see
+until you see for yourself.  The rest of us will do better to keep out
+of it--especially me!"
+
+"That's sensible," she responded, curtly.  "You're most surprising
+of all when you're sensible, Bibbs."
+
+"Yes," he sighed.  "I'm a dull dog.  Shake hands and forgive me,
+Edith."
+
+Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and
+George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was
+waiting there, he announced.  And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but
+friendly touch upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking,
+and left her.
+
+Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he
+merely glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in.  He was
+not over fifty, in spite of Sheridan's habitual "ole Doc Gurney."
+He was gray, however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always
+he looked drowsy.
+
+"Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs," he said,
+not rising.  "Wants me to 'look you over' again.  Come around here
+in front of me--between me and the fire.  I want to see if I can
+see through you."
+
+"You mean you're too sleepy to move," returned Bibbs, complying.
+"I think you'll notice that I'm getting worse."
+
+"Taken on about twelve pounds," said Gurney.  "Thirteen, maybe."
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"Well, it won't do."  The doctor rubbed his eyelids.  "You're so much
+better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
+where you are.  You come down to my place this afternoon.  Walk down
+--all the way.  I suppose you know why your father wants to know."
+
+Bibbs nodded.  "Machine-shop."
+
+"Still hate it?"
+
+Bibbs nodded again.
+
+"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted.  "Yes, I expect it'll make
+a lump in your gizzard again.  Well, what do you say?  Shall I tell
+him you've got the old lump there yet?  You still want to write,
+do you?"
+
+"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully.  "My kind of writing!"
+
+"Yes," the doctor agreed.  "I suppose it you broke away and lived on
+roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention
+of editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five
+hundred dollars a year by the time you're fifty."
+
+"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
+
+"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily.  "You
+don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise
+and jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'
+You'd like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and
+bask on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets.  You'd grow
+fat on it and have a delicate little life all to yourself.  Well, what
+do you say?  I can lie like sixty, Bibbs!  Shall I tell your father
+he'll lose another of his boys if you don't go to Sicily?"
+
+"I don't want to go to Sicily," said Bibbs.  "I want to stay right
+here."
+
+The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his
+patient a sharp glance.  "It's a risk," he said.  "I think we'll find
+you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.
+Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical
+as you used to be.  But I warn you:  I think the shop will knock you
+just as it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs."
+
+He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids.  "Well, when we go
+over you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?"
+
+"Tell him I'm ready," said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
+
+"Oh no," Gurney laughed.  "Not quite yet; but you may be almost.
+We'll see.  Don't forget I said to walk down."
+
+And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
+informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be
+pleasing.  "Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce," he said,
+gloomily, to his next patient when Bibbs had gone.  "Doctor tells a
+man he's well, and that's his death sentence, likely.  Dam' funny
+world!"
+
+Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon
+this point.  In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on
+any point, so discouraging was the young man's improvement.  It was a
+dingy afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight,
+but to his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated
+with the smell they could no longer detect it.  Nearly all of them
+walked hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than
+half aware of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under
+a vague yet constant strain.  They were all lightly powdered, inside
+and out, with fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they
+were unaware of that also.  They did not even notice that they saw the
+smoke, though the thickened air was like a shrouding mist.  And when
+Bibbs passed the new "Sheridan Apartments," now almost completed, he
+observed that the marble of the vestibule was already streaky with
+soot, like his gloves, which were new.
+
+That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the
+way from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought
+which continued till he reached the vicinity of his home.  His route
+was by a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and
+in his preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so
+that, having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House
+from the north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot
+Mr. Vertrees's daughter emerged from the front door and walked
+thoughtfully down the path to the old picket gate.  She was
+unconscious of the approach of the pedestrian from the north, and did
+not see him until she had opened the gate and he was almost beside
+her.  Then she looked up, and as she saw him she started visibly.
+And if this thing had happened to Robert Lamhorn, he would have had
+a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts.
+Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought.  He would have said:
+"You jumped because you were thinking of me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Mary was the picture of a lady flustered.  She stood with one hand
+closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction
+Bibbs was walking.  There appeared to be nothing for it but that they
+should walk together, at least as far as the New House.  But Bibbs had
+paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either
+spoke or moved--it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for
+each to seem to say, by look and attitude, "Why, it's YOU!"
+
+Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's
+name as if about to deliver a message of importance.  Then both came
+to a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they
+began to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
+
+"I--I--hate a frozen fish myself," he said.  "I think three miles was
+too long for you to put up with one."
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
+restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled.  "Mr. Sheridan, you're
+lovely to put it that way.  But it's always the girl's place to say
+it's turning cooler!  I ought to have been the one to show that we
+didn't know each other well enough not to say SOMETHING!  It was an
+imposition for me to have made you bring me home, and after I went
+into the house I decided I should have walked.  Besides, it wasn't
+three miles to the car-line.  I never thought of it!"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, earnestly.  "I didn't, either.  I might have said
+something if I'd thought of anything.  I'm talking now, though;
+I must remember that, and not worry about it later.  I think I'm
+talking, though it doesn't sound intelligent even to me.  I made up
+my mind that if I ever met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it
+going, no mater what it said.  I--"
+
+She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one
+which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple
+would crawl five miles to hear."  And at the merry lilting of it
+Bibbs's father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation.
+"I'll be any kind of idiot," he said, "if you'll laugh at me some
+more.  It won't be difficult for me."
+
+She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which
+Mary perceived.  It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and
+irritated description of him to her mother just after she had seen
+him for the first time.  "Rather tragic and altogether impossible."
+It seemed to her now that she must have been blind.
+
+They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
+possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of
+one of them.
+
+"I'll keep on talking," Bibbs continued, cheerfully, "and you keep on
+laughing.  I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon.
+I'm making a noise, and that makes you make music.  Don't be bothered
+by my bleating out such things as that.  I'm really frightened, and
+that makes me bleat anything.  I'm frightened about two things:  I'm
+afraid of what I'll think of myself later if I don't keep talking--
+talking now, I mean--and I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if
+I do.  And besides these two things, I'm frightened, anyhow.  I don't
+remember talking as much as this more than once or twice in my life.
+I suppose it was always in me to do it, though, the first time I met
+any one who didn't know me well enough not to listen."
+
+"But you're not really talking to me," said Mary.  "You're just
+thinking aloud."
+
+"No," he returned, gravely.  "I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
+vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly.  I seem to be the
+subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change
+it, but I don't know how.  I haven't any experience in talking, and
+I don't know how to manage it."
+
+"You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan," she
+said.  "Not even if you really talked about yourself."  She turned
+her face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was
+pathetically amazed by the look she gave him.  It was a glowing look,
+warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it
+was an eagerly interested look.  Bibbs was not accustomed to anything
+like that.
+
+"I--you--I--I'm--" he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks
+grew almost vivid.
+
+She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance
+that came into his face.  There was something about him, too, that
+explained how "queer" many people might think him; but he did not
+seem "queer" to Mary Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural
+person she had ever met.
+
+He waited, and became coherent.  "YOU say something now," he said.
+"I don't even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing
+the funny man's solo!  You--"
+
+"No," she interrupted.  "I'd rather play your accompaniment."
+
+"I'll stop and listen to it, then."
+
+"Perhaps--" she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
+gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they
+were approaching.  "Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?"
+
+"I suppose I could," he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at
+her.  "But I don't want to.  Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me
+I'd better say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit.
+The other reason I don't want to see the church is that I have a
+feeling it's where you're going, and where I'll be sent back."
+
+She shook her head in cheery negation.  "Not unless you want to be.
+Would you like to come with me?"
+
+"Why--why--yes," he said.  "Anywhere!"  And again it was apparent
+that he spoke in simple truthfulness.
+
+"Then come--if you care for organ music.  The organist is an old
+friend of mine, and sometimes he plays for me.  He's a dear old man.
+He had a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he
+gave up everything for music.  That's he, waiting in the doorway.
+He looks like Beethoven, doesn't he?  I think he knows that, perhaps
+and enjoys it a little.  I hope so."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps.  "I think
+Beethoven would like it, too.  It must be pleasant to look like
+other people."
+
+"I haven't kept you?" Mary said to the organist.
+
+"No, no," he answered, heartily.  "I would not mind so only you
+should shooer come!"
+
+"This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft.  He has come to listen with me."
+
+The organist looked bluntly surprised.  "Iss that SO?" he exclaimed.
+"Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle
+playink.  He iss musician himself, then, of course."
+
+"No," said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together.  "I--I
+played the--I tried to play--"  Fortunately he checked himself; he
+had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master
+the jews'-harp in his boyhood.  "No, I'm not a musician," he contented
+himself with saying.
+
+"What?" Dr. Kraft's surprise increased.  "Young man, you are
+fortunate!  I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone.
+You are the first.  You are the first one EVER!"
+
+They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
+finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary
+Vertrees in a dazed way that was not of her perceiving; for, though
+she stopped as he did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking
+away from them toward the front of the church, shaking his white
+Beethovian mane roguishly.
+
+"It's false pretenses on my part," Bibbs said.  "You mean to be kind
+to the sick, but I'm not an invalid any more.  I'm so well I'm going
+back to work in a few days.  I'd better leave before he begins to
+play, hadn't I?"
+
+"No," said Mary, beginning to walk forward.  "Not unless you don't
+like great music."
+
+He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
+ascended to the organ.  It was an enormous one, the procession of
+pipes ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns;
+they covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's
+figure, reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian
+magician ludicrously daring the attempt to control a monster certain
+to overwhelm him.
+
+"This afternoon some Handel!" he turned to shout.
+
+Mary nodded.  "Will you like that?" she asked Bibbs.
+
+"I don't know.  I never heard any except 'Largo.'  I don't know
+anything about music.  I don't even know how to pretend I do.  If
+I knew enough to pretend, I would."
+
+"No," said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, "you wouldn't."
+
+She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;
+the huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
+listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with
+it.  The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about
+them, while the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a
+tiny star of light.  His white head moved from side to side beneath it
+rhythmically, or lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist
+thrusting, but he was magnificently the master of his giant, and it
+sang to his magic as he bade it.
+
+Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing.  Such a thing was
+wholly unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life.
+Unlike the tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought
+him to the enchanted cave, and that--for Bibbs--was what made its
+magic dazing.  It seemed to him a long, long time since he had been
+walking home drearily from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him
+that he had set out upon a happy journey since then, and that he
+had reached another planet, where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone
+together listening to a vast choiring of invisible soldiers and holy
+angels.  There were armies of voices about them singing praise and
+thanksgiving; and yet they were alone.  It was incredible that the
+walls of the church were not the boundaries of the universe, to remain
+so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky street just yonder,
+where housemaids were bringing in evening papers from front steps and
+where children were taking their last spins on roller-skates before
+being haled indoors for dinner.
+
+He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend.  He knew
+it could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to
+her, saying:  "You hear this strain?  You hear that strain?  You know
+the dream that these sounds bring to me?"  And it seemed to him as
+though she answered continually:  "I hear!  I hear that strain, and
+I hear the new one that you are hearing now.  I know the dream that
+these sounds bring to you.  Yes, yes, I hear it all!  We hear--
+together!"
+
+And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow
+except the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light,
+with the white head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness
+that the girl sitting beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see
+her as plainly as ever in the darkness, though he did not look at her.
+And all the mighty chanting of the organ's multitudinous voices that
+afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be chorusing of her and interpreting her,
+singing her thoughts and singing for him the world of humble gratitude
+that was in his heart because she was so kind to him.  It all meant
+Mary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
+silent.  They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
+walking slowly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it meant to me," she said, as he did not
+immediately reply.  "Almost any music of Handel's always means
+one thing above all others to me:  courage!  That's it.  It makes
+cowardice of whining seem so infinitesimal--it makes MOST things
+in our hustling little lives seem infinitesimal."
+
+"Yes," he said.  "It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
+hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering
+every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town
+to-morrow.  And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to.
+They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing
+the drudgery itself is the great thing.  They make so much noise and
+fuss and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in.  The
+housework has to be done, but the people who do it have been so
+overpaid that they're confused and worship the housework.  They're
+overpaid, and yet, poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken
+can't have.  Of course, when the world gets to paying its wages
+sensibly that will be different."
+
+"Do you mean 'communism'?" she asked, and she made their slow pace
+a little slower--they had only three blocks to go.
+
+"Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very
+sensible now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and
+can't!  'Communism'?  Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's
+fair for all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give
+the weak ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something
+like even on the stretch.  And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if
+they could all cross the winning-line together?  Who really enjoys
+beating anybody--if he sees the beaten man's face?  The only way we
+can enjoy getting ahead of other people nowadays is by forgetting what
+the other people feel.  And that," he added, "is nothing of what the
+music meant to me.  You see, if I keep talking about what it didn't
+mean I can keep from telling you what it did mean."
+
+"Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?" she asked.  "Triumph
+and praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me."
+
+"Yes, they were all there," Bibbs said.  "I don't know the name of
+what he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much.  The man
+that makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and
+the name he puts to it can't make much difference--except to himself
+and people very much like him, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that."
+
+"I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of
+the people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their
+own natures as much as according to the music itself.  The musician
+might compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy
+Grail, and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting,
+and some would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might
+think of himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner
+and riding  a white horse.  And then, if there were some jubilant
+passages in the  music, he'd think of a circus."
+
+They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did
+not open it.  Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her
+kindnesses--not to be prompt in leaving him.
+
+"After all," she said, "you didn't tell me whether you liked it."
+
+"No.  I didn't need to."
+
+"No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask.  I knew.  But you said
+you were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean."
+
+"I can't keep from telling it any longer," he said.  "The music meant
+to me--it meant the kindness of--of you."
+
+"Kindness?  How?"
+
+"You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--"
+
+"No," she said, decidedly.  "I thought perhaps you'd like to hear
+Dr. Kraft play.  And you did."
+
+"It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
+playing."
+
+Mary laughed.  "I?  I strum!  Piano.  A little Chopin--Grieg--
+Chaminade.  You wouldn't listen!"
+
+Bibbs drew a deep breath.  "I'm frightened again," he said, in an
+unsteady voice.  "I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--"  He
+paused, and the words sank to a murmur.
+
+"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said.  "Yes, gladly.  It
+will be merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon.  I play
+like a hundred thousand other girls, and I like it.  I'm glad when
+any one's willing to listen, and if you--"  She stopped, checked by
+a sudden recollection, and laughed ruefully.  "But my piano won't be
+here after to-night.  I--I'm sending it away to-morrow.  I'm afraid
+that if you'd like me to play to you you'd have to come this evening."
+
+"You'll let me?" he cried.
+
+"Certainly, if you care to."
+
+"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that
+old man in the church I could thank you."
+
+"Ah, but you haven't heard me play.  I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
+but--"
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs.  "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."
+
+It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain
+honesty, and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying
+anything especially significant, that she knew it was the truth.
+For a moment she was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went
+in.  "You'll come after dinner, then?"
+
+"Yes," he said, not moving.  "Would you mind if I stood here until
+time to come in?"
+
+She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
+response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
+windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
+dinner.
+
+That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
+
+  Music can come into a blank life, and fill it.  Everything that
+  is beautiful is music, if you can listen.
+
+  There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
+  piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
+  with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
+  see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.
+
+  There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
+  a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
+  she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
+  the world doesn't like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great
+  fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
+  fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You'll be whipped
+  for it--and ought to be.
+
+  There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
+  But they do not have the "Greek profile."  I do not believe Helen
+  of Troy had a "Greek profile"; they would not have fought about her
+  if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the
+  adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
+  shorter.
+
+  Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
+  piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
+  things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a
+  machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner
+  was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a
+  majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
+
+  There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to
+  be "sent away."  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
+  "Sent away" is a euphuism for "sent to prison."  But pianos are not
+  sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is
+  sent to them.  Why are pianos "sent away"--and where?
+
+  Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
+  life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
+  gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
+  perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after
+  such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music
+  and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things God
+  can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected
+  nothing--ah! the heart  that received them should be as humble as
+  it is thankful.  But it is hard  to be humble when one is so rich
+  with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of
+  glory.
+
+  Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
+  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
+
+  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
+  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that's
+  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble's the word!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+That "mystery about pianos" which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery
+to Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time
+Bibbs scribbled the reference to it in his notes.  Mary had gone
+up-stairs upon Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees sat until after midnight in the library, talking.  And in all
+that time they found not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed
+with everything and with every phase of everything that they discussed
+--no extraordinary state of affairs in a family which has always "held
+up its head," only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can
+do is to look on helplessly at the processes of its own financial
+dissolution.  For that was the point which this despairing couple had
+reached--they could do nothing except look on and talk about it.  They
+were only vaporing, and they knew it.
+
+"She needn't to have done that about her piano," vapored Mr. Vertrees.
+"We could have managed somehow without it.  At least she ought to have
+consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details
+with the--the dealer."
+
+"She thought that it might be--annoying for you," Mrs. Vertrees
+explained.  "Really, she planned for you not to know about it until
+they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--
+to mention it.  You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this
+morning.  She has another idea, too, I'm afraid.  It's--it's--"
+
+"Well?" he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
+
+"Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided,
+of course--it was about her furs."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed, quickly.  "I won't have it!  You must see to that.
+I'd rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her."
+
+"I'll try not," his wife promised.  "Of course, they're very
+handsome."
+
+"All the more reason for her to keep them!" he returned, irritably.
+"We're not THAT far gone, I think!"
+
+"Perhaps not yet," Mrs. Vertrees said.  "She seems to be troubled
+about the--the coal matter and--about Tilly.  Of course the piano
+will take care of some things like those for a while and--"
+
+"I don't like it.  I gave her the piano to play on, not to--"
+
+"You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way," she said,
+comfortingly.  "She arranged with the--with the purchaser that
+the men will come for it about half after five in the afternoon.
+The days are so short now it's really quite winter."
+
+"Oh, yes," he agreed, moodily.  "So far as that goes people have a
+right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors,
+I suppose, even by daylight.  I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying
+much attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office
+early the morning after the funeral."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration.  "I don't believe
+that was because he wasn't suffering, though.  I'm sure it was only
+because he felt his business was so important.  Mary told me he seemed
+wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about
+most.  He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk
+a great deal about his--his actual money--though there was something
+about blades of grass that I didn't comprehend.  I think he meant
+something about his energy--but perhaps not.  No, his bragging usually
+seemed to be not so much a personal vainglory as about his family and
+the greatness of this city."
+
+"'Greatness of this city'!" Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness.
+"It's nothing but a coal-hole!  I suppose it looks 'great' to the man
+who has the luck to make it work for him.  I suppose it looks 'great'
+to any YOUNG man, too, starting out to make his fortune out of it.
+The fellows that get what they want out of it say it's 'great,' and
+everybody else gets the habit.  But you have a different point of
+view if it's the city that got what it wanted out of you!  Of course
+Sheridan says it's 'great'."
+
+Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst.  "I believe,"
+she began, timidly, "he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he
+has never seemed so interested in the--the other one."
+
+Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon
+it; he looked more haggard than before.  "'The other one'," he
+repeated, averting his eyes.  "You mean--you mean the third son--the
+one that was here this evening?"
+
+"Yes, the--the youngest," she returned, her voice so feeble it was
+almost a whisper.
+
+And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes.  Nor did
+either look at the other during that silence.
+
+At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly.
+"What--ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she
+came in this afternoon?  I heard you asking her something about him,
+but she answered in such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch
+it."
+
+"She--she didn't say much.  All she said was this:  I asked her if she
+had enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful
+creature I've ever known.'"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That was all.  He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he
+doesn't seem quite so much so lately.  I was watching Mary from the
+window when she went out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't
+known about him I'd have thought he had quite an interesting face."
+
+"If you 'hadn't known about him'?  Known what?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, of course," she said, hurriedly.  "Nothing definite,
+that is.  Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane,
+as we thought at first.  It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their
+attitude about him.  I suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes
+him--perhaps a little queer at times, so that he can't apply himself
+to anything--or perhaps does odd things.  But, after all, of course,
+we only have an impression about it.  We don't know--that is,
+positively.  I--"  She  paused, then went on:  "I didn't know just
+how to ask--that is--I didn't mention it to Mary.  I didn't--I--"
+The poor lady floundered pitifully, concluding with a mumble.  "So
+soon after--after the--the shock."
+
+"I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him," said Mr.
+Vertrees.  "I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of
+him is--"  He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation.
+"I can't imagine her--oh, NO!" he gasped.  And he began to pace the
+floor.  "A half-witted epileptic!"
+
+"No, no!" she cried.  "He may be all right.  We--"
+
+"Oh, it's horrible!  I can't--"  He threw himself back into his chair
+again, sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall
+limply at his sides.
+
+Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous.  "You mustn't give way so," she said,
+inspired for once almost to direct discourse.  "Whatever Mary might
+think of doing, it wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on
+ours.  But if WE should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR
+own account.  It isn't because we think of ourselves."
+
+"Oh God, no!" he groaned.  "Not for us!  We can go to the poorhouse,
+but Mary can't be a stenographer!"
+
+Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness.  "Of course," she
+murmured, "it all seems very premature, speculating about such things,
+but I had a queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested in
+this--"  She had almost said "in this one," but checked herself.  "In
+this young man.  It's natural, of course; she is always so strong and
+well, and he is--he seems to be, that is--rather appealing to the--the
+sympathies."
+
+"Yes!" he agreed, bitterly.  "Precisely.  The sympathies!"
+
+"Perhaps," she faltered, "perhaps you might feel easier if I could
+have a little talk with some one?"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but
+perhaps just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to
+be talking with somebody that knew the family--and then I might find
+a chance to say that I was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much, and
+--Something of that kind perhaps?"
+
+"You don't know anybody that knows the family."
+
+"Yes.  That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family.  That
+Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced
+little woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary.  I think she
+is interested about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more
+intimate with Mary, naturally.  She's always looking over here from
+her house; she was looking out the window this afternoon when Mary
+went out, I noticed--though I don't think Mary saw her.  I'm sure she
+wouldn't think it out of place to--to be frank about matters.  She
+called the other day, and Mary must rather like her--she said that
+evening that the call had done her good.  Don't you think it might
+be wise?"
+
+"Wise?  I don't know.  I feel the whole matter is impossible."
+
+"Yes, so do I," she returned, promptly.  "It isn't really a thing
+we should be considering seriously, of course.  Still--"
+
+"I should say not!  But possibly--"
+
+Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned
+the lights out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between
+them that Mrs. Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain
+definite information from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and
+physical status of Bibbs.  And if he were subject to attacks of
+lunacy, the unhappy pair decided to prevent the sacrifice they
+supposed their daughter intended to make of herself.  Altogether, if
+there were spiteful ghosts in the old house that night, eavesdropping
+upon the woeful comedy, they must have died anew of laughter!
+
+Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon.
+Darkness had fallen, and the piano-movers had come.  They were
+carrying the piano down the front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was
+standing in the open doorway  behind them, preparing to withdraw,
+when she heard a sharp exclamation; and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan,
+bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the light of the doorway.
+
+"Good gracious!" she cried.  "It did give me a fright!"
+
+"It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?"  Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this
+informal appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential.
+"Won't you come in?"
+
+"No.  Oh no, thank you!" Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side.
+"You don't know what a fright you've given me!  And it was nothing
+but your piano!"  She laughed shrilly.  "You know, since our tragedy
+coming so suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been
+--almost hysterical!  And I just glanced out of the window, a minute
+or so ago, and saw your door wide open and black figures of men
+against the light, carrying something heavy, and I almost fainted.
+You see, it was just the way it looked when I saw them bringing my
+poor brother-in-law in, next door, only such a few short days ago.
+And I thought I'd seen your daughter start for a drive with Bibbs
+Sheridan in a car about three o'clock--and--  They aren't back yet,
+are they?"
+
+"No.  Good heavens!"
+
+"And the only thing I could think of was that something must have
+happened to them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!"
+She broke into laughter again.  "I suppose you're just sending it
+somewhere to be repaired, aren't you?"
+
+"It's--it's being taken down-town," said Mrs. Vertrees.  "Won't you
+come in and make me a little visit.  I was SO sorry, the other day,
+that I was--ah--"  She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her
+invitation.  "Won't you come in?  I'd really--"
+
+"Thank you, but I must be running back.  My husband usually gets home
+about this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there."
+
+"That's very sweet."  Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked
+toward the street with Sibyl.  "It's quite balmy for so late in
+November, isn't it?  Almost like a May evening."
+
+"I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano," said Sibyl, watching
+the instrument disappear into the big van at the curb.  "She plays
+wonderfully, Mrs. Kittersby tells me."
+
+"Yes, she plays very well.  One of your relatives came to hear her
+yesterday, after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him."
+
+"You mean Bibbs?" asked Sibyl.
+
+"The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan.  Yes.  He's very musical, isn't he?"
+
+"I never heard of it.  But I shouldn't think it would matter much
+whether he was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him.
+Does your daughter expect the piano back soon?"
+
+"I--I believe not immediately.  Mr. Sheridan came last evening to
+hear her play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was
+to be removed this afternoon.  He seems almost well again."
+
+"Yes."  Sibyl nodded.  "His father's going to try to start him to
+work."
+
+"He seems very delicate," said Mrs. Vertrees.  "I shouldn't think
+he would be able to stand a great deal, either physically or--"  She
+paused and then added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness
+--"or mentally."
+
+"Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right," said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
+
+"Entirely?"  Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
+
+"Yes, entirely."
+
+"But has he ALWAYS been?"  This question came with the same anxious
+eagerness.
+
+"Certainly.  He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over
+it."
+
+"And you think--"
+
+"Bibbs is all right.  You needn't wor--" Sibyl choked, and pressed
+her handkerchief to her mouth.  "Good night, Mrs. Vertrees," she said,
+hurriedly, as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner
+above, sending a brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement
+where the two ladies were standing.
+
+"Won't you come in?" urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound
+of a cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare.
+"Do!  There's Mary now, and she--"
+
+But Sibyl was half-way across the street.  "No, thanks," she called.
+"I hope she won't miss her piano!"  And she ran into her own house
+and plunged headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her
+handkerchief over her mouth.
+
+The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the
+quiet house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash
+of a decanter, dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end
+of the hall; and, after a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe
+came forth, holding a dripping napkin in his hand.
+
+"What's your excitement?" he demanded.  "What do you find to go
+into hysterics over?  Another death in the family?"
+
+"Oh, it's funny!" she gasped.  "Those old frost-bitten people!  I guess
+THEY'RE getting their come-uppance!"  Lying prone, she elevated her
+feet in the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
+
+"Come through, come through!" said her husband, crossly.  "What you
+been up to?"
+
+"Me?" she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
+"Nothing.  It's them!  Those Vertreeses!"  She wiped her eyes.
+"They've had to sell their piano!"
+
+"Well, what of it?"
+
+"That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago," said Sibyl.
+"They've been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as
+last winter she knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled
+and patched, because she got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's
+cook had HERS!  And the night of the house-warming I kind of got
+suspicious, myself.  She didn't have one single piece of any kind of
+real jewelry, and you could see her dress was an old one done over.
+Men can't tell those things, and you all made a big fuss over her,
+but I thought she  looked a sight, myself!  Of course, EDITH was
+crazy to have her, and--"
+
+"Well, well?" he urged, impatiently.
+
+"Well, I'm TELLING you!  Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING!
+Just absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn!  The
+family's all died out but them, and all the relatives they got are
+very distant, and live East and scarcely know 'em.  She says the whole
+town's been wondering what WOULD become of 'em.  The girl had plenty
+chances to marry up to a year or so ago, but she was so indifferent
+she scared the men off, and the ones that had wanted to went and
+married other girls.  Gracious! they were lucky!  Marry HER?  The man
+that found himself tied up to THAT girl--"
+
+"Terrible funny, terrible funny!" said Roscoe, with sarcasm.  "It's
+so funny I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--"
+
+"Wait!" she begged.  "You'll see.  I was sitting by the window a
+little while ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street
+and some men go into the house.  It was too dark to make out much,
+and for a minute I got the idea they were moving out--the house
+has been foreclosed on, Mrs. Kittersby says.  It seemed funny, too,
+because I knew that girl was out riding with Bibbs.  Well, I thought
+I'd see, so I slipped over--and it was their PIANO!  They'd sold it
+and were trying to sneak it out after dark, so nobody'd catch on!"
+Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but resumed, as her husband
+seemed about to interrupt the narrative.  "Wait a minute, can't you?
+The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all away.  I sized
+her up for one of those old churchy people that tell all kinds of
+lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they can't.
+She might just as well told me outright!  Yes, they'd sold it; and
+I hope they'll pay some of their debts.  They owe everybody, and last
+week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees.
+Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't know WHEN
+she'd seen any money, herself!  Did you ever hear of such a case as
+that girl in your LIFE?"
+
+"What girl? Their cook?"
+
+"That Vertrees girl!  Don't you see they looked on our coming up into
+this neighborhood as their last chance?  They were just going down and
+out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family!  So they doll
+the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a
+Sheridan--she's GOT to get one!  And she just goes in blind; and she
+tries it on first with YOU.  You remember, she just plain TOLD you
+she was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married
+one, and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his
+feet.  Oh, Jim was landed--there's no doubt about THAT!  But Jim was
+lucky; he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for him!"
+Sibyl's mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity.
+"Well, she couldn't get you, because you were married, and she
+couldn't get Jim, because Jim died.  And there they were, dead broke!
+Do you know what she did?  Do you know what she's DOING?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Roscoe, gruffly.
+
+Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity.
+"BIBBS!  She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from
+JIM'S FUNERAL!  Never spoke to him before!  Jim wasn't COLD!"
+
+She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan.  "Bibbs!" she
+shrieked.  "Bibbs!  Roscoe, THINK of it!  BIBBS!"
+
+He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that.
+"And yesterday," she continued, between paroxysms--"yesterday she came
+out of the house--just as he was passing.  She must have been looking
+out--waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the
+window!  And she got him there last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the
+old lady gave that away!  And to-day she made him take her out in a
+machine!  And the cream of it is that they didn't even know whether he
+was INSANE or not--they thought maybe he was, but she went after him
+just the same!  The old lady set herself to pump me about it to-day.
+BIBBS!  Oh, my Lord!  BIBBS!"
+
+But Roscoe looked grim.  "So it's funny to you, is it?  It sounds
+kind of pitiful to me.  I should think it would to a woman, too."
+
+"Oh, it might," she returned, sobering.  "It might, if those people
+weren't such frozen-faced smart Alecks.  If they'd had the decency
+to come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was
+funny, but to see 'em sit up on their pedestal all the time they're
+eating dirt--well, I think it's funny!  That girl sits up as if she
+was Queen Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before
+her until they get near enough for her to give 'em a good kick with
+her old patched shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all right!--and then she
+powders up and goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!"
+
+"Look here," said Roscoe, heavily; "I don't care about that one way
+or another.  If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you
+about.  I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim."
+
+At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright.
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well," he began, frowning, "what I was going to say then--"  He broke
+off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin
+in his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner.  "I never expected I'd
+have to say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going
+to ask you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn."
+
+Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. "Well?"
+
+"I felt the time had come for me to know about it," he went on.
+"You never told me anything--"
+
+"You never asked," she interposed, curtly.
+
+"Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much," said Roscoe.  "It
+looks to me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other
+the way a good many people do.  I don't say it wasn't my fault.
+I was up early and down to work all day, and I'd come home tired
+at night, and want to go to bed soon as I'd got the paper read--
+unless there was some good musical show in town.  Well, you seemed
+all right until here lately, the last month or so, I began to see
+something was wrong.  I couldn't help seeing it."
+
+"Wrong?" she said.  "What like?"
+
+"You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and
+excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down.  Now
+then, Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed
+that not long ago you got to picking on him about every little thing
+he did; you got to quarreling with him when I was there and when I
+wasn't.  I could see you'd been quarreling whenever I came in and he
+was here."
+
+"Do you object to that?" asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
+
+"Yes--when it injures my wife's health!" he returned, with a quick
+lift of his eyes to hers.  "You began to run down just about the time
+you began falling out with him."  He stepped close to her.  "See here,
+Sibyl, I'm going to know what it means."
+
+"Oh, you ARE?" she snapped.
+
+"You're trembling," he said, gravely.
+
+"Yes.  I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find.  Go on!"
+
+"That was all I was going to say the other day," he said.  "I was
+going to ask you--"
+
+"Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY.  Yes.  What
+else have you to say to-night?"
+
+"To-night," he replied, with grim swiftness, "I want to know why you
+keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming
+here."
+
+She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, "And
+what else did Edith want you to ask me?"
+
+"I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn," he said,
+fiercely.
+
+"Is that all Edith told you to ask me?  You saw her when you stopped
+in there on your way home this evening, didn't you?  Didn't she tell
+you then what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?"
+
+"No, she didn't!" he vociferated, his voice growing louder.  "She
+said, 'You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come
+and see her, because he isn't going to do it!'  That's what she said!
+And I want to know what it means.  I intend--"
+
+A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall.  "Dinner is ready," she
+said, and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into
+the dining-room.  Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
+
+"I intend to know exactly what has been going on," he declared.
+"I mean to know just what--"
+
+Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
+
+"Oh, you DO!" she cried, shrilly.  "You mean to know just what's what,
+do you?  You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your
+wife, and then you come home making a scene before the servants and
+humiliating me in their presence!  Do you suppose that Irish girl
+didn't hear every word you said?  You go in there and eat your dinner
+alone!  Go on!  Go and eat your dinner alone--because I won't eat with
+you!"
+
+And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon
+her, and dashed up the stairway, panting.  He heard the door of her
+room slam overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing
+through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast,
+found a couple of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor.
+A window had been open in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left
+his note-book on the sill--and the sheets were loose.  The door was
+open, and when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that
+the two sheets had blown out into the hall.  Sheridan recognized the
+handwriting and put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give
+them to George or Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and
+carried them down-town with him.  At noon he found himself alone in
+his office, and, having a little leisure, remembered the bits of
+manuscript, took them out, and glanced at them.  A glance was enough
+to reveal that they were not epistolary.  Sheridan would not have
+read a "private letter" that came into his possession in that way,
+though in a "matter of business" he might have felt it his duty
+to take advantage of an opportunity afforded in any manner whatsoever.
+Having satisfied himself that Bibbs's scribblings were only a sample
+of the kind of writing his son preferred to the machine-shop, he
+decided, innocently enough, that he would be justified in reading
+them.
+
+  It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy
+  generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable
+  expression of accepting it as the law, and then--days afterward,
+  when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator--she will inquire out
+  of a clear sky:  "WHY did you say that the people down-town have
+  nothing in life that a chicken hasn't?  What did you mean?"  And she
+  may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult
+  --you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.
+
+  Yet, what does the rooster lack?  He has food and shelter; he is
+  warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but
+  dozens.  He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he
+  walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers.  He must die,
+  violently perhaps, but quickly.  Is Midas's cancer a better way?
+  The rooster's wives and children must die.  Are those of Midas
+  immortal?  His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas's
+  life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.
+
+  The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh
+  himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster
+  doesn't get.  The office-building has an elevator, the rooster
+  flies up to the bough.  Midas has a machine to take him to his work;
+  the rooster finds his worm underfoot.  The "business man" feels
+  a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine
+  after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because it
+  interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve that pressure
+  again.  The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is
+  in his favor.
+
+  The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the
+  weather.  The rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for
+  to-morrow.  What does he provide for to-morrow?  Nothing that the
+  rooster will not have without providing.
+
+  The rooster and the prosperous worker:  they are born, they grub,
+  they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die.
+  Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.  And after all, when
+  Midas dies and the rooster dies, there is one thing Midas has had
+  and rooster has not.  Midas has had the excitement of accumulating
+  what he has grubbed, and that has been his life and his love and
+  his god.  He cannot take that god with him when he dies.  I wonder
+  if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.
+
+  Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in
+  his religion--
+
+The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more.
+He crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in
+a waste-basket beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia
+of Names, which a book-agent had somehow sold to him years before;
+a volume now first put to use for the location of "Midas."  Having
+read the legend, Sheridan walked up and down the spacious office,
+exhaling the breath of contempt.  "Dam' fool!" he mumbled.  But
+this was no new thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's notes
+a surpise to him; and presently he dismissed the matter from his
+mind.
+
+He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour.  For
+a long time he and Jim had lunched together habitually.  Roscoe
+preferred a club luncheon, but Jim and his father almost always went
+to a small restaurant near the Sheridan Building, where they spent
+twenty minutes in the consumption of food, and twenty in talk, with
+cigars.  Jim came for his father every day, at five minutes after
+twelve, and Sheridan was again in his office at five minutes before
+one.  But now that Jim no longer came, Sheridan remained alone in
+his office; he had not gone out to lunch since Jim's death, nor did
+he have anything sent to him--he fasted until evening.
+
+It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes
+and handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like.  But these
+things were not the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss
+went far deeper.  Roscoe was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and
+that was a great comfort; but it was in Jim that Sheridan had most
+happily perceived his own likeness.  Jim was the one who would have
+been surest to keep the great property growing greater, year by year.
+Sheridan had fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what the
+growth would be under Jim.  He had believed that Jim was absolutely
+certain to be one of the biggest men in the country.  Well, it was all
+up to Roscoe now!
+
+That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe.  It was
+a question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife
+had suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe
+about it.  However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for
+several days, and when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had
+been no opportunity.
+
+He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward
+four o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a
+lower floor.  He found several men waiting for business interviews in
+an outer room of the series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he
+would find his son busy with others, and that his question would have
+to be postponed, but when he entered the door marked "R. C. Sheridan.
+Private," Roscoe was there alone.
+
+He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill,
+and he did not turn as his father opened the door.
+
+"Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy," said
+Sheridan.  "What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
+
+"Well, I guess that's all right, too.  I let 'em wait sometimes
+myself!  I just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it'll
+keep, if you're workin' something out in your mind!"
+
+Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door,
+paused with his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless
+figure in the chair.  Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when
+he came to the office.  "You're all right, ain't you?" said Sheridan.
+"Not sick, are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question.
+"I wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn," he said.  "I guess
+your mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you
+known him longer'n any of us, so--"
+
+"I won't," said Roscoe, thickly--"I won't say a dam' thing about him!"
+
+Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position near
+the window where he could see his son's face.  Roscoe's eyes were
+bloodshot and vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was
+distorted, and he was deathly pale.  The father stood aghast.
+
+"By George!" he muttered.  "ROSCOE!"
+
+"My name," said Roscoe.  "Can' help that."
+
+"ROSCOE!"  Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation.
+Probably nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find
+Roscoe--the steady old wheel-horse--in this condition.  "How'd you
+GET this way?" he demanded.  "You caught cold and took too much for
+it?"
+
+For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely.  "Yeuh!  Cold!  I been drinkun all
+time, lately.  Firs' you notice it?"
+
+"By George!" cried Sheridan.  "I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good
+deal lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good
+for you.  Boh!  To see you like a common hog!"
+
+Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.
+"Hog!" he repeated, chuckling.
+
+"Yes, a hog!" said Sheridan, angrily.  "In business hours!  I don't
+object to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business
+hours; nor, if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I
+wouldn't be the one to baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two,
+three years, maybe.  It ain't MY way.  I let it alone, but I never
+believed in forcin' my way on a grown-up son in moral matters.  I
+guess I was wrong!  You think them men out there are waitin' to talk
+business with a drunkard?  You think you can come to your office and
+do business drunk?  By George!  I wonder how often this has been
+happening and me not on to it!  I'll have a look over your books
+to-morrow, and I'll--"
+
+Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying,
+contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of
+the heavy chair in which he had been sitting.
+
+"Hoo--hoorah!" he cried.  "'S my principles, too.  Be drunkard all
+you want to--outside business hours.  Don' for Gossake le'n'thing
+innerfere business hours!  Business!  Thassit!  You're right, father.
+Drink!  Die!  L'everything go to hell, but DON' let innerfere
+business!"
+
+Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling
+his own office, overhead.  "Abercrombie?  Come down to my son Roscoe's
+suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him
+in room two-fourteen.  There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o'
+fellows on the Kinsey business.  Tell 'em something's come up I have
+to go over with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow
+at two.  You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't
+want to be disturbed.  Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down
+here with a closed car.  We may have to go out.  Tell him to hustle,
+and call me at Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"
+
+Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue.  "Drunk in
+business hours!  Thass awf'l!  Mus'n' do such thing!  Mus'n' get
+drunk, mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours!
+All right any other time.  Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't
+in business hours!  Fine!  Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere
+business.  Keep your trouble 't home.  Don' bring it to th' office.
+Might innerfere business!  Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere
+business!  Don' let your wife innerfere business!  Keep all, all, ALL
+your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em
+ALL for home use!  If you got die, go on die 't home--don' die round
+th' office!  Might innerfere business!"
+
+Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with
+his back to his son, affecting to read.  Roscoe seemed to be unaware
+of his father's significant posture.
+
+"You know wh' I think?" he went on.  "I think Bibbs only one the
+fam'ly any 'telligence at all.  Won' work, an' di'n' get married.
+Jim worked, an' he got killed.  I worked, an' I got married.  Look
+at me!  Jus' look at me, I ask you.  Fine 'dustriss young business
+man.  Look whass happen' to me!  Fine!"  He lifted his hand from
+the sustaining chair in a deplorable gesture, and, immediately
+losing his balance, fell across the chair and caromed to the floor
+with a crash, remaining prostrate for several minutes, during which
+Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to the newspaper.
+He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
+
+Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up
+by holding to the chair.  He was slightly sobered outwardly, having
+progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less
+volatile.  He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
+
+"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+"Yes, you did.  What--what was it?"
+
+"Nothin'.  You better sit down."
+
+"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn.  You did ask me that.
+Well, I won't tell you.  I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"
+
+The telephone-bell tinkled.  Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear
+and said, "Right down."  Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a
+closet and brought them to his son.  "Get into this coat," he said.
+"You're goin' home."
+
+"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.
+
+They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through
+the outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped
+it, and told the operator to take on no more passengers until they
+reached the ground floor.  Roscoe walked out of the building and got
+into the automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked
+into his own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father
+having spoken a word in the interval.
+
+Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room
+without meeting any of his family.  But as he passed Bibbs's door he
+heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant
+fragments of song:
+
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound.
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-yay!
+
+It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any
+musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him whistle
+--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool should
+be merry to-day.
+
+To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and
+he did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and
+locked the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
+came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
+manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
+lunch had "disagreed" with him a little.
+
+Presently, however, he spoke effectively.  Bibbs, whose appetite had
+become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
+white-jacket's salver.  "Here's another difference between Midas and
+chicken," Sheridan remarked, grimly.  "Midas can eat rooster, but
+rooster can't eat Midas.  I reckon you overlooked that.  Midas looks
+to me like he had the advantage there."
+
+Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
+his plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."
+
+Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--
+for he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
+pleasure, thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
+jargon to her.  "Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
+has!" she exclaimed.  "I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look
+right handsome!"
+
+"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.
+
+"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
+anybody was up," said Sheridan.  "I reckon if people lose things in
+this house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as
+I do."
+
+"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.
+
+"He knows!" her father returned.  "Seems to me like I forgot to bring
+it home with me.  I looked it over--thought probably it was something
+pretty important, belongin' to a busy man like him."  He affected to
+search his pockets.  "What DID I do with it, now?  Oh yes!  Seems to
+me like I remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-
+basket."
+
+"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.
+
+Sheridan gave him a grin.  "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
+early enough to find things before I do!"
+
+It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
+evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
+
+"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the
+melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
+That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
+Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
+day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
+upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing
+presence of Mary.  He spoke lightly, not sadly.
+
+"Yes, it's come.  I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put
+off any longer.  It's really my part to go to him--at least it would
+save my face.  He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my
+sentence.  Hard labor for life, I think."
+
+Mary shook her head.  "I don't think so.  He's too kind."
+
+"You think my father's KIND?"  And Bibbs stared at her.
+
+"Yes.  I'm sure of it.  I've felt that he has a great, brave heart.
+It's only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't
+understand any other way."
+
+"Ah yes," said Bibbs.  "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"
+
+She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes.
+"It's going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling.  "This has been just the last
+flicker of revolt.  Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
+There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that
+he could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless
+--so I have to give it up.  To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
+
+"What is it like--exactly?"
+
+"I get up at six," he said.  "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
+which is aristocratic and no advantage.  The other workmen have tin
+buckets, and tin buckets are better.  I leave the house at six-thirty,
+and I'm at work in my overalls at seven.  I have an hour off at noon,
+and work again from one till five."
+
+"But the work itself?"
+
+"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all.  They couldn't give me
+a heavier job because I wasn't good enough."
+
+"But what will you do?  I want to know."
+
+"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there
+a 'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and
+that's what I'll be sent back to."
+
+"But what is it?" she insisted.
+
+Bibbs explained.  "It's very simple and very easy.  I feed long strips
+of zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into
+little circles.  All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into
+the jaws at a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."
+
+He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
+paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes.  He may have
+known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
+
+"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
+incredible!" she exclaimed.  "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a
+machine nine hours a day!  No wonder--"  She broke off, and then,
+after a keen glance at his face, she said:  "I should think you WOULD
+have been a 'bad hand at it'!"
+
+He laughed ruefully.  "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
+say it.  You see, it's a very  powerful machine, and there's a sort of
+rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
+
+"How often is that?"
+
+"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
+than one a second."
+
+"And you're close to it?"
+
+"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more
+gaily.  "The others don't mind.  You see, it's something wrong with
+me.  I have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I
+flinch and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't
+get over it.  I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll
+be glad to see me back.  They used to laugh at me all day long."
+
+Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
+on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek.
+She was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in
+them.
+
+"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in
+a low voice.  "No.  He's not kind.  He ought to be proud to help you
+to the leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to
+have them published for you--"
+
+"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
+his voice.  "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
+imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
+posters all over the country:  'Read B. Sheridan.  Read the Poet with
+a Punch!'  No.  It's just as well he never got the--But what's the
+use?  I've never written anything worth printing, and I never shall."
+
+"You could!" she said.
+
+"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried
+to do."
+
+"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could!  Ah, it's a pity!"
+
+"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly.  "I never could--but you're the
+kindest lady in this world, Miss Vertrees."
+
+She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
+"That sounds wrong," she said, impulsively.  "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
+I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you.  Wouldn't
+you rather call me 'Mary'?"
+
+Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
+
+"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed.  "You're such an honest person,
+it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety."
+She became grave again immediately.  "I hear myself laughing as if
+it were some one else.  It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great
+calamity."  She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against
+the wall, facing him.  "You've GOT to go back to that place?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"And the other time you did it--"
+
+"Just over it," said Bibbs.  "Two years.  But I don't mind the
+prospect of a repetition so much as--"
+
+"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.
+
+Bibbs looked up at her shyly.  "I want to say it, but--but I come
+to a dead balk when I try.  I--"
+
+"Go on.  Say it, whatever it is," she bade him.  "You wouldn't know
+how to say anything I shouldn't like."
+
+"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he
+returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--
+he seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly.  "You see, all my life--until
+I met you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead.
+Saying things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this:
+I used to feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all.  I'd
+never been of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything,
+myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking.  But now it's different--
+I'm still of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being
+useful, but I have had something for myself.  I've had a beautiful
+and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm
+glad I've lived it!  That's all; it's your letting me be near you
+sometimes, as you have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"
+
+He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he
+had to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet.  She did
+not speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she
+had gone back to her chair again.  The house was still; the shabby
+old room was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed
+sharp and loud.
+
+And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible.
+"If you think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want
+to--to make it last."
+
+"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.
+
+"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," he gulped.
+
+"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."
+
+He tried to evade her.  "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his
+overalls--"
+
+"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness.  "You said what you
+did because you think the shop's going to kill you."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Yes, you do think that!"  She rose to her feet again and came and
+stood before him.  "Or you think it's going to send you back to the
+sanitarium.  Don't deny it, Bibbs.  There!  See how easily I call you
+that!  You see I'm a friend, or I couldn't do it.  Well, if you meant
+what you said--and you did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go
+back to the sanitarium.  The shop sha'n't hurt you.  It sha'n't!"
+
+And now Bibbs looked up.  She stood before him, straight and tall,
+splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
+
+"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you!  Go
+back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done.  Let
+the machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember
+each crash that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!"
+
+He stumbled to his feet.  "You say--" he gasped.
+
+"Every evening, dear Bibbs!"
+
+He could only stare, bewildered.
+
+"EVERY evening.  I want you.  They sha'n't hurt you again!"  And she
+held out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous
+clasp.  "If I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine
+with you," she said.  "But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you.
+You must keep remembering that your friend stands beside you.  And
+when the work is done--won't the night make up for the day?"
+
+Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of
+kindness.  But all he could say was, huskily, "To think you're there
+--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--"
+
+And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found
+what it meant not to be alone in the world.  He had a friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
+father sitting alone by the library fire.  Bibbs went in and stood
+before him.  "I'm cured, father," he said.  "When do I go back to
+the shop?  I'm ready."
+
+The desolate and grim old man did not relax.  "I was sittin' up to
+give you a last chance to say something like that.  I reckon it's
+about time!  I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not
+to make me take you over there by the collar.  Last night I made up
+my mind I'd give you just one more day.  Well, you got to it before
+I did--pretty close to the eleventh hour!  All right.  Start in
+to-morrow.  It's the first o' the month.  Think you can get up in
+time?"
+
+"Six o'clock," Bibbs responded, briskly.  "And I want to tell you--
+I'm going in a 'cheerful spirit.'  As you said, I'll go and I'll
+'like it'!"
+
+"That's YOUR lookout!" his father grunted.  "They'll put you back on
+the clippin'-machine.  You get nine dollars a week."
+
+"More than I'm worth, too," said Bibbs, cheerily.  "That reminds me,
+I didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing.  I
+meant--"
+
+"Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!"
+
+"I just wanted you to know.  Good night, father."
+
+"G'night!"
+
+The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
+inaudible, and the house was quiet.  But presently, as Sheridan sat
+staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers
+could be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance,
+her oblique expression and the state of her toilette being those of
+a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has
+got up to look for burglars.
+
+"Papa!" she exclaimed, drowsily.  "Why'n't you go to bed?  It must be
+goin' on 'leven o'clock!"
+
+She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
+the fire.  "What's the matter?" she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
+sluggishly with each other in her voice.  "I knew you were worried all
+dinner-time.  You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
+taken away like he was.  What's worryin' you now, papa?"
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+She jeered feebly.  "N' tell ME that!  You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
+you?"
+
+"He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning," said Sheridan.
+
+"Just the same as he did before?"
+
+"Just pre-CISELY!"
+
+"How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Until he KNOWS something!"  The unhappy man struck his palms
+together, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his
+wont when he talked.  "He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn
+to tend properly in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it
+till he DOES learn it!  Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself
+WHY I want him to learn it?  No!  And I ain't a-goin' to tell him,
+either!  When he went there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine
+we got--and he stuck there!  How much prospect would there be of his
+learnin' to run the whole business if he can't run the easiest machine
+in it?  I sent him there to make him THOROUGH.  And what happened?  He
+didn't LIKE it!  That boy's whole life, there's been a settin' up o'
+something mulish that's against everything I want him to do.  I don't
+know what it is, but it's got to be worked out of him.  Now, labor
+ain't any more a simple question than what it was when we were young.
+My idea is that, outside o' union troubles, the man that can manage
+workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.  Well, I set Bibbs
+to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE set himself to balk
+on the first job!  That's what he did, and the balk's lasted close on
+to three years.  If he balks again I'm just done with him!  Sometimes
+I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!"
+
+"I knew there was something else," said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
+a yawn.  "You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--
+'less you'll tell me?"
+
+"Suppose something happened to Roscoe," he said.  "THEN what'd I
+have to look forward to?  THEN what could I depend on to hold things
+together?  A lummix!  A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip
+o' zinc along a groove!"
+
+"Roscoe?" she yawned.  "You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa.  He's
+the strongest child we had.  I never did know anybody keep better
+health than he does.  I don't believe he's even had a cold in five
+years.  You better go up to bed, papa."
+
+"Suppose something DID happen to him, though.  You don't know what it
+means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE,
+let alone makin' it grow the way I do.  I've seen too many estates
+hacked away in chunks, big and little.  I tell you when a man dies the
+wolves come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can
+tear off for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the
+job, night and day, everything he built'll get carried off.  Carried
+off?  I've seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--
+there wasn't even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood!  I've seen
+it, time and again.  My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to
+ME!  It don't seem like I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to
+raise his boys right than I have.  I planned and planned and planned
+how to bring 'em up to be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to
+be builders to build, and build bigger.  I tell you this business life
+is no fool's job nowadays--a man's got to have eyes in the back of his
+head.  You hear talk, sometimes, 'd make you think the millennium had
+come--but right the next breath you'll hear somebody hollerin' about
+'the great unrest.'  You BET there's a 'great unrest'!  There ain't
+any man alive smart enough to see what it's goin' to do to us in the
+end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but it's frothin' and
+bubblin' in the boiler.  This country's been fillin' up with it from
+all over the world for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin'
+days are dead and done with.  Church ain't what it used to be.
+Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the bottom,
+and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air.  There's an
+awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin' to
+keep your balance on the top of it.  And the schemers!  They run like
+bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
+loose.  Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most
+and the worst!  You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made
+it.  And the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only
+one motto:  'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!'  And
+when a man's built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and
+made good things grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for
+the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names
+to it!  And what's the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a
+thing as that is goin' to happen?  What's the use of my havin' worked
+my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed
+and scattered soon as I'm in the ground?"
+
+He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
+the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside.  His throat rumbled
+thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness.  "You think this
+is a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease?  I tell you there
+never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity.  The
+sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a man lays
+down they'll eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build
+straight up till he touches the sky!  This is the business man's day;
+it used to be the soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is
+OURS!  And it ain't a Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--
+and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself,
+or you'll only be a dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive.
+And that's what my son Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what
+he'd rather do now than go out and do his part by me.  And if anything
+happens to Roscoe--"
+
+"Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense," Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
+irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment.  "There isn't
+anything goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin'
+yourself about nothin'.  Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?"
+
+Sheridan halted.  "All right, mamma," he said, with a vast sigh.
+"Let's go up."  And he snapped off the electric light, leaving
+only the rosy glow of the fire.
+
+"Did you speak to Roscoe?" she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
+drowsiness.  "Did you mention about what I told you the other
+evening?"
+
+"No.  I will to-morrow."
+
+
+But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
+Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house.  He waited.  Then, on the
+fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at
+nine in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
+
+"They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me."
+
+"Sit down," said Sheridan, rising.
+
+Roscoe sat.  His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously,
+and then walked away, smiling bitterly.  "Boh!" he exclaimed.
+"Still at it!"
+
+"Yes," said Roscoe.  "I've had a couple of drinks this morning.
+What about it?"
+
+"I reckon I better adopt some decent young man," his father returned.
+"I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit.  I
+would!"
+
+"Better do it," Roscoe assented, sullenly.
+
+"When'd you begin this thing?"
+
+"I always did drink a little.  Ever since I grew up, that is."
+
+"Leave that talk out!  You know what I mean."
+
+"Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until
+the other day."
+
+Sheridan began cutting.  "It's a lie.  I've had Ray Wills up from your
+office.  He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into
+him, and he came through.  You were drunk twice before and couldn't
+work.  You been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the
+last three weeks.  I been over your books.  Your office is way behind.
+You haven't done any work, to count, in a month."
+
+"All right," said Roscoe, drooping under the torture.  "It's all
+true."
+
+"What you goin' to do about it?"
+
+Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders.  "I can't stand very
+much talk about it, father," he said, pleadingly.
+
+"No!" Sheridan cried.  "Neither can I!  What do you think it means to
+ME?"  He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning.  "I can't
+stand to talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to
+find out what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you
+out!"
+
+Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
+
+"You can't straighten me out."
+
+"See here!" said Sheridan.  "Can you go back to your office and stay
+sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a
+couple o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out
+o' your hand if they see you tryin' to take it?"
+
+"You needn't worry about that," said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
+resentment.  "I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst."
+
+"Well, what have you got?"
+
+"Nothing.  Nothing you can do anything about.  Nothing, I tell you."
+
+"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly.  "Now I can't fool
+with you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
+office.  You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow.  You didn't come
+last Sunday--but you come to-morrow.  I'll talk this out with you when
+the women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner.  Can you
+keep sober till then?  You better be sure, because I'm going to send
+Abercrombie down to your office every little while, and he'll let me
+know."
+
+Roscoe paused at the door.  "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
+
+"TOLD him!"  And Sheridan laughed hideously.  "Do you suppose there's
+an elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
+
+Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  "WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+  Changety, chang, chang!  Bash! Crash! BANG!"
+
+So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
+because of the noise of the machinery.  He had discovered long ago
+that the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now,
+on the afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying
+the swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments,
+mingling improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the
+zinc-eater's crash with vocal imitations:
+
+  Fearless and bold,
+  Chang!  Bash!  Behold!
+  With a leap from the ground
+  To the saddle in a bound,
+      And away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
+  WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
+      NIGHT'S on the way
+      EACH time I say,
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, chang!  Bash, chang!  Chang, bang, BANG!
+
+The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the
+air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually;
+everything was implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the
+dizzied eye.  The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become
+dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea
+to faintness.  But he felt neither now.  "ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY
+THOUGHTS TO YOU.  YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS
+BESIDE YOU."  He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring
+place became suffused with radiance.  The poet was happy in his
+machine-shop; he was still a poet there.  And he fed his old
+zinc-eater, and sang:
+
+      Away--and away!
+      Hi-YAY!
+  Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!
+    Wild are his eyes,
+    Fiercely he dies!
+      Hi-YAH!
+  Crash, bash, bang!  Bash, CHANG!
+    Ready to fling
+    Our gloves in the ring--
+
+He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen.
+Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him
+standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs.  Sheridan
+nodded to those nearest him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly
+all of them--but he kept his attention upon his son.  Bibbs worked
+steadily, never turning from his machine.  Now and then he varied his
+musical programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.
+
+"Go on, you old crash-basher!  Chew it up!  It's good for you, if you
+don't try to bolt your vittles.  Fletcherize, you pig!  That's right
+--YOU'LL never get a lump in your gizzard.  Want some more?  Here's
+a nice, shiny one."
+
+The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to
+Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely:  "Talkin' to himself!  By George!"
+
+Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
+
+Bibbs returned to song:
+
+  Chang!  Chang, bash, chang!  It's I!
+  WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
+    Fearless and bo--
+
+His father grasped him by the arm.  "Here!" he shouted.  "Let ME show
+you how to run a strip through there.  The foreman says you're some
+better'n you used to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way
+and let me show you once."
+
+"Better be careful," Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
+
+"Careful?  Boh!"  Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box.
+"What you talkin' to yourself about?  Tryin' to make yourself think
+you're so abused you're goin' wrong in the head?"
+
+"'Abused'?  No!" shouted Bibbs.  "I was SINGING--because I 'like it'!
+I told you I'd come back and 'like it.'"
+
+Sheridan may not have understood.  At all events, he made no reply,
+but began to run the strip of zinc through the machine.  He did it
+awkwardly--and with bad results.
+
+"Here!" he shouted.  "This is the way.  Watch how I do it.  There's
+nothin' to it, if you put your mind on it."  By his own showing then
+his mind was not upon it.  He continued to talk.  "All you got to look
+out for is to keep it pressed over to--"
+
+"Don't run your hand up with it," Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward
+him.
+
+"Run nothin'!  You GOT to--"
+
+"Look out!" shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang
+forward.  But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far,
+and the zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second
+fingers. He swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower
+of red drops over himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist,
+and said, sharply:
+
+"Come out of here.  Come over to the lavatory in the office.  Bibbs,
+fetch my bag.  It's in my machine, outside."
+
+And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor
+still grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a
+basin.  Sheridan had lost color, and temper, too.  He glared over
+his shoulder at his son as the latter handed the bag to Gurney.
+
+"You go on back to your work," he said.  "I've had worse snips than
+that from a pencil-sharpener."
+
+"Oh no, you haven't!" said Gurney.
+
+"I have, too!" Sheridan retorted, angrily.  "Bibbs, you go on back
+to your work.  There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole
+Doc Gurney tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that
+only needs a little court-plaster.  I slipped, or it wouldn't
+happened.  You get back on your job."
+
+"All right," said Bibbs.
+
+"HERE!" Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door.
+"You watch out when you're runnin' that machine!  You hear what I say?
+I slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get
+your whole hand cut off!  You keep your eyes open!"
+
+"Yes, sir."  And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
+
+Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned
+him outside, where conversation was possible.  "I sent him home,
+Bibbs.  He'll have to be careful of that hand.  Go get your overalls
+off.  I'll take you for a drive and leave you at home."
+
+"Can't," said Bibbs.  "Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows."
+
+"No, you don't," the doctor returned, smothering a yawn.  "He wants
+me to take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see
+how much harm these four days on the machine have done you.  I guess
+you folks have got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you,
+up at your house!  But I don't need to go over you.  I can see with
+my eyes half shut--"
+
+"Yes," Bibbs interrupted, "that's what they are."
+
+"I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape.
+What's made the difference?"
+
+"I like the machine," said Bibbs.  "I've made a friend of it.
+I serenade it and talk to it, and then it talks back to me."
+
+"Indeed, indeed?  What does it say?"
+
+"What I want to hear."
+
+"Well, well!"  The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot
+repeatedly.  "Better come along and take a drive with me.  You can
+take the time off that he allowed for the examination, and--"
+
+"Not at all," said Bibbs.  "I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater
+till five o'clock.  I tell you I LIKE it!"
+
+"Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write."
+
+"I don't know about that," Bibbs said, thoughtfully; "but the zinc-
+eater doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least.  It's better than
+being in business; I'm sure of that.  I don't want anything to change.
+I'd be content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my
+days."
+
+"You do beat the devil!" exclaimed Gurney.  "Your father's right when
+he tells me you're a mystery.  Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was
+doing when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it!
+Well, I'm off.  Go on back to your murdering old machine."  He climbed
+into his car, which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting
+it immediately in motion.  "Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that
+you had warned him not to slide his hand along too far, and that he
+got hurt because he didn't pay attention to your warning, and because
+he was trying to show you how to do something you were already doing a
+great deal better than he could.  You tell him I'll be around to look
+at it and change the dressing to-morrow morning.  Good-by."
+
+But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more
+than change the dressing upon the damaged hand.  The injury was severe
+of its kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was
+rebellious and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability
+only by means of horrible threats and talk of amputation.  However,
+he appeared at the dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling,
+which he seemed to regard as an indignity, while the natural inquiries
+upon the subject evidently struck him as deliberate insults.  Mrs.
+Sheridan, having been unable to contain her solicitude several times
+during the day, and having been checked each time in a manner that
+blanched her cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their
+arrival at five, to omit any reference to the injury and to avoid
+even looking at the sling if they possibly could.
+
+The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five.  Sibyl had taken pains not to
+arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and
+the members of the family were all seated at the table within two
+minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
+
+It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents.  The air seemed
+charged, awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's
+expression, as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon
+her husband, was that of a person engaged in prayer.  Edith was pale
+and intent.  Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked
+both ill and explosive.  Bibbs had more color than any of these, and
+there was a strange brightness, like a light, upon his face.  It was
+curious to see anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.
+
+Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate.  She
+never once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick
+glance, heavily charged, and then looked away.  Roscoe ate nothing,
+and, like Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to
+occupy himself with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently,
+but not lifting it to his mouth.  He did not once look at his father,
+though his father gazed heavily at him most of the time.  And between
+Edith and Sibyl, and between Roscoe and his father, some bitter
+wireless communication seemed continually to be taking place
+throughout the long silences prevailing during this enlivening
+ceremony of Sabbath refection.
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?" his mother asked,
+in the effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
+
+"What did you say, mother?"
+
+"Didn't you go to church this morning?"
+
+"I think so," he answered, as from a roseate trance.
+
+"You THINK so!  Don't you know?"
+
+"Oh yes.  Yes, I went to church!"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Just down the street.  It's brick."
+
+"What was the sermon about?"
+
+"What, mother?"
+
+"Can't you hear me?" she cried.  "I asked you what the sermon was
+about?"
+
+He roused himself.  "I think it was about--"  He frowned, seeming to
+concentrate his will to recollect.  "I think it was about something
+in the Bible."
+
+White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and
+lean upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry.  "He don't know
+they WAS any suhmon!" he concluded, having narrated the dining-room
+dialogue.  "All he know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!"
+George was right.
+
+"Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?" Sibyl asked.
+
+"No," he answered.  "No, I didn't go alone."
+
+"Oh?"  Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking
+inquiry, and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious
+comprehension.  "OH!"
+
+Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further.  And that
+completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
+
+Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed
+to other parts of the house.  Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe
+into the library, but was not well received.
+
+"YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks," Sheridan
+commanded.
+
+Bibbs retreated.  "Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!"
+he said.
+
+However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his
+mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn,
+according to their Sabbatical custom.  Edith sat in a corner, tapping
+her feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the
+room, examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and
+Mrs. Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting
+exclusively of Caruso and rag-time.  She selected one of the latter,
+remarking that she thought it "right pretty," and followed it with one
+of the former and the same remark.
+
+As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad
+doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak.
+Instead, he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately
+left the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and
+then disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful
+diplomacy.  He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret
+instructions and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil
+them to the letter.
+
+Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with
+curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
+
+"What's that?" she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
+
+"Here's another right pretty record," said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting--
+with patent nervousness--not to hear.  And she unloosed the music.
+
+Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch.  After
+a little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in
+a gold chair, with his eyes closed.
+
+"Where did Edith go?" she asked, curiously.
+
+"Edith?" he repeated, opening his eyes blankly.  "Is she gone?"
+
+Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway.  She leaned against the casing,
+still tapping her chin with the brooch.  Her eyes were dilating; she
+was suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of
+sharp excitement.  She listened intently.
+
+When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the
+library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and
+husky:  "I won't say anything at all.  I tell you, you might just as
+well let me alone!"
+
+But there were other sounds:  a rustling and murmur, whispering, low
+protesting cadences in a male voice.  And as Mrs. Sheridan started
+another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes
+of Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
+
+Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating.  Edith became
+instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to
+foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
+
+But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face
+so white.  At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible
+consequences became nothing to Sibyl.  She courtesied, holding up
+her skirts and contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.
+
+"Sit just as you were--both of you!" she said.  And then to Edith:
+"Did you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?"
+
+"You march out of here!" said Edith, fiercely.  "March straight out
+of here!"
+
+Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
+
+"Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?"
+
+"Oh, good God!" Lamhorn said.  "Hush!"
+
+"You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?" she cried.  "You knew
+that!"
+
+"HUSH!" he begged, panic-stricken.
+
+"That was a MANLY thing to do!  Oh, it was like a gentleman!  You
+wouldn't come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what
+I had to say!  You were TIRED of what I had to say!  You'd heard it
+all a thousand times before, and you wouldn't come!  No! No! NO!"
+she stormed.  "You wouldn't even come for five minutes, but you could
+tell that little cat!  And SHE told my husband!  You're a MAN!"
+
+Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous
+to Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give
+way to her feelings.  "Get out of this house!" she shrieked.  "This
+is my father's house.  Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!"
+
+"No! No!  I mustn't SPEAK--"
+
+"Don't you DARE!"
+
+Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously,
+fronting each other, their furious faces close.  Their voices shrilled
+and rose and cracked--they screeched.  They could be heard over the
+noise of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection.
+They could be heard all over the house.  They were heard in the
+kitchen; they could have been heard in the cellar.  Neither of them
+cared for that.
+
+"You told my husband!" screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer
+to Edith's.  "You told my husband!  This man put THAT in your hands
+to strike me with!  HE did!"
+
+"I'll tell your husband again!  I'll tell him everything I know!
+It's TIME your husband--"
+
+They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand.  "Do you want the
+neighbors in?" Sheridan thundered.
+
+There fell a shocking silence.  Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and
+his mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done.
+She moved slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run.
+She ran into the hall, and through it, and out of the house.  Roscoe
+followed her heavily, his eyes on the ground.
+
+"NOW THEN!" said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
+
+The words were indefinite, but the voice was not.  Neither was the
+vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit
+in the direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift
+dispersal of George and Jackson and several female servants who
+hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan.  They fled lightly.
+
+"Papa, papa!" wailed Mrs. Sheridan.  "Look at your hand!  You'd
+oughtn't to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her
+shoulder.  Look!"
+
+There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the
+tips of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling.
+"Now then!" he repeated.  "You goin' to leave my house?"
+
+"He will NOT!" sobbed Edith.  "Don't you DARE order him out!"
+
+"Don't you bother, dear," said Lamhorn, quietly.  "He doesn't
+understand.  YOU mustn't be troubled."  Pallor was becoming to him;
+he looked very handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the
+girl's distraught eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble
+yawping insult at his heels--the rabble being enacted by her father.
+
+"Don't come back, either!" said, Sheridan, realistic in this
+impersonation.  "Keep off the premises!" he called savagely into
+the hall.  "This family's through with you!"
+
+"It is NOT!" Edith cried, breaking from her mother.  "You'll SEE about
+that!  You'll find out!  You'll find out what'll happen!  What's HE
+done?  I guess if I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it?
+What's HE done, I'd like to know?  You don't know anything about it.
+Don't you s'pose he told ME?  She was crazy about him soon as he began
+going there, and he flirted with her a little.  That's everything he
+did, and it was before he met ME!  After that he wouldn't, and it
+wasn't anything, anyway--he never was serious a minute about it.  SHE
+wanted it to be serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up.
+He told her long ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him
+and--"
+
+"Yes," said Sheridan, sternly; "that's HIS side of it!  That'll do!
+He doesn't come in this house again!"
+
+"You look out!" Edith cried.
+
+"Yes, I'll look out!  I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed
+on the premises, but I had other things on my mind.  I had Abercrombie
+look up this young man privately, and he's no 'count.  He's no 'count
+on earth!  He's no good!  He's NOTHIN'!  But it wouldn't matter if
+he was George Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard
+to-night!"
+
+"But, papa," Mrs. Sheridan began, "if Edie says it was all Sibyl's
+fault, makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--"
+
+"'S enough!" he roared.  "He keeps off these premises!  And if any
+of you so much as ever speak his name to me again--"
+
+But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by
+her mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and
+joined her husband in the library.  Bibbs, still sitting in his gold
+chair, saw her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in
+after her.
+
+"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully.
+"She wouldn't even answer me.  They wasn't a sound from her room."
+
+"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it.  She
+never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her
+to-morrow--Here!  You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and
+say it's my orders.  No, you needn't.  I'll tell 'em myself."
+
+"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+His father glared at him.
+
+"It's no good," said Bibbs.  "Mother, when you were in love with
+father--"
+
+"My goodness!" she cried.  "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father
+to that--"
+
+"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs.
+"And if YOUR father had told you--"
+
+"I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.
+
+"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan.
+"What is it?"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants."
+
+"You're a--"  Sheridan gave it up.  "I don't know what to call you!"
+
+"Let her see him all she wants," Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully.
+"You're up against something too strong for you.  If Edith were
+a weakling you'd have a chance this way, but she isn't.  She's got
+a lot of your determination, father, and with what's going on inside
+of her she'll beat you.  You can't keep her from seeing him, as long
+as she feels about him the way she does now.  You can't make her think
+less of him, either.  Nobody can.  Your only chance is that she'll
+do it for herself, and if you give her time and go easy she probably
+will.  Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's just what
+you don't want, and as you DON'T want it, you'd better--"
+
+"I can't stand any more!" Sheridan burst out.  "If it's come to BIBBS
+advisin' me how to run this house I better resign.  Mamma, where's
+that nigger George?  Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my
+family.  Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down!  'Let her see him all
+she wants'!  Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's--"
+
+"Bibbs," said Mrs. Sheridan, "if you haven't got anything to do, you
+might step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall.
+I don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now."
+
+"All right."  And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and
+delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door.  Bibbs said only,
+"Forgot these," and, "Good night, Roscoe," cordially and cheerfully,
+and returned to the New House.  His mother and father were still
+talking in the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on
+and upward to his own room, and there he proceeded to write in his
+note-book.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+   There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
+   Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
+   very wide awake when it dies.  Let it alone until then.
+
+   You cannot reason with love or with any other passion.  The wise
+   will not wish for love--nor for ambition.  These are passions
+   and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
+   blind.  Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
+
+   What a turbulence is love!  It is dangerous for a blind thing to
+   be turbulent; there are precipices in life.  One would not cross
+   a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes.  Lovers do.
+   Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.
+
+   To walk to church with a friend!  To sit beside her there!  To rise
+   when she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other
+   half of the hymn-book that she holds!  What lover, with his fierce
+   ways, could know this transcendent happiness?
+
+   Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring.  There is no
+   labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend
+   is thinking of you as you labor.  So you sing at your work.  For
+   the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!
+
+   Love is demanding and claiming and insistent.  Friendship is all
+   kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness.  What color
+   you see when you walk with a friend!  You see that the gray sky
+   is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
+   browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes iridescent.
+   You see the gold in brown hair.  Light floods everything.
+
+   When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give
+   you nothing richer.  You pray that there will be no change in
+   anything for ever.
+
+   What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
+   friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
+   adore!  On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
+   without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
+   when you ask her why she does not wear them.  You will say no
+   more, because you understand.  She looks beautiful in her furs;
+   you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
+   they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
+   chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
+   look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
+   taking cold.  So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
+   had not thought it out.
+
+   This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
+   the absence of the muff.  Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
+   somewhere!  Mystery is a part of enchantment.
+
+   Manual labor is best.  Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
+   while your hands are working.  You could not have a singing heart
+   and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars,
+   or if you had to add columns of figures.  Those things take your
+   attention.  You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
+   letters beginning "Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents
+   duly noted."  But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
+   singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
+   of your friend's greeting--always there--for you!  Who would wake
+   from such a dream as this?
+
+   Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
+   serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
+   things into the city's turmoil?  Yet they are here, and roses
+   blossom in the soot.  That is what it means not to be alone!
+   That is what a friend gives you!
+
+Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed
+a somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his
+own (and perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan
+to sleep soundly through the night and to wake at dawn with a light
+heart.
+
+His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of
+affairs of his family.  He had recognized his condition when he wrote,
+"Who would wake from such a dream as this?"  Bibbs was a sympathetic
+person, easily touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all
+things outside of it were veiled and remote--for that is the way of
+youth in a dream.  And Bibbs, who had never before been of any age,
+either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
+
+He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
+down-stairs.  There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder
+of soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an
+automobile at the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it
+as Dr. Gurney's, but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist.
+And when he was once more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater
+he whistled and sang to it, as other workmen did to their own machines
+sometimes, when things went well.  His comrades in the shop glanced
+at him amusedly now and then.  They liked him, and he ate his lunch at
+noon with a group of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked
+of electing him to their association.
+
+The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the
+whistles blew.  When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where
+he divested himself of his overalls--his single divergence from the
+routine of his fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water
+copiously.  This was his transformation scene:  he passed into the
+office a rather frail young working-man noticeably begrimed, and
+passed out of it to the pavement a cheerfully pre-occupied sample
+of gentry, fastidious to the point of elegance.
+
+The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and
+boys and women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five.
+Many hurried and some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling
+one another, and Bibbs, turning his face homeward, was forced to go
+slowly.
+
+Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught
+sight of his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost
+passed her, for in the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not
+recognize her, though his shoulder actually touched hers.  He would
+have gone by, but she laughed delightedly; and he stopped short,
+startled.  Two boys, one chasing the other, swept between them, and
+Bibbs stood still, peering about him in deep perplexity.  She leaned
+toward him.
+
+"I knew YOU!" she said.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Bibbs.  "I thought it was your voice coming out
+of a star!"
+
+"There's only smoke overhead," said Mary, and laughed again. "There
+aren't any stars."
+
+"Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!"
+
+She took his arm, and they went on.  "I've come to walk home with you,
+Bibbs.  I wanted to."
+
+"But were you here in the--"
+
+"In the dark?  Yes!  Waiting?  Yes!"
+
+Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness.  He began to
+scold her.
+
+"But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it.  You shouldn't have--you
+ought to know better.  What did--"
+
+"I only waited about twelve seconds," she laughed.  "I'd just got
+here."
+
+"But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--"
+
+"I was in this part of town already," she said.  "At least, I was only
+seven or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd
+have had to go home alone--and I preferred going home with you."
+
+"It's pretty beautiful for me," said Bibbs, with a deep breath.
+"You'll never know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and
+then to--to see you standing there! Oh, it was like--it was like--how
+can I TELL you what it was like?"  They had passed beyond the crowd
+now, and a crossing-lamp shone upon them, which revealed the fact that
+again she was without her furs.  Here was a puzzle.  Why did that
+adorable little vanity of hers bring her out without them in the DARK?
+But of course she had gone out long before dark.  For undefinable
+reasons this explanation was not quite satisfactory; however, allowing
+it to stand, his solicitude for her took another turn.  "I think you
+ought to have a car," he said, "especially when you want to be out
+after dark.  You need one in winter, anyhow.  Have you ever asked your
+father for one?"
+
+"No," said Mary.  "I don't think I'd care for one particularly."
+
+"I wish you would."  Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled.  "I think
+in winter you--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, lightly.  "I don't need--"
+
+"But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every
+afternoon for me.  I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk,
+but a girl--"
+
+"A girl likes to walk, too," said Mary.  "Let me tell you where I've
+been this afternoon and how I happened to be near enough to make you
+take me home.  I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures
+of the smoke.  He has a sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives
+there with his mother and his wife and their seven children, and he's
+gloriously happy.  I'd seen one of his pictures at an exhibition, and
+I wanted to see more of them, so he showed them to me.  He has almost
+everthing he ever painted; I don't suppose he's sold more than four
+or five pictures in his life.  He gives drawing-lessons to keep
+alive."
+
+"How do you mean he paints the smoke?" Bibbs asked.
+
+"Literally.  He paints from his studio window and from the street--
+anywhere.  He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful."
+
+"The smoke?"
+
+"Wonderful!  He sees the sky through it, somehow.  He does the ugly
+roofs of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky
+sunsets and smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy,
+solid, slow columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal
+and mixing with the hazy light in the distance; and he has others
+with the broken sky-line of down-town, all misted with the smoke and
+puffs and jets of vapor that have colors like an orchard in mid-April.
+I'm going to take you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs."
+
+"You're showing me the town," he said.  "I didn't know what was in it
+at all."
+
+"There are workers in beauty here," she told him, gently.  "There are
+other painters more prosperous than my friend.  There are all sorts
+of things."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"No.  Since the town began growing so great that it called itself
+'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side
+of it that shows."
+
+"The beauty-workers seem buried very deep," said Bibbs.  "And I
+imagine that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried
+deepest of all.  My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his
+buying one of your friend's pictures.  He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,'
+but he wouldn't get one of those.  He'd think smoke in a picture was
+horrible--unless he could use it for an advertisement."
+
+"Yes," she said, thoughtfully.  "And really he's the town.  They ARE
+buried pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs."
+
+"And yet it's all wonderful," he said.  "It's wonderful to me."
+
+"You mean the town is wonderful to you?"
+
+"Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend.  The
+city is only a rumble on the horizon for me.  It can't come any closer
+than the horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old
+zinc-eater all day long, helping me.  Mary--"  He stopped with a gasp.
+"That's the first time I've called you 'Mary'!"
+
+"Yes."  She laughed, a little tremuously.  "Though I wanted you to!"
+
+"I said it without thinking.  It must be because you came there to
+walk home with me.  That must be it."
+
+"Women like to have things said," Mary informed him, her tremulous
+laughter continuing.  "Were you glad I came for you?"
+
+"No--not 'glad.'  I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up
+and up--over the clouds.  I feel like that still.  I think I'm that
+way most of the time.  I wonder what I was like before I knew you.
+The person I was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs
+Sheridan at all.  It seems long, long ago.  I was gloomy and sickly
+--somebody else--somebody I don't understand now, a coward afraid
+of shadows--afraid of things that didn't exist--afraid of my old
+zinc-eater!  And now I'm only afraid of what might change anything."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, "You're happy, Bibbs?" she asked.
+
+"Ah, don't you see?" he cried.  "I want it to last for a thousand,
+thousand years, just as it is!  You've made me so rich, I'm a miser.
+I wouldn't have one thing different--nothing, nothing!"
+
+"Dear Bibbs!" she said, and laughed happily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream.  He had told
+Edith, after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that
+he had decided that he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared
+to have relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at
+participancy--he was far enough detached from membership now.  These
+were turbulent days in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever
+in the turbulence--he seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by
+accident and not wholly aware that he was present.  He would sit,
+faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of
+his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while
+Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily
+to endure them.  The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a
+somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened.  He was sorry for
+his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but their
+sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
+
+Sibyl was under Gurney's care.  Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday
+night, not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during
+the first days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be
+with her frequently, and to install a muscular nurse.  And whether
+he would or no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety
+of pungent information which would have staggered anybody but a family
+physician.  Among other things he was given to comprehend the change
+in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the
+operator's gizzard as of yore.
+
+Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
+shrieking in pain.  Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
+herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration
+of that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and
+telling mother all about the hurt and how it happened.  Sibyl babbled
+herself hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine.  She went from the
+beginning to the end in a breath.  No protest stopped her; nothing
+stopped her.
+
+"You ought to let me die!" she wailed.  "It's cruel not to let me die!
+What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
+Just look at my life!  I only married Roscoe to get away from home,
+and look what that got me into!--look where I am now!  He brought me
+to this town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY?  And they
+didn't even know the right crowd!  If they had, it might have been
+SOMETHING!  I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world!  I wanted
+to have a good time--and how could I?  Where's any good time among
+these Sheridans?  They never even had wine on the table!  I thought
+I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet attractive people
+I'd read about, and travel, and go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all
+I got was these Sheridans!  I did the best I could; I did, indeed!
+Oh, I DID!  I just tried to live.  Every woman's got a right to live,
+some time in her life, I guess!  Things were just beginning to look
+brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen crowd across the street
+were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd have started us with the
+right people--and then I saw how Edith was getting him away from me.
+She did it, too!  She got him!  A girl with money can do that to a
+married woman--yes, she can, every time!  And what could I do?  What
+can any woman do in my fix?  I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand
+it--and I couldn't stand it!  I went to that icicle--that Vertrees
+girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt
+her.  It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT little! She
+treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take the trouble
+to sweep out of her house!  Let her WAIT!"
+
+Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
+whisper, though she strove to make it louder.  She struggled half
+upright, and the nurse restrained her.  "I'd get up out of this bed
+to show her she can't do such things to me!  I was absolutely
+ladylike, and she walked out and left me there alone!  She'll SEE!
+She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground,
+and she thinks she's landed that poor loon--but she'll see!  She'll
+see!  If I'm ever able to walk across the street again I'll show her
+how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help!  It
+wouldn't have hurt her any--it wouldn't--it wouldn't.  And Edith
+needn't have told what she told Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her
+to let me alone.  And HE told her I bored him--telephoning him I
+wanted to see him.  He needn't have done it!  He needn't--needn't--"
+Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion, though she
+would go over it all again as soon as her strength returned.  She lay
+panting.  Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway,
+"Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured.  "I don't want to see you."
+And as he turned away she added, "I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe."
+
+Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
+and she had the advantage of a mother for listener.  She had also
+the disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
+husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one.  Edith was reduced
+to telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother
+into a momentary distraction over a counter.
+
+Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion.
+Her whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything
+that separated her from him.  She was in a state that could be altered
+by only the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but
+Sheridan, like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and
+fed it hourly fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force.  He swore
+she should cool, and thus set her on fire.
+
+Edith planned neatly.  She fought hard, every other evening, with
+her father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his
+violence had done to her.  Then, when the mere sight of her set him
+to breathing fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble
+better if she went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with
+Lamhorn and not think always of him.  Perhaps in New York she might
+forget a little.  She had written to a school friend, established
+quietly with an aunt in apartments--and a month or so of theaters
+and restaurants might bring peace.  Sheridan shouted with relief;
+he gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a Monday morning
+wearing violets with her mourning and having kissed everybody good-by
+except Sibyl and Bibbs.  She might have kissed Bibbs, but he failed to
+realize that the day of her departure had arrived, and was surprised,
+on returning from his zinc-eater, that evening, to find her gone.
+"I suppose they'll be maried there," he said, casually.
+
+Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
+fuming.  "Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted.
+"I don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot
+you are!  She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be
+kept away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the
+business.  For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!"
+
+Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged.  And the black
+silk sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's
+and no excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in
+the sling.  The wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected
+the first time he had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long
+delayed.  Sheridan had the habit of gesture; he could not "take time
+to remember," he said, that he must be careful, and he had also a
+curious indignation with his hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment
+of admitting its existence.
+
+The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
+Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
+the doctor felt had become necessary.  But he was a little before the
+appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom
+--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's office.
+The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
+latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
+
+"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and
+then, breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO!  Some o' you men make
+me sick!  You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug
+flipped his hind leg at you!  You say money's tight all over the
+country.  Well, what if it is?  There's no reason for it to be tight,
+and it's not goin' to keep OUR money tight!  You're always runnin'
+to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a crack because some fool
+newspaper says the market's a little skeery!  You listen to every
+street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try to scare ME
+out of a big thing!  We're IN on this--understand?  I tell you there
+never WAS better times.  These are good times and big times, and I
+won't stand for any other kind o' talk.  This country's on its feet
+as it never was before, and this city's on its feet and goin' to stay
+there!"  And Gurney heard a series of whacks and thumps upon the desk.
+"'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with accompanying thumps.
+"Rabbit talk!  These times are glorious, I tell you!  We're in the
+promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there!  That's all, gentlemen.
+The loan goes!"
+
+The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
+in.  His guess was correct:  Sheridan had been thumping the desk with
+his right hand.  The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh
+damage as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the
+subject of Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected,
+a warmly hostile reception.  But the result of this conversation was
+that by telephonic command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later,
+in the library at the New House.
+
+"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as
+he came in.
+
+"Yes."  Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
+which had become his habit.  "Yes, she is."
+
+"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.
+
+"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!"  There was a bitter gibe in the father's
+voice, and he added:  "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
+stay there.  I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
+least of all!"
+
+"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe.  "You won't do any
+good."
+
+"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?"  Sheridan used a
+brisker, kinder tone.  "Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
+When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
+foolishness and start in again?  You ought to be able to make up for
+a lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes
+herself out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone."
+
+"It's no use, father, I tell you.  I know what Gurney was going to say
+to you.  I'm not going back to the office.  I'm DONE!"
+
+"Wait a minute before you talk that way!"  Sheridan began his
+sentry-go up and down the room.  "I suppose you know it's taken two
+pretty good men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and
+get 'em runnin' right again, down in your office?"
+
+"They must be good men."  Roscoe nodded indifferently.  "I thought I
+was doing about eight men's work.  I'm glad you found two that could
+handle it."
+
+"Look here!  If I worked you it was for your own good.  There are
+plenty men drive harder'n I do, and--"
+
+"Yes.  There are some that break down all the other men that work with
+'em.  They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
+the rest of their lives.  The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
+domestic difficulties'!"
+
+"You set there and tell me you give up?" Sheridan's voice shook, and
+so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward
+the despondent figure.  "Don't do it, Roscoe!  Don't say it!  Say
+you'll come down there again and be a man!  This woman ain't goin'
+to trouble you any more.  The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you
+haven't got her to worry you, and you can get shut o' this nasty
+whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't fastened on you yet.  Don't say--"
+
+"It's no use on earth," Roscoe mumbled.  "No use on earth."
+
+"Look here!  If you want another month's vacation--"
+
+"I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?"
+
+"Gurney!"  Sheridan vociferated the name savagely.  "It's Gurney,
+Gurney, Gurney!  Always Gurney!  I don't know what the world's comin'
+to with everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,'
+and, 'The doctor says that'!  It makes me sick!  How's this country
+expect to get its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-
+goats keep up this blattin'--'Oh, oh!  Don't lift that stick o' wood;
+you'll ruin your NERVES!'  So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion
+induced by overwork and emotional strain.'  They always got to
+stick the Work in if they see a chance!  I reckon you did have the
+'emotional strain,' and that's all's the matter with you.  You'll be
+over it soon's this woman's gone, and Work's the very thing to make
+you quit frettin' about her."
+
+"Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?"
+
+"Shut up!" Sheridan bellowed.  "I'm so sick o' that man's name I
+feel like shootin' anybody that says it to me!"  He fumed and chafed,
+swearing indistinctly, then came and stood before his son.  "Look
+here; do you think you're doin' the square thing by me?  Do you?
+How much you worth?"
+
+"I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
+outside the salary.  That much is mine whether I work or not."
+
+"It is?  You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think,
+at your age?"
+
+"No. But it's mine, and it's enough."
+
+"My Lord!  It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
+there!  I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the
+bucket, and all you have to do is lay back and wait!  You let me
+tell you right here, you'll never see one cent of it.  You go out o'
+business now, and what would you know about handlin' it five or ten
+or twenty years from now?  Because I intend to STAY here a little
+while yet, my boy!  They'd either get it away from you or you'd sell
+for a nickel and let it be split up and--"  He whirled about, marched
+to the other end of the room, and stood silent a moment.  Then he
+said, solemnly:  "Listen.  If you go out now, you leave me in the
+lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth to depend on but your brother
+--and you know what he is.  I've depended on you for it ALL since Jim
+died.  Now you've listened to that dam' doctor, and he says maybe you
+won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that certainly you won't
+be for a year or so--probably more.  Now, that's all a lie.  Men don't
+break down that way at your age.  Look at ME!  And I tell you, you can
+shake this thing off.  All you need is a little GET-up and a little
+gumption.  Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING
+businesses like ours--they lose the strings.  And if you could, I
+won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because
+if you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were."
+He cleared his throat and finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take
+a month's vacation and come back and go to it?"
+
+"No," said Roscoe, listlessly.  "I'm through."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan.  He picked up the evening paper from a
+table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
+"Good-by."
+
+Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his
+eyes. "Best I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet
+lingering.  "I figure it out a good deal like this," he said.  "I
+didn't KNOW my job was any strain, and I managed all right, but from
+what Gur--from what I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves
+from overwork, and the--the trouble at home was the extra strain
+that's fixed me the way I am.  I tried to brace, so I could stand
+the work and the trouble too, on whiskey--and that put the finish
+to me!  I--I'm not hitting it as hard as I was for a while, and I
+reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a little more energy, I
+better try to quit entirely--I don't know.  I'm all in--and the doctor
+says so.  I thought I was running along fine up to a few months ago,
+but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know it.  Now, then,
+I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you I wouldn't speak
+of her as 'that woman,' because she's your daughter-in-law and going
+to stay that way.  She didn't do anything wicked.  It was a shock to
+me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had done--encouraging that
+fellow to hang around her after he began trying to flirt with her,
+and losing her head over him the way she did.  I don't deny it was
+a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll never get
+over.  But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's nature."
+Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.  "A
+woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive people, and
+traveling.  Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can give
+her the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or
+New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times.  A woman has to have
+something in her life besides a business man.  And that's ALL I was.
+I never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and
+I believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
+about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have.  That's
+all.  I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but
+I was so busy with business I put it ahead of her.  I never THOUGHT
+about her, I was so busy thinking business.  Well, this is where it's
+brought us to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel
+the way you do when anybody talks about Gurney to you.  The word
+'business' makes me dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach.
+I believe if I had to go down-town and step inside that office door
+I'd fall down on the floor, deathly sick.  You talk about a 'month's
+vacation'--and I get just as sick.  I'm rattled--I can't plan--I
+haven't got any plans--can't make any, except to take my girl and get
+just as far away from that office as I can--and stay.  We're going to
+Japan first, and if we--"
+
+His father rustled the paper.  "I said good-by, Roscoe."
+
+"Good-by," said Roscoe, listlessly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing;
+then he rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall.  Jackson
+appeared.
+
+"Has Bibbs got home from work?"
+
+"Mist' Bibbs?  No, suh."
+
+"Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes."
+
+"Yessuh."
+
+Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon
+the newspaper.  He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond
+their explanatory rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to
+concentrate his attention:
+
+  "Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes.  Three Killed when Car Slides."
+  "Burglars Make Big Haul."
+  "Board Works Approve Big Car-line Extension."
+  "Hold-up Men Injure Two.  Man Found in Alley, Skull Fractured."
+  "Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court."
+  "Plan New Eighteen-story Structure."
+  "School-girl Meets Death under Automobile."
+  "Negro Cuts Three.  One Dead."
+  "Life Crushed Out.  Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes
+    Action by Coroner."
+  "Declare Militia will be Menace.  Polish Societies Protest to
+    Governor in Church Rioting Case."
+  "Short $3,500 in Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug."
+  "Found Frozen.  Family Without Food or Fuel.  Baby Dead when
+    Parents Return Home from Seeking Work."
+  "Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures on Big Future of Our
+    City.  Sees Big Improvement during Short Absence.  Says No
+    European City Holds Candle." (Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
+
+Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly.
+"Well, father, did you want me?"
+
+"Yes.  Sit down."  Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the
+fire, holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold
+outdoors.
+
+"I came within seven of the shop record to-day," he said.  "I handled
+more strips than any other workman has any day this month.  The
+nearest to me is sixteen behind."
+
+"There!" exclaimed his father, greatly pleased.  "What'd I tell you?
+I'd like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you
+there--I would just like to hear him!  And you--ain't you ashamed of
+makin' such a fuss about it?  Ain't you?"
+
+"I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time," Bibbs said,
+smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight.  "I didn't
+know the difference it meant to like a thing."
+
+"Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement.  I
+guess I HAVE!  I said the shop'd be good for you, and it was.  I said
+it wouldn't hurt you, and it hasn't.  It's been just exactly what
+I said it would be.  Ain't that so?"
+
+"Looks like it!" Bibbs agreed, gaily.
+
+"Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last!
+Instead o' hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically.
+You're a good inch taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than
+what I am if you'd get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin'
+a little.  Physically, it's started you out to be the huskiest one o'
+the whole family.  Now, then, mentally--that's different.  I don't say
+it unkindly, Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally,
+just like what's begun physically.  And I'm goin' to help you."
+
+Sheridan decided to sit down again.  He brought his chair close to his
+son's, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially.  "I got
+plans for you, Bibbs," he said.
+
+Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed.  He drew back.  "I--I'm all
+right now, father."
+
+"Listen."  Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the
+tone of a reasonable man reasoning.  "Listen here, Bibbs.  I had
+another blow to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face,
+though I HAVE been expectin' it some little time back.  Well, it's
+got to be met.  Now I'll be frank with you.  As I said a minute ago,
+mentally I couldn't ever called you exactly strong.  You been a little
+weak both ways, most of your life.  Not but what I think you GOT a
+mentality, if you'd learn to use it. You got will-power, I'll say that
+for you.  I never knew boy or man that could be stubborner--never one
+in my life!  Now, then, you've showed you could learn to run that
+machine best of any man in the shop, in no time at all.  That looks
+to me like you could learn to do other things.  I don't deny but what
+it's an encouragin' sign.  I don't deny that, at all.  Well, that
+helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as it looks.  You're all
+I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't as poor material as
+I thought.  Your tellin' me about comin' within seven strips of the
+shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin' information brought
+in at just about the right time.  Now, then, I'm goin' to give you a
+raise.  I wanted to send you straight on up through the shops--a year
+or two, maybe--but I can't do it.  I lost Jim, and now I've lost
+Roscoe.  He's quit.  He's laid down on me.  If he ever comes back at
+all, he'll be a long time pickin' up the strings, and, anyway, he
+ain't the man I thought he was.  I can't count on him.  I got to have
+SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on.  And I'm down to this:  you're my last
+chance.  Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got and see
+if we can't develop 'em a little.  Who knows?  And I'm goin' to put my
+time in on it.  I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I
+won't be hard on you if you're a little slow at first.  And I'm goin'
+to do the big thing for you.  I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do
+the big thing for me, in return.  I've vindicated my policy with you
+about the shop, and now I'm goin' to turn right around and swing you
+'way over ahead of where the other boys started, and I'm goin' to make
+an appeal to your ambition that'll make you dizzy!"  He tapped his son
+on the knee again.  "Bibbs, I'm goin' to start you off this way: I'm
+goin' to make you a director in the Pump Works Company; I'm goin' to
+make you vice-president of the Realty Company and a vice-president of
+the Trust Company!"
+
+Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched.  "Oh no!" he cried.
+
+Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy.  "Yes,
+sir!  And there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those
+vice-presidencies, and a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the
+directorship.  You thought I was pretty mean about the shop--oh, I
+know you did!--but you see the old man can play it both ways.  And so
+right now, the minute you've begun to make good the way I wanted you
+to, I deal from the new deck.  And I'll keep on handin' it out bigger
+and bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the hand
+I deal you.  I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!"
+
+"But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!" Bibbs stammered.
+
+"What'd you say?"  Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
+
+"I don't want it, father.  I thank you--I do thank you--"
+
+Sheridan looked perplexed.  "What's the matter with you?  Didn't you
+understand what I was tellin' you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You sure?  I reckon you didn't.  I offered--"
+
+"I know, I know!  But I can't take it."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"  Sheridan was half amazed, half
+suspicious.  "Your head feel funny?"
+
+"I've never been quite so sane in my life," said Bibbs, "as I have
+lately.  And I've got just what I want.  I'm living exactly the right
+life.  I'm earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it.  My
+wages are enough. I don't want any more money, and I don't deserve
+any--"
+
+"Damnation!"  Sheridan sprang up.  "You've turned Socialist!  You been
+listening to those fellows down there, and you--"
+
+"No, sir.  I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that
+isn't it."
+
+Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.
+"Then what is it?  What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," his son returned, nervously.  "Nothing--except that I'm
+content.  I don't want to change anything."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain.  "I'll tell you,
+father, if I can.  I know it may be hard to understand--"
+
+"Yes, I think it may be," said Sheridan, grimly.  "What you say
+usually is a LITTLE that way.  Go on!"
+
+Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself
+at every possible disadvantage.  He was a sleeper clinging to a dream
+--a rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him.  He went to a
+table and made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke
+he kept his eyes lowered.  "You weren't altogether right about the
+shop--that is, in one way you weren't, father."  He glanced up
+apprehensively.  Sheridan stood facing him, expressionless, and made
+no attempt to interrupt.  "That's difficult to explain," Bibbs
+continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of his
+finger.  "I--I believe the shop might have done for me this time if
+I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh, not only to bear it,
+but to be happy in it.  Well, I AM happy in it.  I want to go on just
+as I am.  And of all things on earth that I don't want, I don't want
+to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn into it.  I don't
+think it IS living--and now I AM living.  I have the healthful toil
+--and I can think.  In business as important as yours I couldn't think
+anything but business.  I don't--I don't think making money is worth
+while."
+
+"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
+
+"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs.  "You
+think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being
+rich and powerful?  They don't teach the children any more in the
+schools because the city is rich and powerful.  They teach them more
+than they used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--
+have thought the thoughts to teach the children.  And yet when you've
+been reading the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being
+taught anything except what would help them to make money.  You said
+it was wasting the taxes.  You want them taught to make a living, but
+not to live.  When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now
+it's hideous. What's the use of being big just to be hideous?  I mean
+I don't think all this has meant really going ahead--it's just been
+getting bigger and dirtier and noisier.  Wasn't the whole country
+happier and in many ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and
+quieter and kinder?  I know you think I'm an utter fool, father, but,
+after all, though, aren't business and politics just the housekeeping
+part of life?  And wouldn't you despise a woman that not only made her
+housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and dirtily that the
+whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it?  And suppose
+she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was
+always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep
+clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the
+house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--"
+
+"Just one minute!" Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible
+courtesy, "If you will permit me?  Have you ever been right about
+anything?"
+
+"I don't quite--"
+
+"I ask the simple question:  Have you ever been right about anything
+whatever in the course of your life?  Have you ever been right upon
+any subject or question you've thought about and talked about?  Can
+you mention one single time when you were proved to be right?"
+
+He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only,
+"If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm
+right about this.  It seems reasonable to suppose something would be
+due to bring up my average."
+
+"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point.  And there's another you
+probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it.  You
+been balkin' all your life.  Pretty much everything I ever wanted you
+to do, you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet
+I can't seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do
+what I said.  But go on with your remarks about our city and the
+business of this country.  Go on!"
+
+"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.
+"I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now.  I couldn't, if I
+went down there with you.  I'd be swallowed into it.  I don't care for
+money enough to--"
+
+"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet.  "You've
+never had to earn a living.  Anybody could tell that by what you say.
+Now, let me remind you:  you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're
+eatin' pretty fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes.  Just
+suppose one o' these noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided
+to let you do your own housekeepin'.  May I ask what your proposition
+would be?"
+
+"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, sturdily.  "It's
+enough.  I shouldn't mind at all."
+
+"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"
+
+"My work!" Bibbs answered.  "And I've done so well on that clipping-
+machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week
+at another job.  I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure.
+I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should, infinitely!"
+
+"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!"  But Sheridan
+struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
+controlling it.  "You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
+either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go
+to plumbing!"
+
+"All right," said Bibbs, gently.  "I can get along."
+
+Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer.  "O God," he
+said, "this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine
+dollars a week, and now his money's gone to his head!  Can't You do
+nothin' for him?"  Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in
+a furious gesture of dismissal.  "Get out o' this room!  You got a
+skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang
+all the way across!  You hated the machine-shop so bad when I sent you
+there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I
+offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the
+shop like a calf for its mammy!  You're cracked!  Oh, but I got a fine
+layout here!  One son died, one quit, and one's a loon!  The loon's
+all I got left!  H. P. Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they
+undertook to keep him at the house.  First morning he was there he
+walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out into the
+yard.  He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!'  That's what
+you're doin'!  You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the
+pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust!
+Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are,
+I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you
+--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of
+you that's fit to be called a business man!  I'll keep at you while
+I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
+at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me!  Now go on, and
+don't let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've
+waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"
+
+Bibbs gave him a queer look.  There was something like reproach in it,
+for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by
+his father's last word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this
+storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place
+in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the
+presence of Mary.  All was right in his world as he sat with her,
+reading Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides.  The sorrowful
+light of the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing
+amber and rose through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle,
+it was so bright for Bibbs.  And while the zinc-eater held out to
+bring him such golden nights as these, all the king's horses and all
+the king's men might not serve to break the spell.
+
+Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking;
+and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers,
+appeared to discover no fault.  It had grown to be her habit to look
+at him whenever there was an opportunity.  It may be said, in truth,
+that while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all
+the time.
+
+When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a
+little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and
+said:  "There's something I want to read over.  This:"
+
+   You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a
+   soul that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like
+   an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you
+   for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know
+   how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
+   of it....
+
+He stopped and looked at her.
+
+"You boy!" said Mary, not very clearly.
+
+"Oh yes," he returned.  "But it's true--especially my knees!"
+
+"You boy!" she murmured again, blushing charmingly.  "You might read
+another line over.  The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were
+looking into a mirror.  Do it again.  But you needn't read it--I can
+give it to you:  'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of
+Arcady!'"
+
+"I!  I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one,
+unless I have to decide to study plumbing."
+
+"No."  She shook her head.  "You love and want what's beautiful and
+delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life,
+and have always wanted.  You seemed to me, from the first, the most
+wistful person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful
+for."
+
+Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment
+or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him.  "Why, no," he
+said; "I wanted something else more than that.  I wanted you."
+
+"And here I am!" she laughed, completely understanding.  "I think
+we're like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth.  I'm just the
+rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard
+and told everybody that the devil was dead."
+
+"He isn't, though," said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next
+room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count.
+"He gets into the clock whenever I'm with you."  And, sighing deeply
+he rose to go.
+
+"You're always very prompt about leaving me."
+
+"I--I try to be," he said.  "It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
+everything by giving myself a little more at a time.  If I ever saw
+you look tired--"
+
+"Have you ever?"
+
+"Not yet.  You always look--you always look--"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Care-free.  That's it.  Except when you feel sorry for me about
+something, you always have that splendid look.  It puts courage into
+people to see it.  If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering
+that look--and I'd never give up!  It's a brave look, too, as though
+gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't
+quite understand why it should be, either."  He smiled quizzically,
+looking down upon her.  "Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have
+you?"
+
+For answer she only laughed.
+
+"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world.  I think
+that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in
+your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn
+to happiness, too.  But there's one little time in the twenty-four
+hours when I'm not happy.  It's now, when I have to say good night.
+I feel dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house,
+there's a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were
+temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind
+that I'm really beginning another day that's to end with YOU again.
+Then I cheer up.  But now's the bad time--and I must go through it,
+and so--good night."  And he added with a pungent vehemence of which
+he was little aware, "I hate it!"
+
+"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him.  But he stood
+motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
+
+"Mary!  Your eyes are so--"  He stopped.
+
+"Yes?"  But she looked quickly away.
+
+"I don't know," he said.  "I thought just then--"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
+understand--and didn't."
+
+She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly.  "My eyes are
+pleased," she said.  "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you
+go."
+
+"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he
+said.
+
+She inclined her head.  "Yes.  I'll--'let it'!"
+
+"Going to church," said Bibbs.  "It IS going to church when I go with
+you!"
+
+She went to the front door with him; she always went that far.  They
+had formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them
+ever speaking of it; but it was always the same.  She always stood
+in the doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always
+turned and looked back, and she waved her hand to him.  Then he went
+on, halfway to the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not
+in the doorway, but the door was open and the light shone.  It was as
+if she meant to tell him that she would never shut him out; he could
+always see that friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were
+open for him to come back, if he would.  He could see it until a wing
+of the New House came between, when he went up the path.  The open
+doorway seemed to him the beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her
+thought of him; a symbol of herself and of her ineffable kindness.
+
+And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine
+snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was
+strewn with tiny white stars.  His heart leaped as he turned and saw
+that she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know
+that the storm touched her.  When he had gone on, Mary did as she
+always did--she went into an unlit room across the hall from that
+in which they had spent the evening, and, looking from the window,
+watched him until he was out of sight.  The storm made that difficult
+to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that
+stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back
+again.  Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of
+Roscoe's house across the street.  They were dark.  Mary waited, but
+after a little while she closed the front door and returned to her
+window.  A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe's house
+flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them.  Mary
+felt the cold then--it was the third night she had seen those windows
+lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.
+
+But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows.  He stopped for
+his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
+already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
+lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.
+
+A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
+aware of a paroxysm within the house.  Terrible sounds came from the
+library:  Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her
+voice rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series
+of muffled detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand
+upon wood; then Gurney, sharply imperious, "Keep your hand in that
+sling!  Keep your hand in that sling, I say!"
+
+"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important
+a tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with
+which he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before
+the eyes of Bibbs.  "Look at 'at lamidal statue!"
+
+Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine--
+painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human;
+and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous
+palms like the spoil of a barbarians' battle.  There had been a
+massacre in the oasis--the Moor had been hurled headlong from his
+pedestal.
+
+"He hit 'at ole lamidal statue," said George.  "POW!"
+
+"My father?"
+
+"YESsuh!  POW! he hit 'er!  An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick
+'s I kin telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel.  He
+ain't takin' on 'tall NOW.  He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was
+'while ago.  You done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs.  Doctuh got him all
+quiet' down, to what he was.  POW! he hit'er!  Yessuh!"  He took
+Bibbs's coat and proffered a crumpled telegraph form.  "Here what
+come," he said.  "I pick 'er up when he done stompin' on 'er.  You
+read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn 'er ovuh to you soon's
+you come in."
+
+Bibbs read the telegram quickly.  It was from New York and addressed
+to Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+   Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
+   health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
+   this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure
+   you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
+   happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
+   when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
+   him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
+                                                     Edith Lamhorn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening
+to thunder.  He could not reach the stairway without passing the open
+doors of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of
+him, just then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his
+father.  For that reason he was about to make his escape into the
+gold-and-brocade room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard
+Sheridan vociferously demanding his presence.
+
+"Tell him to come in here!  He's out there.  I heard George just let
+him in.  Now you'll SEE!"  And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out
+into the hall, beckoned to her son.
+
+Bibbs went as far as the doorway.  Gurney sat winding a strip of white
+cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
+striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages
+that he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove.  His eyes were
+bloodshot; his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar
+had broken loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
+
+"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared.  "THERE'S
+the hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy!  I want--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.
+
+Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl.  "For God's
+sake, sing another tune!" he cried.  "You said you 'came as a doctor
+but stay as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up
+and criticize ME--"
+
+"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally.  "What
+do you want Bibbs to say?"
+
+"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--
+'hysterical,' oh Lord!  You sat up there and told me I got
+'hysterical' over nothin'!  You sat up there tellin' me I didn't
+have as heavy burdens as many another man you knew.  I just want you
+to hear THIS.  Now listen!"  He swung toward the quiet figure waiting
+in the doorway.  "Bibbs, will you come down-town with me Monday morning
+and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock,
+and salaries?  I ask you."
+
+"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.
+
+Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
+
+"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
+instead of takin' up my offer?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And I'd like the doctor to hear:  What'll you do if I decide you're
+too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in
+my shop?"
+
+"Find other work," said Bibbs.
+
+"There!  You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried.  "You hear
+what--"
+
+"Keep you hand in that sling!  Yes, I hear him."
+
+Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
+broke, piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER!  He wants
+to be a PLUMBER!  He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into
+business--he wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!"
+
+He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left
+hand.  "There!  That's my son!  That's the only son I got now!  That's
+my chance to live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave
+ashes in his throat.  "That's my one chance to live--that thing you
+see in the doorway yonder!"
+
+Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been
+winding, and tossed it into the open bag.  "What's the matter
+with giving Bibbs a chance to live?" he said, coolly.  "I would
+if I were you.  You've had TWO that went into business."
+
+Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak.  "Joe
+Gurney," he said, when he could command himself so far, "are you
+accusin' me of the responsibility for the death of my son James?"
+
+"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor.  "But just once I'd like
+to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
+too."  He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands
+behind his back and smiling.  "Look here, old fellow, let's be
+reasonable," he said.  "You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop
+again, and I gave you and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that
+if he went it was at the risk of his life.  Well, what did he do?  He
+said he wanted to go.  And he did go, and he's made good there.  Now,
+see:  Isn't that enough?  Can't you let him off now?  He wants to
+write, and how do you know that he couldn't do it if you gave him
+a chance?  How do you know he hasn't some message--something to say
+that might make the world just a little bit happier or wiser?  He
+MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be denied.  Now he can't
+deliver any message if he goes down there with you, and he won't HAVE
+any to deliver.  I don't say going down with you is likely to injure
+his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the shop did, the
+first time.  I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow.  But I tell you
+one thing I know:  if you take him down there you'll kill something
+that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical
+body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail!  And so why not let
+it live?  You've about come to the end of your string, old fellow.
+Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
+chance?"
+
+Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly.  "What 'fighting?'"
+
+"Yours--with nature."  Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his
+fierce antagonist equably.  "You don't seem to understand that you've
+been struggling against actual law."
+
+"What law?"
+
+"Natural law," said Gurney.  "What do you think beat you with Edith?
+Did Edith, herself, beat you?  Didn't she obey without question
+something powerful that was against you?  EDITH wasn't against you,
+and you weren't against HER, but you set yourself against the power
+that had her in its grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won
+in a walk!  What's taken Roscoe from you?  Timbers bear just so much
+strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load across the broken
+bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked thing
+into standing.  Well, you couldn't!  Now here's Bibbs.  There are
+thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he.
+It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business
+man as Jim and Roscoe put together."
+
+"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
+
+"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has
+the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success
+in anything--if he ever wakes up!  Personally I should prefer him to
+remain asleep.  I like him that way.  But the thousands of men fit
+for the life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life
+he OUGHT to lead.  Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead
+it--he's obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and,
+blindly, he knows you'll crush it out.  You've set your will to do it.
+Let me tell you something more.  You don't know what you've become
+since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a
+bafflement stronger than your normal grief.  You're half mad with a
+consuming fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very
+self of the law that took Jim from you.  That was a law concerning
+the cohesion of molecules.  The very self of the law took Roscoe from
+you and gave Edith the certainty of beating you; and the very self of
+the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.  The LAW beats you.  Haven't
+you been whipped enough?  But you want to whip the law--you've set
+yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and
+twist it--"
+
+The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout.  "Yes!
+And by God, I will!"
+
+"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.
+
+"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
+"That's for chuldern and niggers.  It ain't twentieth century, let me
+tell you!  'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass!  If he'd been
+half a man he'd 'a' got away with it.  WE don't go showin' off defyin'
+the lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a
+black-steer!  A man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin'
+a wood-shed!"
+
+"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney.  "Will you be a really big man
+now and--"
+
+"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!"  Sheridan began to walk to and
+fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair.  He had shot
+his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best,
+but the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
+
+"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan
+went on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
+don't!  I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
+mightn't need a son!  Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"
+
+"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.
+
+There was a bronze inkstand upon the table.  Sheridan put his right
+hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the
+table and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black
+tail.  Mrs. Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
+
+"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely.  "Let it lay!"  And, weeping,
+she obeyed.  "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for
+the sudden hush he put upon it.  "I got a spender for a son-in-law!
+It's wonderful where property goes, sometimes.  There was ole man
+Tracy--you remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker.  He went
+into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president
+at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years
+more.  He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the
+afternoon the day before he died--over eighty!  Gilt edge, that bank?
+It was diamond edge!  He used to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple
+for lunch; but he wasn't stingy--he was just livin' in his business.
+He didn't care for pie or automobiles--he had his bank.  It was an
+institution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin' heart o' this
+town in its time.  Well, that ole man used to pass one o' these here
+turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets.
+Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't.  Speak to him?  God! he wouldn't 'a'
+coughed on him!  He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the
+bank!  Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd
+'a' had him run off the street.  And yet all Tracy was doin' every
+day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!  Tracy thought it
+was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood
+and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.  It was every
+bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at
+eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for that
+turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy.  AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN
+KNOW HIS NAME!  He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
+him off the front steps of his house once.  The day after Tracy died
+his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy
+bank any more!  And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a
+cigarette son-in-law!"
+
+Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
+Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
+
+"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on.  "That's
+good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll
+be there next winter.  They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and
+I hear it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law.  When Roscoe's
+woman got me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith
+wouldn't give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her.
+And she's got it, besides what I gave her to go East on.  It'll be
+gone long before this time next year, and when she comes home and
+leaves the cigarette behind--for good--she'll get some more.  MY name
+ain't Tracy, and there ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the
+Sheridan family.  And there ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and
+endowin' and trusteein', nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive
+when I'm gone!  Edith'll be back, and she'll get a girl's share when
+she's through with that cigarette, but--"
+
+"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
+Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?"
+
+Sheridan went completely to pieces:  he swore, while his wife screamed
+and stopped her ears.  And as he swore he pounded the table with
+his wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him
+ineffectively, sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan
+wrenched it away, tearing the bandage.  He hammered the table till
+it leaped.
+
+"Fool!" he panted, choking.  "If he's shown gumption enough to guess
+right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
+him on!"  And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
+thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale.  "My
+name ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he screamed, hoarsely.  "You give in,
+you stubborn fool!  I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my
+way with you now!"
+
+Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering
+that "splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him
+courage in a struggle, so that he would "never give up."
+
+"No.  You can't have your way," he said.  And then, obeying a
+significant motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving
+them struggling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
+husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
+darkened chamber.  At the "old" house they had shared a room, but
+the architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had
+not known how to formulate an objection, although to both of them
+something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.
+
+Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
+aperture when he spoke.
+
+"Oh, I'm AWAKE!  Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."
+
+She came and sat by the bed.  "I woke up thinkin' about it," she
+explained.  "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
+be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
+so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
+goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."
+
+"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.
+
+"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she
+continued. "He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I
+honestly have to say he seems right smart, too.  Now and then he'll
+say something sounds right bright.  'Course, most always it doesn't,
+and a good deal of the time, when he says things, why, I have to feel
+glad we haven't got company, because they'd think he didn't have any
+gumption at all.  Yet, look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got
+hurt.  He took right hold o' things.  'Course he'd been sick himself
+so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind
+o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take
+hold, and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much,
+papa.  And Dr. Gurney says he's got brains, and you can't deny but
+what the doctor's right considerable of a man.  He acts sleepy, but
+that's only because he's got such a large practice--he's a pretty
+wide-awake kind of a man some ways.  Well, what he says last night
+about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd amount to if he
+ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about.  You heard him,
+papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what Jim and
+Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says.  Wasn't that
+exactly what he says?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
+"Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
+true--what of it?"
+
+"Listen, papa.  Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get
+married.  You know where he goes all the time--"
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!"  Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the
+wall, leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair.
+"You better go back to sleep.  He runs over there--every minute
+she'll let him, I suppose.  Go back to bed.  There's nothin' in it."
+
+"WHY ain't there?" she urged.  "I know better--there is, too!  You
+wait and see.  There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the
+sleepiest young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't
+care who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is.  That's when
+he takes it into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and
+have a home and chuldern of his own.  THEN, I guess, he'll go out
+after the money!  You'll see.  I've known dozens o' cases, and so've
+you--moony, no-'count young men, all notions and talk, goin' to be
+ministers, maybe or something; and there's just this one thing takes
+it out of 'em and brings 'em right down to business.  Well, I never
+could make out just what it is Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem
+he wants to be a minister exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell,
+and he never SAYS--but I know this is goin' to get him right down to
+common sense.  Now, I don't say that Bibbs has got the idea in his
+head yet--'r else he wouldn't be talkin' that fool-talk about nine
+dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on.  But it's COMIN',
+papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him out.  He will!
+And I can tell you this much, too:  he'll want all the salary and
+stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more.
+That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give
+things to!  She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look nice on
+her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the next.
+And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll be
+pretty ready for the change.  I saw her with her sleeves rolled up
+at the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday
+their cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another
+one.  He says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good
+while, and now they're doin' the cookin,' too.  'Course Bibbs wouldn't
+know that unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind
+o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice
+anything like that for himself.  They've never asked him to a meal
+in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of
+innocent.  Now I was thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly
+mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me
+maybe if--"
+
+Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
+"You're barkin' up the wrong tree!  Go on back to bed, mamma!"
+
+"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly.  "Why am I barkin' up the wrong
+tree?"
+
+"Because you are.  There's nothin' in it."
+
+"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church
+with her this morning.  What you want to bet?"
+
+"Go back to bed," he commanded.  "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about;
+there's nothin' in it, I tell you."
+
+She shook her head perplexedly.  "You think because--because Jim
+was runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?"
+
+"No.  Nothin' to do with it."
+
+"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"
+
+"Yes, I do," he grunted.  "Now go on.  Maybe I can get a little sleep.
+I ain't had any yet!"
+
+"Well--"  She went to the door, her expression downcast.  "I thought
+maybe--but--"  She coughed prefatorily.  "Oh, papa, something else
+I wanted to tell you.  I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last
+night when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well,
+Sibyl wants to come over this afternoon.  Roscoe says she has
+something she wants to say to us.  It'll be the first time she's been
+out since she was able to sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us
+she's sorry for what happened.  They expect to get off by the end
+o' the week, and I reckon she wants to feel she's done what she could
+to kind o' make up.  Anyway, that's what he said.  I 'phoned him again
+about Edith, and he said it wouldn't disturb Sibyl, because she'd
+been expectin' it; she was sure all along it was goin' to happen;
+and, besides, I guess she's got all that foolishness pretty much out
+of her, bein' so sick.  But what I thought was, no use bein' rough
+with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a good deal--and I don't think
+we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.  You'll--you'll be kind o'
+polite to her, won't you, papa?"
+
+He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had
+pulled over his head.
+
+"What?" she said, timidly.  "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat
+Sibyl all right when she comes, this afternoon.  You will, won't you,
+papa?"
+
+He threw the coverlet off furiously.  "I presume so!" he roared.
+
+She departed guiltily.
+
+But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to
+church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have
+lost.  Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr.
+Vertrees's house with the purpose of going to church.  That was their
+intention, and they had no other.  They meant to go to church.
+
+But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a
+conversation as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking
+to the right and Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward
+glance converged with Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking
+far beyond the other at this time.  It also happened that, though they
+were a little jostled among groups of people in the vicinity of the
+church, they passed this somewhat prominent edifice without being
+aware of their proximity to it, and they had gone an incredible number
+of blocks beyond it before they discovered their error.  However,
+feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if they returned, they
+decided that a walk would make them as good.  It was a windless winter
+morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground.  So they walked,
+and for the most part they were silent, but on their way home, after
+they had turned back at noon, they began to be talkative again.
+
+"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"
+
+She laughed a little, then looked grave.  "Does your father say you
+are?"
+
+"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me.  Other times, other names.
+He has quite a list."
+
+"You mustn't mind," she said, gently.  "He's been getting some pretty
+severe shocks.  What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him,
+Bibbs. I've always been sure he's very big."
+
+"Yes.  Big and--blind.  He's like a Hercules without eyes and without
+any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to
+grow stronger.  Stronger for what?  For nothing."
+
+"Are you sure, Bibbs?  It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger
+for something, even though he doesn't know what it is.  Perhaps what
+he and his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T
+see it--so great none of us could see it."
+
+"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving
+underground--"
+
+"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she
+finished for him, cheerily.
+
+"Into the smoke," said Bibbs.  "Look at the powder of coal-dust
+already dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday.  That's
+from the little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday!  There's
+a fleck of soot on your cheek.  Some pig sent it out into the air;
+he might as well have thrown it on you.  It would have been braver,
+for then he'd have taken his chance of my whipping him for it if
+I could."
+
+"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
+rhetorically?  IS there?"
+
+"Is there?  There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each.
+One landed since I mentioned the first."
+
+She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded
+in transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric.  They
+were entirely matter-of-course about it.
+
+An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary
+for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of
+the soot. "There!" said the elderly wife.  "You're always wrong when
+you begin guessing about strangers.  Those two young people aren't
+honeymooners at all--they've been married for years.  A blind man
+could see that."
+
+
+"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up
+at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on.  "They arrest children
+for throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but--"
+
+"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures
+in the houses crooked every time they go by.  Nor for the uproar they
+make.  I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city
+each year.  Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,'
+whether we have money to pay or none."
+
+"Who is it gets the pay?" said Bibbs.
+
+"Not I!" she laughed.
+
+"Nobody gets it.  There isn't any pay; there's only money.  And only
+some of the men down-town get much of that.  That's what my father
+wants me to get."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling to him, and nodding.  "And you don't want it,
+and you don't need it."
+
+"But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?"  He had told her of
+his father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor
+and picturesqueness of their setting forth.  "You think I'm right?"
+
+"A thousand times!" she cried.  "There aren't so many happy people
+in this world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy.
+If it's a dream--keep it!"
+
+"The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate
+it as I never hated the shop!" he said.  "I hate it!  And the city
+itself, the city that the money shuffle has made--just look at it!
+Look at it in winter.  The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness
+bearable, but the ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous;
+the snow's getting dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the
+dirt and disease of the unclean street.  And the dirt and the ugliness
+and the rush and the noise aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt
+and ugliness and rush and noise MEAN--that's the worst!  The outward
+things are insufferable, but they're only the expression of a spirit--
+a blind embryo of a spirit, not yet a soul--oh, just greed!  And this
+'go ahead' nonsense!  Oughtn't it all to be a fellowship?  I shouldn't
+want to get ahead if I could--I'd want to help the other fellow to
+keep up with me."
+
+"I read something the other day and remembered it for you," said Mary.
+"It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint:
+'In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a
+great city, full of all kinds of happy life:  children, and lovers
+walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths
+of a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide
+open, letting in a space of green field and cornfield in harvest; and
+all round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from
+a little walled graveyard."
+
+"And if I painted," Bibbs returned, "I'd paint a lady walking in the
+street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile
+life--children being taught only how to make money, and lovers
+hurrying to get richer, and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their
+windows clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums
+and slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady's head
+a great rain of swirling soot--"  He paused, adding, thoughtfully:
+"And yet I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek.  It was just
+as if I were your brother--the way you gave me your handkerchief to
+rub it off for you.  Still, Edith never--"
+
+"Didn't she?" said Mary, as he paused again.
+
+"No.  And I--"  He contented himself with shaking his head instead of
+offering more definite information.  Then he realized that they were
+passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly.  "Mary, our walk's
+almost over."
+
+She looked as blank.  "So it is, Bibbs."
+
+They said no more until they came to her gate.  As they drifted slowly
+to a stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with
+Sibyl, who was startlingly pale.  She seemed little enfeebled by her
+illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not
+taking his arm.  The two crossed the street without appearing to see
+Mary and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to
+sight.  Mary gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary,
+did not see them.
+
+"Mary," he said, "you seem very serious.  Is anything bothering you?"
+
+"No, Bibbs."  And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him
+instantly unreasonably happy.
+
+"I know you want to go in--" he began.
+
+"No.  I don't want to."
+
+"I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you--
+but--I just wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this
+morning, grumbling about soot and all that--while all the time I--
+Mary, I think it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've
+given me.  I do.  And--I don't know just why--but it's seemed to me
+that it was one I'd always remember.  And you," he added, falteringly,
+"you look so--so beautiful to-day!"
+
+"It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs."
+
+"Mary, will you tell me something?" he asked.
+
+"I think I will."
+
+"It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them
+ever just fits.  You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so
+much colder, you don't--you never wear them at all any more.  Why
+don't you?"
+
+Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red.  Then she looked up
+gaily.  "Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask
+any more questions?"
+
+"Yes.  Why did you stop wearing them?"
+
+"Because I found I'd be warmer without them!"  She caught his hand
+quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran
+into the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative
+warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual
+"living-room" of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed
+sealed.  Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except
+newspapers, business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as
+he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting--when he was at home, and
+not abed or eating, he was in the library.
+
+He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at
+the far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and
+he exhaled a solemnity.  His deference to the Sabbath was manifest,
+as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his
+Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious
+pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his
+demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.
+
+Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not
+looking at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen,
+her hands were nervously moving.  Roscoe went to a chair in another
+part of the room.  There was a deadly silence.
+
+But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though
+she was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to
+veil them.  She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting
+something committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less
+evident for that.
+
+"Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to
+me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the
+way I acted.  I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that
+night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and
+it will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson;
+and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got
+a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again.  I want to
+ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any
+feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in
+her new life.  I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know
+I made a poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved
+I know I would feel a good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too.
+I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the future, and the same
+error would never occur again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be
+charitable enought to excuse it this time."
+
+He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
+never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved
+the agitation of her hands within the muff.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation
+of heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
+
+"Thank you," she said.  "There's something else--about something
+different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear
+it, too."
+
+"She's up-stairs in her room," said Sheridan.  "Roscoe--"
+
+Sibyl interrupted.  She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall
+and begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively
+perceived the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
+
+"No, let me go," she said.  "I want to speak to her a minute first,
+anyway."
+
+And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to
+see Bibbs enter his room and close the door.  Sibyl knew that Bibbs,
+in his room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside;
+for bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently
+informed her of the circumstance.  Sibyl had just remembered this,
+and with the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her
+own experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by
+words they overhear than by words directly addressed to them.  Sibyl
+intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear.  She did not
+hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
+in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
+say.  Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
+girl who had affronted her.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room.  The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe
+had driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her
+husband's mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a
+mark of emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought
+of it) "have a fit right there."  She heard Sibyl's step, and
+pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a mirror.
+
+"I was just coming down," she said, as the door opened.
+
+"Yes, he wants you to," said Sibyl.  "It's all right, mother Sheridan.
+He's forgiven me."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared.  She kissed her
+daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
+wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
+
+"And I hope Edith will be happy," Sibyl added, inciting more
+applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured the good woman.  "We mustn't make the worst
+of things."
+
+"Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear
+it, too," said Sibyl.  "We better go down, mother Sheridan."
+
+She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they
+came to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped.  "I want to tell
+you about it first," she said, abruptly.  "It isn't a secret, of
+course, in any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and
+the sooner the whole family knows it the better.  It's something it
+wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL not to understand, and of course father
+Sheridan most of all.  But I want to just kind of go over it first
+with you; it'll kind of help me to see I got it all straight.  I
+haven't got any reason for saying it except the good of the family,
+and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of course, except for
+that.  I oughtn't to've behaved the way I did that night, and it seems
+to me if there's anything I can do to help the family, I ought to,
+because it would help show I felt the right way.  Well, what I want to
+do is to tell this so's to keep the family from being made a fool of.
+I don't want to see the family just made use of and twisted around her
+finger by somebody that's got no more heart than so much ice, and just
+as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as Edith's mistake is.
+Well, then, this is the way it is.  I'll just tell you how it looks
+to me and see if it don't strike you the same way."
+
+Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil.
+He wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying
+to write.  He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem
+begun the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted
+to fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
+to vanish, for they were but gossamer.  Bibbs was pleased with the
+beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
+dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor.  For he had
+his plan of life now:  his day would be of manual labor and thinking
+--he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for
+poems, to the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned
+him out of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live
+elsewhere.  His father had the right, and it mattered very little to
+Bibbs--he faced the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without
+trepidation.  He could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and
+every evening when he left Mary he would write a little; and he would
+write on holidays and on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon.  In a
+lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-
+law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his door for conversations
+evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to him.  He
+frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of
+asking her to go away.  But, as she went on, he started violently,
+dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
+
+"I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan," she said, "but
+this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
+all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
+little longer.  Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
+been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job
+he could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it.  You heard anything
+about it, mother Sheridan?"
+
+"Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while
+back," said Mrs. Sheridan.  "And now they're doin' the cookin', too."
+
+Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge.  "I hope they find
+something to cook!  She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!"
+
+Bibbs jumped up.  He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy
+--of all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream
+the last would have been what he heard now.  He felt that something
+incredible was happening, and that he was powerless to stop it.
+It seemed to him that heavy blows were falling on his head and upon
+Mary's; it seemed to him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten
+physically--and  that something hideous impended.  He wanted to shout
+to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand,
+swallowing and trembling.
+
+"What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this," said
+Sibyl, sharply.  "Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
+started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!
+They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and
+Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took
+the daughter out auto-riding!"  She paused a moment, looking at Mrs.
+Sheridan, but listening intently.  There was no sound from within the
+room.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
+
+"It's the truth," Sibyl declared, loudly.  "Oh, of course we were all
+crazy about that girl at first.  We were pretty green when we moved up
+here, and we thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to
+read her!  Her family were down and out when it came to money--and
+they had to go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW!  So she started
+for Roscoe; but she found out pretty quick he was married, and she
+turned right around to Jim--and she landed him!  There's no doubt
+about it, she had Jim, and if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-
+in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God's
+truth about it!  Well--when Jim was left in the cemetery she was
+waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!  Jim wasn't COLD--and she
+didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one
+of the rich Sheridan boys left.  She had to get him."
+
+The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was
+not, in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and
+she spoke with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
+
+"What I feel about it is," she said, "it oughtn't to be allowed to go
+on.  It's too mean!  I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him
+made such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a
+fool of!  I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute
+himself he'd have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would
+be apt to fall in love with.  He's better-looking lately, maybe, but
+you know how he WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes.
+And girls like men with some SO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness,
+anyhow!  Nobody ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she
+--no, SIR! not till she'd tried both Roscoe and Jim first!  It was
+only when her and her family got desperate that she--"
+
+Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the
+door.  He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her.
+Both women screamed.
+
+"Oh, good heavens!" cried Sibyl.  "Were you in THERE?  Oh, I
+wouldn't--"  She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward
+the stairway.  "Come on, mother Sheridan!" she urged, and as the
+befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy
+exclamations:  "Good gracious!  Oh, I wouldn't--too bad!  I didn't
+DREAM he was there!  I wouldn't hurt his feelings!  Not for the
+world!  Of course he had to know SOME time!  But, good heavens--"
+
+She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top
+of the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but
+Bibbs was not following; he had gone back into his room.
+
+"He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!" stammered Mrs. Sheridan.
+"I--I wish--"
+
+"Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it," said Sibyl.
+"I shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could
+happened.  Come on!"
+
+And completing their descent to the library, the two made their
+appearance to Roscoe and his father.  Sibyl at once gave a full
+and truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own
+remarks, and omitting only the fact that it was through her design
+that Bibbs had overheard them.
+
+"But as I told mother Sheridan," she said, in conclusion, "it might
+turn out for the very best that he did hear--just that way.  Don't
+you think so, father Sheridan?"
+
+He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top
+of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire.  He had given
+no sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary
+Vertrees's character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it
+was Bibbs whom she desired to impress, and she was content in that
+matter.
+
+"I'm sure it was all for the best," she said.  "It's over now, and
+he knows what she is.  In one way I think it was lucky, because,
+just hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he
+knows I haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good
+of the family."
+
+Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking
+toward the stairway.  "I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin',"
+she said.  "He did look terrible bad.  It was like something had
+been done to him that was--I don't know what.  I never saw anybody
+look like he did.  He looked--so queer.  It was like you'd--"
+She called down the hall, "George!"
+
+"Yes'm?"
+
+"Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?"
+
+"Yes'm.  He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate.  I done
+buil' him nice fiah.  I reckon he ain' feelin' so well.  Yes'm."
+He departed.
+
+"What do you expect he wants a fire for?" she asked, turning toward
+her husband.  "The house is warm as can be,  I do wish I--"
+
+"Oh, quit frettin'!" said Sheridan.
+
+"Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl.  I know
+you meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would
+been so much harm if--"
+
+"Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in
+the family?  Why, she--"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," the troubled woman quavered.  "If he
+liked her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it.  He's so queer, and
+he hasn't ever taken much enjoyment.  And besides, I believe the way
+it was, there was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa
+wants him to.  If she wants to marry him--"
+
+Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh.  "She don't!" he
+said.  "You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl.  She ain't that
+kind of a girl."
+
+"But, father Sheridan, didn't she--"
+
+He cut her short.  "That's enough.  You may mean all right, but
+you guess wrong.  So do you, mamma."
+
+Sibyl cried out, "Oh!  But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--"
+
+"She did not," he said, curtly.  "She wouldn't take Jim.  She
+turned him down cold."
+
+"But that's impossi--"
+
+"It's not.  I KNOW she did."
+
+Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
+
+"And YOU needn't worry," he said, turning to his wife.  "This won't
+have any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it,
+anyhow.  D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she
+wouldn't take JIM?  She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs
+come to see her, but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement
+the way you women think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he
+has--he'd 'a' been at me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job
+he could support a wife on.  There's nothin' in it--and I've got the
+same old fight with him on my hands I've had all his life--and the
+Lord knows what he won't do to balk me!  What's happened now'll
+probably only make him twice as stubborn, but--"
+
+"SH!"  Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand.  "That's
+his step--he's comin' down-stairs."  She shrank away from the door
+as if she feared to have Bibbs see her.  "I--I wonder--" she said,
+almost in a whisper--"I wonder what he'd goin'--to do."
+
+Her timorousness had its effect upon the others.  Sheridan rose,
+frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved
+toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway.  They listened
+as the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
+
+Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes
+looked slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested
+upon his father.  Then he came and stood before him.
+
+"I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me," he said, gently.
+"You won't, any more.  I'll take the job you offered me."
+
+Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and
+Bibbs had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound,
+though he went as slowly as he came.  Mrs. Sheridan was the first to
+move.  She went nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the
+hall.  Bibbs had gone from the house.
+
+Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
+before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in
+her mourned for him uncomprehendingly.  She felt that an awful thing
+had been done to him, though she did not know what it was.  She went
+up to his room.
+
+The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
+charred ashes of paper.  The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
+large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers
+and note-books, was empty.  And somehow she understood that Bibbs
+had given up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and
+that he had given it up for ever.  She thought it was the wisest
+thing he could have done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat
+upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.
+
+So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of
+passage upon the sidewalk:  an ample young woman, placid of face;
+a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual
+anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness.  He propelled a
+perambulator containing the third--and all three were newly cleaned,
+Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
+
+"How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?" the husband
+whispered.  "He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left
+now."
+
+The wife stared curiously at Bibbs.  "Well, I don't know," she
+returned. "He looks to me like he had his own troubles."
+
+"I expect he has, like anybody else," said the young husband, "but
+I guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money."
+
+"Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well
+fixed as the Sheridans.  You can't tell."  She glanced back at
+Bibbs, who had turned north.  "He walks kind of slow and stooped
+over, like."
+
+"So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess," said the
+young husband, with bitter admiration.
+
+Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
+started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm.  She met him
+at the door.
+
+"Bibbs!" she cried.  "What is the matter?  I saw something was
+terribly wrong when I--You look--"  She paused, and he came in,
+not lifting his eyes to hers.  Always when he crossed that threshold
+he had come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers.
+"Ah, poor boy!" she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity.
+"I know what it is!"
+
+He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into
+a chair.
+
+"You needn't tell me," she said.  "They've made you give up.  Your
+father's won--you're going to do what he wants.  You've given up."
+
+Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
+
+She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him.
+"Bibbs," she said.  "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish.
+I can be glad you came straight to me.  It's more to me than even if
+you'd come because you were happy."  She did not speak again for a
+little while; then she said:  "Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about
+it?  Do you want to?"
+
+Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked
+her a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had
+misunderstood his words.
+
+"Mary," he said, "could you marry me?"
+
+"What did you say, Bibbs?" she asked, quietly.
+
+His tone and attitude did not change.  "Will you marry me?"
+
+Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
+She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
+incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
+in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question.  The room filled
+with strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each
+other.  At last she said:
+
+"What made you say that?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Bibbs, look at me!"  Her voice was loud and clear.  "What made
+you say that?  Look at me!"
+
+He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
+
+"What was it that made you?" she said.  "I want you to tell me."
+
+She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
+intensity of wonder.  "You've given up--to your father," she said,
+slowly, "and then you came to ask me--"  She broke off.  "Bibbs,
+do you want me to marry you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, just audibly.
+
+"No!" she cried.  "You do not.  Then what made you ask me?  What
+is it that's happened?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Wait," she said.  "Let me think.  It's something that happened since
+our walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon.  Something
+happened that--"  She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of
+amazement and dawning comprehension.  She remembered that Sibyl had
+gone to the New House.
+
+Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want
+you to--marry me, if--if--you could."
+
+She looked at him, and slowly shook her head.  "Bibbs, do you--"
+Her voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper.  "Do
+you think I'm--in love with you?"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word;
+it did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware
+of it.  "Why?"
+
+"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they
+weren't like that.  Sibyl said no girl could care about me."  He
+smiled faintly, though still he did not look at Mary.  "And when
+I first came home Edith told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that
+she'd have married ME.  She meant it to express Sibyl's extremity,
+you see.  But I hardly needed either of them to tell me.  I hadn't
+thought of myself as--well, not as particularly captivating!"
+
+Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush.  "Those
+two!" she exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt:
+"Lamhorn! That's like them!"  She turned away, went to the bare
+little black mantel, and stood leaning upon it.  Presently she
+asked:  "WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could
+care about you?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+Mary drew a deep breath.  "I think I'm beginning to understand--a
+little."  She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes
+and in her voice.  "Answer me once more," she said.  "Bibbs, do you
+know now why I stopped wearing my furs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so!  Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?"
+
+"I--I heard her say--"
+
+"I think I know what happened, now."  Mary's breath came fast and
+her voice shook, but she spoke rapidly.  "You 'heard her say' more
+than that.  You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and
+on that account I tried first to marry your brother--and then--"
+But now she faltered, and it was only after a convulsive effort
+that she was able to go on.  "And then--that I tried to marry--you!
+You 'heard her say' that--and you believe that I don't care for you
+and that 'no girl' could care for you--but you think I am in such
+an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you--  And so, not wanting me,
+and believing that I could not want you--except for my 'extremity'
+--you took your father's offer and then came to ask me--to marry
+you!  What had I shown you of myself that could make you--"
+
+Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms
+upon the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
+
+"Mary, Mary!" he cried, helplessly.  "Oh NO--you--you don't
+understand."
+
+"I do, though!" she sobbed.  "I do!"
+
+He came and stood beside her.  "You kill me!" he said.  "I can't
+make it plain.  From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all
+self.  It was always you that gave and I that took.  I was the
+dependent--I did nothing but lean on you.  We always talked of me,
+not of you.  It was all about my idiotic distresses and troubles.
+I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that had no mortal
+or human suffering except by sympathy.  You seemed to lean down
+--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me.  I never dreamed I could
+do anything for YOU!  I never dreamed you could need anything to
+be done for you by anybody.  And to-day I heard that--that you--"
+
+"You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money,"
+she sobbed.  "And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed
+that I had--"
+
+"No!" he said, quickly.  "I didn't believe you'd done one kind
+thing for me--for that.  No, no, no!  I knew you'd NEVER thought
+of me except generously--to give.  I said I couldn't make it
+plain!" he cried, despairingly.
+
+"Wait!"  She lifted her head and extended her hands to him
+unconsciously, like a child.  "Help me up, Bibbs."  Then, when she
+was once more upon her feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him
+ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that
+way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her.  And that smile
+of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his own
+eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
+
+"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said.  "You can't,
+because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me
+and you're too gentle to say them.  Tell me, though, isn't it true?
+You didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--"
+
+"Never!  Never for an instant!"
+
+"You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--"
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+"I believe it, Bibbs.  You thought that I was fond of you; you knew
+I cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
+But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you
+because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--"
+
+"Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--"
+
+"Were desperately poor," she said.  "You can't even say that!
+Bibbs, it was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me.  I did!"
+And she sank down into the chair, weeping bitterly again.  Bibbs was
+agonized.
+
+"Mary," he groaned, "I didn't know you COULD cry!"
+
+"Listen," she said.  "Listen till I get through--I want you to
+understand.  We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be.  We never
+had been, and we didn't know what to do.  We'd been almost rich;
+there was plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the
+growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well,
+just about the time your father finished building next door we
+found we hadn't anything.  People say that, sometimes, meaning
+that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their
+own kind, but we really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all,
+Bibbs!  And we couldn't DO anything.  You might wonder why I didn't
+'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder myself why, when a family
+loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought to go and
+be stenographers.'  It's curious!--as if a wave of the hand made
+you into a stenographer.  No, I'd been raised to be either married
+comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry.
+The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--
+and I didn't know how to be a stenographer.  I didn't know how to
+be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and
+I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid.  Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd
+been raised to know how to do.  I went out to be fascinating and be
+married.  I did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent
+honesty.  I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that
+I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant
+to marry him.  I think I did mean to marry him.  I had never cared
+for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T anything
+more than a kind of excited fondness.  I can't be sure, but I think
+that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it,
+because that sort of a marriage is--it's sacrilege--something would
+have stopped me.  Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law,
+Sibyl.  She meant no harm--but she was horrible, and she put what
+I was doing into such horrible words--and they were the truth--oh!
+I SAW myself!  She was proposing a miserable compact with me--and
+I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so
+cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD.  But I
+couldn't!  I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a quick
+scrawl.  I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and
+I said I would not marry him.  I posted the letter, but he never
+got it.  That was the afternoon he was killed.  That's all, Bibbs.
+Now you know what I did--and you know--ME!"  She pressed her
+clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far forward, her
+head bowed before him.
+
+Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her.
+"Couldn't you--Isn't there--Won't you--" he stammered.  "Mary,
+I'm going with father.  Isn't there some way you could use the
+money without--without--"
+
+She gave a choked little laugh.
+
+"You gave me something to live for," he said.  "You kept me alive,
+I think--and I've hurt you like this!"
+
+"Not you--oh no!"
+
+"You could forgive me, Mary?"
+
+"Oh, a thousand times!"  Her right hand went out in a faltering
+gesture, and just touched his own for an instant.  "But there's
+nothing to forgive."
+
+"And you can't--you can't--"
+
+"Can't what, Bibbs?"
+
+"You couldn't--"
+
+"Marry you?" she said for him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No, no, no!"  She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what
+she did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her
+a little.  "I can't, I can't!  Don't you SEE?"
+
+"Mary--"
+
+"No, no!  And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--
+please--"
+
+"MARY--"
+
+"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears.  "You
+mustn't come any more.  I can't see you, dear!  Never, never,
+never!"
+
+Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture,
+he got himself to the door and out of the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned
+to the New House.  He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly,
+but so that the others might hear.
+
+"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one
+would be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,"
+he said.  "I thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss
+Vertrees to marry me.  It proved what you said of me, and disproved
+what you said of her.  She refused."
+
+And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly
+as he had entered it.
+
+"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped.  "Who on earth would thought
+of his doin' THAT?"
+
+"I told you," said her husband, grimly.
+
+"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"
+
+"I told you she wouldn't have him.  I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
+didn't I?"
+
+Sibyl was altogether taken aback.  "Do you supose it's true?  Do you
+suppose she WOULDN'T?"
+
+"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things
+fixed up fine with his girl," said Sheridan.  "Not to me, he didn't!"
+
+"But why would--"
+
+"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of
+a girl!  If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it
+over with, though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk
+a whole lot about my dead boy's private affairs.  She wrote to Jim
+she couldn't take him, and it was a good, straight letter, too.
+It came to Jim's office; he never saw it.  She wrote it the afternoon
+he was hurt."
+
+"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,"
+said Roscoe.  "Don't you remember, Sibyl?  I told you about it--I
+was waiting for you while you were in there so long talking to her
+mother.  It was just before we saw that something was wrong over
+here, and Edith came and called me."
+
+Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered.  And she was not cast down,
+for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they
+were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after
+some further fragmentary discourse--visibly elated.  After all, the
+guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the
+less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged.  She bestowed
+a contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and
+Roscoe crossed the street.
+
+When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after
+a while she said, uneasily, "Papa, you think it would be any use
+to tell Bibbs about that letter?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, walking moodily to the window.  "I been
+thinkin' about it."  He came to a decision.  "I reckon I will."  And
+he went up to Bibbs's room.
+
+"Well, you goin' back on what you said?" he inquired, brusquely,
+as he opened the door.  "You goin' to take it back and lay down
+on me again?"
+
+"No," said Bibbs.
+
+"Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that.  I
+don't know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly,
+though the Lord knows you've laid down on me enough.  You certainly
+have!" Sheridan was baffled.  This was not what he wished to say,
+but his words were unmanageable; he found himself unable to control
+them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of him.  "I can't say
+I expect much of you--not from the way you always been, up to now
+--unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don't see any encouragement
+to think you're goin' to do THAT!  If you go down there and show a
+spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the whole office'll fall in a faint.
+But if you're ever goin' to show any, you better begin right at the
+beginning and begin to show it to-morrow."
+
+"Yes--I'll try."
+
+"You better, if it's in you!"  Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed.  He
+had always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue
+seemed bewitched.  He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and
+to his own angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything
+except to scold like a drudge-driver.  "You better come down there
+with your mind made up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man
+that's under you, or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you!
+The way to get ahead--and you better set it down in your books--the
+way to get ahead is to do ten times the work of the hardest worker
+that works FOR you.  But you don't know what work is, yet.  All
+you've ever done was just stand around and feed a machine a child
+could handle, and then come home and take a bath and go callin'.
+I tell you you're up against a mighty different proposition now,
+and if you're worth your salt--and you never showed any signs of it
+yet--not any signs that stuck out enough to bang somebody on the head
+and make 'em sit up and take notice--well, I want to say, right here
+and now--and you better listen, because I want to say just what I DO
+say.  I say--"
+
+He meandered to a full stop.  His mouth hung open, and his mind was
+a hopeless blank.
+
+Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look.  "Yes, father; I'm
+listening."
+
+"That's all," said Sheridan, frowning heavily.  "That's all I came
+to say, and you better see't you remember it!"
+
+He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind
+him with a crash.  However, no sound of footsteps indicated his
+departure.  He stopped just outside the door, and stood there a
+minute or more.  Then abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to
+his son a forehead liberally covered with perspiration.
+
+"Look here," he said, crossly.  "That girl over yonder wrote Jim
+a letter--"
+
+"I know," said Bibbs.  "She told me."
+
+"Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--"  The
+door closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of
+the sentence was nevertheless audible--"if you knew she wouldn't
+have Jim, either."
+
+And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her
+frettin' and not bother him with any more fool's errands.  She was
+about to inquire what Bibbs "said," but after a second thought she
+decided not to speak at all.  She merely murmured a wordless assent,
+and verbal communication was given over between them for the rest
+of that afternoon.
+
+Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next
+morning, and she had a dreary day.  She missed Edith woefully, and
+she worried about what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building.
+She felt that everything depended on how Bibbs "took hold," and
+upon her husband's return in the evening she seized upon the first
+opportunity to ask him how things had gone.  He was non-committal.
+What could anybody tell by the first day?  He'd seen plenty go at
+things well enough right at the start and then blow up.  Pretty near
+anybody could show up fair the first day or so.  There was a big job
+ahead.  This material, such as it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be
+broken in to handling the work Roscoe had done; and then, at least
+as an overseer, he must take Jim's position in the Realty Company
+as well.  He told her to ask him again in a month.
+
+But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed
+remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small
+restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim,
+and she took this to be an encouraging sign.  Bibbs went to his room
+as soon as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative
+after reading his paper.
+
+She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of
+business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and
+only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.
+Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on
+the first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an
+opinion which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
+
+"I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those
+storage-rooms, father," he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before
+him.  "Abercrombie agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him."
+
+"You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen," Sheridan returned,
+"but you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing.
+The roof fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account
+of weather conditions.  I want that building put just the way Jim
+planned it."
+
+"You can't have it," said Bibbs.  "You can't, because Jim planned for
+the building to stand up, and it won't do it.  The other one--the one
+that didn't fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for
+storage.  It won't stand weight.  There's only one thing to do: get
+both buildings down as quickly as we can, and build over.  Brick's
+the best and cheapest in the long run for that type."
+
+Sheridan looked sarcastic.  "Fine!  What we goin' to do for storage-
+rooms while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?"
+
+"Rent," Bibbs returned, promptly.  "We'll lose money if we don't rent,
+anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter
+your attention after the roof fell.  You don't know what an amount of
+stuff they've got piled up on us over there.  We'd have to rent until
+we could patch up those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing
+Company's plant is empty, right across the street.  I took an option
+on it for us this morning."
+
+Sheridan's expression was queer.  "Look here!" he said, sharply.
+"Did you go and do that without consulting me?"
+
+"It didn't cost anything," said Bibbs.  "It's only until to-morrow
+afternoon at two o'clock.  I undertook to convince you before then."
+
+"Oh, you did?"  Sheridan's tone was sardonic.  "Well, just suppose
+you couldn't convince me."
+
+"I can, though--and I intend to," said Bibbs, quietly.  "I don't
+think you understand the condition of those buildings you want
+patched up."
+
+"Now, see here," said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; "suppose I had
+my mind set about this.  JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it
+was--well, kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was
+right."
+
+Bibbs looked at him compassionately.  "I'm sorry if you have a
+sentiment about it, father," he said.  "But whether you have or not
+can't make a difference.  You'll get other people hurt if you trust
+that process, and that won't do.  And if you want a monument to Jim,
+at least you want one that will stand.  Besides, I don't think you
+can reasonably defend sentiment in this particular kind of affair."
+
+"Oh, you don't?"
+
+"No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it."
+
+Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone.  "Why are you 'sorry'?"
+he asked, curiously.
+
+"Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon," said
+Bibbs, "and I had him condemn both those buildings."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid
+you'd see he lost his job.  But he can't un-condemn them--they've
+got to come down now."
+
+Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered
+brows.  Finally he said, "How long did they give you on that option
+to convince me?"
+
+"Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"All right," said Sheridan, not relaxing.  "I'm convinced."
+
+Bibbs jumped up.  "I thought you would be.  I'll telephone the
+Krivitch agent.  He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I
+told him I'd settle it this evening."
+
+Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his
+expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him
+that startled his wife.  It had been a long time since she had heard
+anything resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound--although
+it was grim and dry--bore that resemblance.
+
+She brightened eagerly.  "Looks like he was startin' right well
+don't it, papa?"
+
+"Startin'?  Lord!  He got me on the hip!  Why, HE knew what I wanted
+--that's why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat
+before we even started to talk about it.  And did you hear him?
+'Can't reasonably defend SENTIMENT!'  And the way he says 'Us':
+'Took an option for Us'!  'Stuff piled up on Us'!"
+
+There was always an alloy for Mrs. sheridan.  "I don't just like
+the way he looks, though, papa."
+
+"Oh, there's got to be something!  Only one chick left at home,
+so you start to frettin' about IT!"
+
+"No.  He's changed.  There's kind of a settish look to his face,
+and--"
+
+"I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then," said
+Sheridan.  "You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business
+men, I expect."
+
+"Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before.
+And he'd begun to fill out some, but--"
+
+Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table
+to her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right
+being still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling.
+"That's the way it is with you, mamma--got to take your frettin'
+out one way if you don't another!"
+
+"No.  He don't look well.  It ain't exactly the way he looked when
+he begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin',
+some way."
+
+"Yes, he may 'a' lost something," said Sheridan.  "I expect he's
+lost a whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions
+about writin' poetry and--"
+
+"No," his wife persisted.  "I mean he looks right peakid.  And
+yesterday, when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the
+window.  He wasn't readin'."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?"
+
+"He was lookin' over there.  He never read a word all afternoon,
+I don't believe."
+
+"Look, here!" said Sheridan.  "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over
+there the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl
+say did one big thing, anyway.  It woke him up out of his trance.
+Well, he had to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped
+his goin' over there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's
+begun to get pretty fair pay for what he lost.  I guess a good many
+young men have had to get over worries like his; they got to lose
+SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays
+--and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a
+considerable long way ahead.  Why, a year from now I'll bet you he
+won't know there ever WAS such a thing as poetry!  And ain't he funny?
+He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could 'think'!  What he meant
+was, think about something useless.  Well, I guess he's keepin' his
+mind pretty occupied the other way these days.  Yes, sir, it took a
+pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but it certainly
+did the business."  He patted his wife's shoulder again, and then,
+without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
+
+"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers.
+But no one came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of
+Bigness, and the changing of money was holy worship and true religion.
+The priests wore that "settish" look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning
+to develop about his mouth and eyes--a wary look which she could not
+define, but it comes with service at the temple; and it was the more
+marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to the necessities of that
+service.
+
+He did as little "useless" thinking as possible, giving himself no
+time for it.  He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on
+his work when he came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever
+except his work.  But he did not sing at it.  He was often in the
+streets, and people were not allowed to sing in the streets.  They
+might make any manner of hideous uproar--they could shake buildings;
+they could out-thunder the thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the
+sick with noise; or they could walk the streets or drive through them
+bawling, squawking, or screeching, as they chose, if the noise was
+traceably connected with business; though street musicians were not
+tolerated, being considered a nuisance and an interference.  A man or
+woman who went singing for pleasure through the streets--like a crazy
+Neopolitan--would have been stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom
+does not mean that a citizen is allowed to do every outrageous thing
+that comes into his head.  The streets were dangerous enough, in all
+conscience, without any singing! and the Motor Federation issued
+public warnings declaring that the pedestrian's life was in his own
+hands, and giving directions how to proceed with the least peril.
+However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to sing in the streets, or
+anywhere. He had gone to his work with an energy that, for the start,
+at least, was bitter, and there was no song left in him.
+
+He began to know his active fellow-citizens.  Here and there among
+them he found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period
+of neighborliness, "pioneer stock," usually; and there were men
+--particularly among the merchants and manufacturers--"so honest
+they leaned backward"; reputations sometimes attested by stories
+of heroic sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some instances
+of generosity even nobler.  Here and there, too, were book-men,
+in their little leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men.  And
+these, with the others, worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man
+serving for his own sake and for what he could get out of it, but
+all united in their faith in the beneficence and glory of their god.
+
+To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing
+in life, except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as
+the dangerous illness of a wife or child.  In the way of "relaxation"
+some of the servers took golf; some took fishing; some took "shows"
+--a mixture of infantile and negroid humor, stockings, and tin music;
+some took an occasional debauch; some took trips; some took cards;
+and some took nothing.  The high priests were vigilant to watch that
+no "relaxation" should affect the service.  When a man attended to
+anything outside his business, eyes were upon him; his credit was
+in danger--that is, his life was in danger.  And the old priests were
+as ardent as the young ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as
+the thousand; seventy was as busy as seventeen.  They strove mightily
+against one another, and the old priests were the most wary, the most
+plausible, and the most dangerous.  Bibbs learned he must walk charily
+among these--he must wear a thousand eyes and beware of spiders
+indeed!
+
+And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming
+thieves and sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open
+rascals; but these were feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them,
+and he had a good guide to point them out to him.  They were useful
+sometimes, he learned, and many of them served as go-betweens in
+matters where business must touch politics.  He learned also how
+breweries and "traction" companies and banks and other institutions
+fought one another for the political control of the city.  The
+newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political influence,
+especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a skeptical
+humor, believing the journals either to be retained partisans, like
+lawyers, or else striving to forward the personal ambitions of their
+owners.  The control of the city lay not with them, but was usually
+obtained by giving the hordes of negroes gin-money, and by other
+largesses.  The revenues of the people were then distributed as fairly
+as possible among a great number of men who had assisted the winning
+side.  Names and titles of offices went with many of the prizes, and
+most of these title-holders were expected to present a busy appearance
+at times; and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and
+faithfully.
+
+Bibbs had been very ignorant.  All these simple things, so well known
+and customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment
+of forgetting that he was done with writing--he thought that if he
+had known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest
+relation of them must have seemed!  Strangest of all to him was the
+vehement and sincere patriotism.  On every side he heard it--it was
+a permeation; the newest school-child caught it, though just from
+Hungary and learning to stammer a few words of the local language.
+Everywhere the people shouted of the power, the size, the riches,
+and the growth of their city.  Not only that, they said that the
+people of their city were the greatest, the "finest," the strongest,
+the Biggest people on earth.  They cited no authorities, and felt
+the need of none, being themselves the people thus celebrated.  And
+if the thing was questioned, or if it was hinted that there might be
+one small virtue in which they were not perfect and supreme, they
+wasted no time examining themselves to see if what the critic said
+was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for they
+were sensitive.  So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them,
+harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them.
+For the voice of the people is the voice of their god.
+
+
+Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs,
+and the door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had
+established that intimacy.  One morning in February, when Bibbs was
+alone, Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his
+hand.
+
+"Bibbs," he said, "I don't like to butt in very often this way, and
+when I do I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have
+you been buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?"
+
+Bibbs leaned back from his desk.  "For eleven hundred and fifty-five
+dollars.  That's all it cost."
+
+"Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents.  You ought
+to know that.  I don't get your idea.  That stuff's deader'n Adam's
+cat!"
+
+"It might be worth something--some day."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It mightn't be so dead--not if we went into it," said Bibbs, coolly.
+
+"Oh!"  Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, "Who'd you
+buy it from?"
+
+"A broker--Fansmith."
+
+"Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that
+was soaked with it.  Don't you know who owned it?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Ain't sayin', though?  That it?  What's the matter?"
+
+"It belonged to Mr. Vertrees," said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself
+to his desk.
+
+"So!"  Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face.  "Excuse me,"
+he said.  "Your business."  And he went back to his own room.  But
+presently he looked in again.
+
+"I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day"--he was shuffling
+himself into his overcoat--"because I just thought I'd go up to the
+house and get THIS over with mamma."  He glanced apologetically toward
+his right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat.  The
+bandages had been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three
+fingers--the forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated.
+"She's bound to make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than
+her dinner.  I'll be back about two."
+
+But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so
+accurately that Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she
+was rising from the lonely table when he came into the dining-room.
+He had left his overcoat in the hall, but he kept his hands in his
+trousers pockets.
+
+"What's the matter, papa?" she asked, quickly.  "Has anything gone
+wrong? You ain't sick?"
+
+"Me!"  He laughed loudly.  "Me SICK?"
+
+"You had lunch?"
+
+"Didn't want any to-day.  You can give me a cup o' coffee, though."
+
+She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had
+withdrawn she said querulously, "I just know there's something
+wrong."
+
+"Nothin' in the world," he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the
+head of the table.  "I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with
+you, that's all.  It's more women-folks' business than what it is
+man's, anyhow."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--"
+
+"To look at your hand?  How's he say it's doin'?"
+
+"Fine!  Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically.  "I guess it's time you had
+him, too.  I KNEW Bibbs--"
+
+"Now, mamma, hold your horses!  I wanted him to look Bibbs over
+BEFORE anything's the matter.  You don't suppose I'm goin' to take
+any chances with BIBBS, do you?  Well, afterwards, I shut the door,
+and I an' ole Gurney had a talk.  He's a mighty disagreeable man;
+he rubbed it in on me what he said about Bibbs havin' brains if he
+ever woke up.  Then I thought he must want to get something out
+o' me, he go so flattering--for a minute!  'Bibbs couldn't help havin'
+business brains,' he says, 'bein' YOUR son.  Don't be surprised,' he
+says--'don't be surprised at his makin' a success,' he says.  'He
+couldn't get over his heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business
+success--once you got him into it.  It's in his blood.  Yes, sir'
+he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate
+brains, at that,' he says, 'but it does need a special KIND o'
+brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire.  I mean,' he says, 'when
+a man's given a start.  If nobody gives him a start, why, course
+he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains.  The only miracle
+about Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind o' brains--the
+brains you made him quit usin' and throw away.'"
+
+"But what'd he say about his health?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded,
+impatiently, as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband.
+Sheridan helped himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the
+coffee.
+
+"I'm comin' to that," he returned, placidly.  "See how easy I manage
+this cup with my left hand, mamma?"
+
+"You been doin' that all winter.  What did--"
+
+"It's wonderful," he interrupted, admiringly, "what a fellow can do
+with his left hand.  I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever
+could with my right.  It came a little hard at first, but now, honest,
+I believe I RATHER sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write,
+anyway--just the signature.  Rest's all dictatin'."  He blew across
+the top of the cup unctuously.  "Good coffee, mamma!  Well, about
+Bibbs.  Ole Gurney says he believes if Bibbs could somehow get back
+to the state o' mind he was in about the machine-shop--that is,
+if he could some way get to feelin' about business the way he felt
+about the shop--not the poetry and writin' part, but--"  He paused,
+supplementing his remarks with a motion of his head toward the old
+house next door.  "He says Bibbs is older and harder'n what he was
+when he broke down that time, and besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy
+way he was then--and I should say he AIN'T!  I'd like 'em to show ME
+anybody his age that's any wider awake!  But he says Bibbs's health
+never need bother us again if--"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shook her head.  "I don't see any help THAT way.
+You know yourself she wouldn't have Jim."
+
+"Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody?  But, my Lord! she might let
+him LOOK at her!  She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked
+her, that she won't let him come in the house any more.  He's a
+mighty funny boy, and some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard
+to understand as the Bible, but Gurney kind o' got me in the way o'
+thinkin' that if she'd let him come back and set around with her an
+evening or two sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I just
+thought I'd see what YOU'D think of it.  There ain't any way to talk
+about it to Bibbs himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but
+I thought maybe you could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort
+o' fix up to have a little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till
+you see how the land lays, and ask her--"
+
+"ME!"  Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened.  "No."
+She shook her head decidedly.  "It wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You won't try it?"
+
+"I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house.  Some way, that's what
+I believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once.  No, I CAN'T
+--and, what's more, it'd only make things worse.  If people find out
+you're runnin' after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't
+do as much for you as if you let 'em alone.  I don't believe it's any
+use, and I couldn't do it if it was."
+
+He sighed with resignation.  "All right, mamma.  That's all."  Then,
+in a livelier tone, he said:  "Ole Gurney took the bandages off my
+hand this morning.  All healed up.  Says I don't need 'em any more."
+
+"Why, that's splendid, papa!" she cried, beaming.  "I was afraid--
+Let's see."
+
+She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his
+pocket. "Wait a minute," he said, smiling.  "Now it may give you just
+a teeny bit of a shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that
+Sunday when Sibyl came over here and made all that fuss about nothin'
+--it was the day after I got tired o' that statue when Edith's
+telegram came--"
+
+"Let me see your hand!" she cried.
+
+"Now wait!" he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand.
+"The truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning,
+when you wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd
+told me to, you see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything."  And
+he held out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand.  "You see, these
+days when it's all dictatin', anyhow, nobody'd mind just a couple
+o'--"
+
+He had to jump for her--she went over backward.  For the second time
+in her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her
+own room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her
+with heat that the "fuss" she was making irked him far more than his
+physical loss.  He permitted her to think that he meant to return
+directly to his office, but when he came out to the open air he told
+the chauffeur in attendance to await him in front of Mr. Vertrees's
+house, whither he himself proceeded on foot.
+
+Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as
+manna in the wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did
+not particularly question.  The broker informed him that "parties were
+interested in getting hold of the stock," and that later there might
+be a possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by
+his client.  It might go "quite a ways up" within a year or so, he
+said, and he advised "sitting tight" with it.  Mr. Vertrees went home
+and prayed.
+
+He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own
+again.  It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him,
+and his wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back
+her piano, and as for furs--spring was on the way, she said.  But they
+paid the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired
+a cook once more.  It was this servitress who opened the door for
+Sheridan and presently assured him that Miss Vertrees would "be down."
+
+He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he
+flushed and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels
+of the cook.  She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of
+a second, but it vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken
+in her eyes by a soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.
+
+"Don't be surprised," he said.  "Truth is, in a way it's sort of on
+business I looked in here.  It'll only take a minute, I expect."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Mary.  "I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors."
+
+He chuckled.  "Neighbors!  Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
+neighbors as they used to.  That is, I hear so--lately."
+
+"You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?"
+
+"I guess I could manage that much."  And they sat down, facing each
+other and not far apart.
+
+"Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly," he said, more
+gravely.  "Not at all, I expect.  But there's something o' yours it
+seemed to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better
+to bring it myself and explain how I happened to have it.  It's
+this--this letter you wrote my boy."  He extended the letter to her
+solemnly, in his left hand, and she took it gently from him.  "It was
+in his mail, after he was hurt.  You knew he never got it, I expect."
+
+"Yes," she said, in a low voice.
+
+He sighed.  "I'm glad he didn't.  Not," he added, quickly--"not but
+what you did just right to send it.  You did.  You couldn't acted any
+other way when it came right down TO it.  There ain't any blame comin'
+to you--you were above-board all through."
+
+Mary said, "Thank you," almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed
+low.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me for readin' it.  I had to take charge of all
+his mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it
+all--once I got started."
+
+"I'm glad you did."
+
+"Well"--he leaned forward as if to rise--"I guess that's about all.
+I just thought you ought to have it."
+
+"Thank you for bringing it."
+
+He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she
+might have something more to say.  But she seemed not to be aware
+of this glance, and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the
+floor.
+
+"Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office," he said,
+rising desperately.  "I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two
+o'clock, and I guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he
+catches me behind time.  I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight
+line these days--with THAT fellow keepin' tabs on me!"
+
+Mary rose with him.  "I've always heard YOU were the hard driver."
+
+He guffawed derisively.  "Me?  I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine.
+You couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up
+my end o' the job.  I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand
+bounce some day, and run the whole circus by himself.  You know how
+he is--once he goes AT a thing!"
+
+"No," she smiled.  "I didn't know you had a partner.  I'd always
+heard--"
+
+He laughed, looking away from her.  "It's just my way o' speakin'
+o' that boy o' mine, Bibbs."
+
+He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of
+careless geniality.  He felt that she certainly must at least say,
+"How IS Bibbs?" but she said nothing at all, though he waited until
+the silence became embarrassing.
+
+"Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there," he said, at last.
+"He might worry."
+
+"Good-by--and thank you," said Mary.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the letter."
+
+"Oh," he said, blankly.  "You're welcome.  Good-by."
+
+Mary put out her hand.  "Good-by."
+
+"You'll have to excuse my left hand," he said.  "I had a little
+accident to the other one."
+
+She gave a pitying cry as she saw.  "Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!"
+
+"Nothin' at all!  Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow."  He laughed
+jovially.  "Did anybody tell you how it happened?"
+
+"I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how."
+
+"It was this way," he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat
+down again.  "You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal
+about the youngest o' my boys--the one that used to come to see you
+sometimes, after Jim--that is, I mean Bibbs.  He's the one I spoke
+of as my partner; and the truth is that's what it's just about goin'
+to amount to, one o' these days--if his health holds out.  Well, you
+remember, I expect, I had him on a machine over at a plant o' mine;
+and sometimes I'd kind o' sneak in there and see how he was gettin'
+along.  Take a doctor with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so
+robust, you might say.  Ole Doc Gurney--I guess maybe you know him?
+Tall, thin man; acts sleepy--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook
+to show Bibbs how to run his machine.  He told me to look out, but I
+wouldn't listen, and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand
+hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and
+I didn't.  Made me so mad I just wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS
+hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o' radical
+measures with me.  He's a right good doctor, too.  Don't you think so,
+Miss Vertrees?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yes, he is so!"  Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and
+gossip with all day on his hands.  "Take him on Bibbs's case.  I was
+talkin' about Bibbs's case with him this morning.  Well, you'd laugh
+to hear the way ole Gurney talks about THAT!  'Course he IS just as
+much a friend as he is doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs
+as if he was in the family.  He says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET;
+and he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if--well, this
+is what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there, Miss Vertrees--honest
+it would!"  He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her.  She was
+gazing straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and--
+visibly--she was breathing heavily and quickly.  He feared that she
+was growing furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say,
+and he went on, determined now to say it all.  He leaned forward and
+altered his voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he
+still maintained a tone which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion
+was only a joke he shared with her.  "Yes, sir, you certainly would
+'a' laughed!  Why, that ole man thinks YOU got something to do with
+it.  You'll have to blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel
+like startin' out to whip somebody!  He's actually got THIS theory:
+he says Bibbs got to gettin' better while he worked over there at the
+shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin' good.  And he says if
+you could manage to just stand him hangin' around a little--maybe not
+much, but just SOMEtimes--again, he believed it'd do Bibbs a mighty
+lot o' good.  'Course, that's only what the doctor said.  Me, I don't
+know anything about that; but I can say this much--I never saw any
+such a MENTAL improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in
+Bibbs.  I expect you'd find him a good deal more entertaining than
+what he used to be--and I know it's a kind of embarrassing thing to
+suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to ask you to
+stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc
+GURNEY, he's got you on his brain so bad--"
+
+Mary jumped.  "Mr. Sheridan!" she exclaimed.
+
+He sighed profoundly.  "There!  I noticed you were gettin' mad.
+I didn't--"
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried.  "But I don't understand--and I think you
+don't.  What is it you want me to do?"
+
+He sighed again, but this time with relief.  "Well, well!" he said.
+"You're right.  It'll be easier to talk plain.  I ought to known I
+could with you, all the time.  I just hoped you'd let that boy come
+and see you sometimes, once more.  Could you?"
+
+"You don't understand."  She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
+gesture.  "Yes, we must talk plain.  Bibbs heard that I'd tried to
+make your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came
+and asked me to marry him--because he was sorry for me.  And I CAN'T
+see him any more," she cried in distress.  "I CAN'T!"
+
+Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably.  "You mean because he
+thought that about you?"
+
+"No, no!  What he thought was TRUE!"
+
+"Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of
+you--"  The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue;
+he seemed to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a
+ghastly pause he bravely repeated them.  "You mean he thought so much
+of you that you just couldn't stand him around?"
+
+"NO!  He was sorry for me.  He cared for me; he was fond of me; and
+he'd respected me--too much!  In the finest way he loved me, if you
+like, and he'd have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him,
+and as he knew I would.  It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan," she said.
+"But the cheap, bad things one has done seem always to come back--they
+wait, and pull you down when you're happiest.  Bibbs found me out, you
+see; and he wasn't 'in love' with me at all."
+
+"He wasn't?  Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to
+do--it was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just
+threw it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never
+would--just for you.  And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that
+must think quite a heap o' the girl he does it for!  You say it was
+only because he was sorry, but let me tell you there's only ONE girl
+he could feel THAT sorry for!  Yes, sir!"
+
+"No, no," she said.  "Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything
+for anybody."
+
+Sheridan grinned.  "Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays," he
+said.  "For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in
+'sentiment in business.'  But that's neither here nor there.  What he
+wanted was, just plain and simple, for you to marry him.  Well, I was
+afraid his thinkin' so much OF you had kind o' sickened you of him--
+the way it does sometimes.  But from the way you talk, I understand
+that ain't the trouble."  He coughed, and his voice trembled a little.
+"Now here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell you--because you see
+things easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like this, but
+I had to make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for
+the sake o' my business and on his own account, too--and I expect
+you got some idea how it hurt him to give up.  Well, he's made good.
+He didn't come in half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way!
+But there isn't anything in it to him; you can see he's just shut his
+teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust in his mouth.  You see, one way
+of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work FOR.  And it seems to me
+like it cost him your friendship, and I believe--honest--that's what
+hurt him the worst.  Now you said we'd talk plain.  Why can't you let
+him come back?"
+
+She covered her face desperately with her hands.  "I can't!"
+
+He rose, defeated, and looking it.
+
+"Well, I mustn't press you," he said, gently.
+
+At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her
+face.  "Ah!  He was only sorry for me!"
+
+He gazed at her intently.  Mary was proud, but she had a fatal
+honesty, and it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless.
+It was so clear that even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able
+to see it.  Then a change came over him; gloom fell from him, and
+he grew radiant.
+
+"Don't!  Don't" she cried.  "You mustn't--"
+
+"I won't tell him," said Sheridan, from the doorway.  "I won't tell
+anybody anything!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest
+in the sanctuary of the temple.  The people went about in it, busy
+and dirty, thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar,
+asphalt, sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar
+things the men liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and
+garments and upon their wives and babies and sweethearts.  The growth
+of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush.
+There was more smoke than there had been this day of February a year
+earlier; there was more noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet
+quicker in spite of that.  The traffic policeman had a hard time,
+for the people were independent--they retained some habits of the old
+market-town period, and would cross the street anywhere and anyhow,
+which not only got them killed more frequently than if they clung
+to the legal crossings, but kept the motormen, the chauffeurs, and
+the truck-drivers in a stew of profane nervousness.  So the traffic
+policemen led harried lives; they themselves were killed, of course,
+with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that they
+could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally
+perilous to go about their city.  It was strange, for there were
+probably no citizens of any length of residence who had not personally
+known either some one who had been killed or injured in an accident,
+or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others.  And yet,
+perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of the
+faces--the people had something on their minds; they could not stop
+to bother about dirt and danger.
+
+Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
+until this afternoon.  She had come upon errands for her mother
+connected with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in
+and out of the department stores, she had an insistent consciousness
+of the Sheridan Building.  From the street, anywhere, it was almost
+always in sight, like some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored
+and rising limitlessly into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist.
+It was gaunt and grimy and repellent; it had nothing but strength
+and size--but in that consciousness of Mary's the great structure
+may have partaken of beauty.  Sheridan had made some of the things
+he said emphatic enough to remain with her.  She went over and over
+them--and they began to seem true:  "Only ONE girl he could feel THAT
+sorry for!"  "Gurney says he's got you on his brain so bad--"  The
+man's clumsy talk began to sing in her heart.  The song was begun
+there when she saw the accident.
+
+She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the
+traffic to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking
+the passage, darting and halting and dodging parlously.  Two men came
+from the crowd behind her, talking earnestly, and started across.
+Both wore black; one was tall and broad and thick, and the other
+was taller, but noticeably slender.  And Mary caught her breath, for
+they were Bibbs and his father.  They did not see her, and she caught
+a phrase in Bibbs's mellow voice, which had taken a crisper ring:
+"Sixty-eight thousand dollars?   Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!"
+It startled her queerly, and as there was a glimpse of his profile
+she saw for the first time a resemblance to his father.
+
+She watched them.  In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead
+of his father, and the two were separated.  But the reckless passing
+of a truck, beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of
+country women who were in course of passage; they were just in front
+of Bibbs, and shoved backward upon him violently.  To extricate
+himself from them he stepped back, directly in front of a moving
+trolley-car--no place for absent-mindedness, but Bibbs was still
+absorbed in thoughts concerned with what he had been saying to his
+father.  There were shrieks and yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and
+then Mary saw the heavy figure of Sheridan plunge straight forward in
+front of the car.  With absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled
+himself at Bibbs like a football-player shunting off an opponent, and
+to Mary it seemed that they both went down together.  But that was all
+she could see--automobiles, trucks, and wagons closed in between.  She
+made out that the trolley-car stopped jerkily, and she saw a policeman
+breaking his way through the instantly condensing crowd, while the
+traffic came to a standstill, and people stood up in automobiles or
+climbed upon the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a chance of
+seeing anything horrible.
+
+Mary tried to get through; it was impossible.  Other policemen came
+to help the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion
+again. The crowd became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon
+the ground, and no ambulance came.  But one of the policemen was
+detained by the clinging and beseeching of a gloved hand.
+
+"What IS the matter, lady?"
+
+"Where are they?" Mary cried.
+
+"Who?  Ole man Sheridan?  I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!"
+
+"His SON--"
+
+"Was that who the other one was?  I seen him knock him--oh, he's not
+bad off, I guess, lady.  The ole man got him out of the way all right.
+The fender shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got
+shook up. They both went on in the Sheridan Building without any help.
+Excuse me, lady."
+
+Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator,
+ascending.  "Whisk-broom up in the office," Sheridan was saying.
+"You got to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you.  I don't
+know I got any call to blow, though--because I tried to cross after
+you did.  That's how I happened to run into you.  Well, you want to
+remember to look out after this.  We were talkin' about Murtrie's
+askin' sixty-eight thousand flat for that ninety-nine-year lease.
+It's his lookout if he'd rather take it that way, and I don't know
+but--"
+
+"No," said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; "he won't
+get it.  Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why.  I can
+convince you in five minutes."  He followed his father into the
+office anteroom--and convinced him.  Then, having been diligently
+brushed by a youth of color, Bibbs went into his own room and closed
+the door.
+
+He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and
+his side was sore where Sheridan had struck him.  He desired to be
+alone; he wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless
+thinking again.  He knew that his father had not "happened" to run
+into him; he knew that Sheridan had instantly--and instinctively--
+proved that he held his own life of no account whatever compared
+to that of his son and heir.  Bibbs had been unable to speak of
+that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan, just as instinctively,
+had swept the matter aside--as of no importance, since all was well
+--reverting immediately to business.
+
+Bibbs began to think intently of his father.  He perceived, as he
+had never perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and
+indomitable--and lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's
+very self; laughing at the lightning and at wounds and mutilation;
+conquering, irresistible--and blindly noble.  For the first time in
+his life Bibbs began to understand the meaning of being truly this
+man's son.
+
+He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan
+said, Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly.
+He had given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for
+Mary Vertrees in her need.  And he shivered with horror of himself,
+thinking how he had gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him
+--with his head on his breast in shameful fear that she would accept
+him!  He had not known her; the knowing had lost her to him, and
+this had been his real awakening; for he knew now how deep had been
+that slumber wherein he dreamily celebrated the superiority of
+"friendship"!  The sleep-walker had wakened to bitter knowledge
+of love and life, finding himself a failure in both.  He had made
+a burnt offering of his dreams, and the sacrifice had been an
+unforgivable hurt to Mary.  All that was left for him was the work
+he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in that, though
+it was indeed no more than "dust in his mouth."  If there had been
+anything "to work for--"
+
+He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets
+below.  He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked
+across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the
+vast, foggy heart of the smoke.  Dizzy traceries of steel were rising
+dimly against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in
+steam, while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky.
+Buildings would overtop the Sheridan.  Bigness was being served.
+
+But what for?  The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair.
+Here, where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running
+brooks, and how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured!
+The pioneers had begun the work, but in their old age their orators
+had said for them that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that
+their posterity might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits
+of the earth.  Well, their posterity was here--and there was only
+turmoil.  Where was the promised land?  It had been promised by the
+soldiers of all the wars; it had been promised to this generation
+by the pioneers; but here was the very posterity to whom it had been
+promised, toiling and risking and sacrificing in turn--for what?
+
+The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window,
+continuously beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish
+a pulsation in it--a broken and irregular cadence.  It seemed to him
+that it was like a titanic voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily
+metallic--the voice of the god, Bigness.  And the voice summoned
+Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.
+
+"Come and work!" it seemed to yell.  "Come and work for Me, all men!
+By your youth and your hope I summon you!  By your age and your
+despair I summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength
+you have.  By your love of home I summon you!  By your love of woman
+I summon you!  By your hope of children I summon you!
+
+"You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me,
+your Master and Driver!  For your reward you shall gaze only upon
+my ugliness.  You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall
+go mad for love and worship of my ugliness!  You shall perish
+still worshipping Me, and your children shall perish knowing no
+other god!"
+
+And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his
+father's voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish
+the words but the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP!
+THUMP! of the maimed hand.  Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was
+bragging of the city and of Bigness to some visitor from
+out-of-town.
+
+And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness.
+But with the old, old thought again, "What for?"  Bibbs caught a
+glimmer of far, faint light.  He saw that Sheridan had all his life
+struggled and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling
+and inevitably conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own.
+Sheridan served blindly--but was the impulse blind?  Bibbs asked
+himself if it was not he who had been in the greater hurry, after all.
+The kiln must be fired before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis
+was not crowned with marble in a day.
+
+Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of
+some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil.  "Ugly I am,"
+it seemed to say to him, "but never forget that I AM a god!"  And the
+voice grew in sonorousness and in dignity.  "The highest should serve,
+but so long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you.
+It is man who makes me ugly, by his worship of me.  If man would let
+me serve him, I should be beautiful!"
+
+Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
+the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
+figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
+disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
+with soot.  But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still
+a little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that
+up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his
+hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
+there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
+were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--
+
+It was the telephone that called him from his vision.  It rang
+fiercely.
+
+He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
+inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash.  He trembled
+violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
+been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
+kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.
+
+"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
+
+"Mary."
+
+He responded with two hushed and incredulous words:  "IS IT?"
+
+There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
+"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"
+
+"Yes--Mary?"
+
+"I was looking when you were so nearly run over.  I saw it, Bibbs.
+They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know
+for myself."
+
+"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary.  It was father who came nearer
+it. He saved me."
+
+"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen.  I couldn't get through the crowd
+until you had gone.  And I wanted to KNOW."
+
+"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.
+
+There was a long interval before she answered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs?"
+
+"I don't know what to say," he cried.  "It's so wonderful to hear
+your voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know
+anything except that I AM talking to you!  It IS you--Mary?"
+
+"Yes, Bibbs!"
+
+"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
+I--since then.  You looked--oh, how can I tell you?  It was like
+a man chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary.
+Mary, won't you--let me see you again--near?  I think I could make
+you really forgive me--you'd have to--"
+
+"I DID--then."
+
+"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
+more."
+
+"That wasn't the reason."  The voice was very low.
+
+"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you
+COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--
+care?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Mary?" he called, huskily.  "If you mean THAT--you'd let me see
+you--wouldn't you?"
+
+And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all,
+but if it did, the words were, "Yes, Bibbs--dear."
+
+But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so
+light, so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came
+from the air.
+
+Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining
+eyes.  The door of his father's room had opened.
+
+Mary stood upon the threshold.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
+
+
diff --git a/old/old/turmo11.zip b/old/old/turmo11.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a31961
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/turmo11.zip