_ 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--" _