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'