nd 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 go