ll 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-