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
whol