hem struggling.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
darkened chamber. At the "old" house they had shared a room, but the
architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had not known
how to formulate an objection, although to both of them something seemed
vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.

Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
aperture when he spoke.

"Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."

She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she
explained. "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."

"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.

"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she continued.
"He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to
say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds
right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the
time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got
company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet,
look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold
o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all--and the rest
of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do in
that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold, and everything went off
all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's
got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right considerable
of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such a large
practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what
he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You
heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what
Jim and Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't
that exactly what he says?"

"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
"Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
true--what of it?"

"Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get