to, because it would help show I felt the right way.
Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from
being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of
and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than
so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as
Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way."

Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun
the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to
fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the
beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor. For he had
his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he
could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to
the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of
home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced
the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He
could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when
he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and
on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least
he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate
vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself,
but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could
think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on,
he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.

"I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan," she said, "but
this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he
could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about
it, mother Sh