the
guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the
less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a
contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe
crossed the street.

When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while
she said, uneasily, "Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs
about that letter?"

"I don't know," he answered, walking moodily to the window. "I been
thinkin' about it." He came to a decision. "I reckon I will." And he
went up to Bibbs's room.

"Well, you goin' back on what you said?" he inquired, brusquely, as he
opened the door. "You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?"

"No," said Bibbs.

"Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't
know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the
Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!" Sheridan
was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were
unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous
abuse went on in spite of him. "I can't say I expect much of you--not
from the way you always been, up to now--unless you turn over a new
leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do
THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the
whole office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any,
you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow."

"Yes--I'll try."

"You better, if it's in you!" Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had
always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed
bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own
angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold
like a drudge-driver. "You better come down there with your mind made
up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you,
or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get
ahead--and you better set it down in your books--the way to get ahead is
to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But
you don't know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand
around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home
and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty
different proposition now, and if you're worth your salt--and you never
showed any signs