eft at home, so you
start to frettin' about IT!"

"No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--"

"I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then," said
Sheridan. "You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I
expect."

"Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And
he'd begun to fill out some, but--"

Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to
her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being
still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. "That's the
way it is with you, mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you
don't another!"

"No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he
begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some
way."

"Yes, he may 'a' lost something," said Sheridan. "I expect he's lost a
whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin'
poetry and--"

"No," his wife persisted. "I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday,
when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't
readin'."

"Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?"

"He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
believe."

"Look, here!" said Sheridan. "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there
the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did
one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had
to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over
there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty
fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get
over worries like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin'
to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me,
mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a
year from now I'll bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as
poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could
'think'! What he meant was, think about something useless. Well, I guess
he's keepin' his mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes,
sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but
it certainly did the business." He patted his wife's shoulder again, and
then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.

"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"