roosts
again?"

"Not much! He'll like it, and stick to it, and bring others, and you'll
extend operations and build shops, and in no time you'll go the way of
all the world--a big factory, running night and day; you on the keen
jump every minute; dust an inch thick over your books and music; nerves
taut; head humming with business schemes to beat your competitors;
forget your wife most of the time except to give her money; making
profits hand over fist; suborning legislators to wink at your getting
special railroad rates for your stuff; can't remember how many children
you have; grand success; notable example of what can be done by
attention to business; nervous prostration at forty-five; Bright's
disease at fifty; leave a million."

Rankin burst into a great roar of boyish laughter at this prophetic
flight. The doctor gnawed his lower lip, and looked at him without
smiling. "I've got ten million blue devils on my back to-night," he
said.

"So I see--so I see." Rankin was still laughing, but as he continued to
look into his old friend's face his own grew grave by reflection. "You
don't believe all that?"

"Oh, you won't mean to. It'll come gradually." He broke out suddenly,
"Good Heavens, Rankin, give me a serious answer."

"Answer!" The cabinet-maker's bewilderment was immense. "Have you asked
me anything?"

The doctor turned away to his desk with the pettish gesture of a woman
whose inner thoughts are not divined.

"He makes me feel very thick-witted and dense," Rankin appealed to the
two women.

Mrs. Sandworth exonerated him from blame. "Oh, nobody ever can make out
what he's driving at. I never try." She took out a piece of crochet
work. "Lydia, they're at it now. I know the voice Marius gets on.
_Would_ you make this in shell stitch? It's much newer, of course, but
they say it don't wash so well." As Lydia's attention wavered, "Oh,
there's not a particle of use in trying to make out what they're saying.
They just go on and on."

Rankin was addressing himself to the doctor's back. "I don't, you know,
see anything wicked in making a lot of chairs by machinery instead of a
few by hand. I'm no handcraft faddist. I did that in the beginning only
because I had to begin somehow to earn my living honestly without being
too tied up to folks, and I couldn't think of any other way. But I
think, now that you've put the idea into my head--I think it would be a
good thing to gather the boys of the neighborhood aroun