Part 26 (1/2)
”Every evening, dear Bibbs!”
He could only stare, bewildered.
”EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!” And she held out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. ”If I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,”
she said. ”But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is done--won't the night make up for the day?”
Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, ”To think you're there--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--”
And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
CHAPTER XX
When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before him. ”I'm cured, father,” he said. ”When do I go back to the shop? I'm ready.”
The desolate and grim old man did not relax. ”I was sittin' up to give you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time!
I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the month. Think you can get up in time?”
”Six o'clock,” Bibbs responded, briskly. ”And I want to tell you--I'm going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!”
”That's YOUR lookout!” his father grunted. ”They'll put you back on the clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.”
”More than I'm worth, too,” said Bibbs, cheerily. ”That reminds me, I didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--”
”Makes a h.e.l.l of a lot o' difference what you meant!”
”I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.”
”G'night!”
The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for burglars.
”Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily. ”Why'n't you go to bed? It must be goin' on 'leven o'clock!”
She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the fire. ”What's the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving sluggishly with each other in her voice. ”I knew you were worried all dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?”
”Nothin'.”
She jeered feebly. ”N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't you?”
”He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.
”Just the same as he did before?”
”Just pre-CISELY!”
”How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.
”Until he KNOWS something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he talked. ”He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine we got--and he stuck there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole business if he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles, the man that can manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.