The Turmoil | Page 6

the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a country grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick."
He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions --in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his bedded spouse. "My Lord!" he said. "If a little, teeny bit o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything! It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put on!"
"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan. "It was when he was here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything. Honey, you better come to bed."
"Eat!" he snorted. "Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's imagination that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for that kind of imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice about good health, if you'll take the trouble to look around you Mrs. Sheridan: busy men haven't got time to be sick and they don't GET sick. You just think it over and you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the sick people you know are either women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!"
"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."
"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her. "Look at Jim and Roscoe. Look at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies. Work never made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my shoulders already. Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter business man in this city than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me something to push AGAINST. You can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that boy's done for himself, and barely twenty-seven years old--married, got a fine wife, and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I put up the New House for you and Edie."
"Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet," she murmured. "You better come to bed."
"And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl," he continued, emphatically, "as I am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good wife when the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in the United States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school and took the prize with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and she'd never even tried to write one before. It's the finest thing I ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he's a good enough literary judge for me-- turns out more advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city. I tell you she's smart! Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise the New House--and I guess you had your finger in that, too, mamma! This old shack's good enough for me, but you and little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and push her the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o' them three chuldern! But Bibbs--" He paused, shaking his head. "Honest, mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth their salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs."
Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. "You did the best you could, papa," she said, impatiently, "so come to bed and quit reproachin' yourself for it."
He glared at her indignantly. "Reproachin' myself!" he snorted. "I ain't doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want to reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was the best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was in him and make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia' on me!"
He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and muttered his way morosely into bed.
"What?" said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
"More like hook-worm, I said," he explained, speaking louder. "I don't know what to do with him!"
Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and the completion of the