The Turmoil | Page 7

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 New House; and it was to that
abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the
nurse, was found sufficient to his support.
Edith met him at the station. "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he came
slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train. She
gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick glance
at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. "Do you

think they ought to've let you come? You certainly don't look well!"
"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as his
gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly
he stammered. "Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me.
They had to get me in a line between 'em!"
Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first
quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint,
troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some
obligation of business to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital. She was
nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness of
color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close upon
beauty. Her movements were eager and restless: there was something
about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was
something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it
was a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon
her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for
an automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
"That's the new car," she said. "Everything's new. We've got four now,
besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two."
"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his
tone had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
"You look--" He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown and
green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
mode--all suited to the October day.
"How do I look?" she insisted.
"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!" That
was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and

preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance
away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
intimacies.
"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
glance. "Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening
thing, for the theater--by my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby
Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you
want Claus to help you in?"
"Oh no," said Bibbs. "I'm alive." And after a fit of panting subsequent
to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course, I have to
TELL people!"
"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to
move rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.
"Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month."
"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he
explained, gently. "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep
me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in.
They told me to go home --and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll
be all right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day."
"Pshaw!" She laughed nervously. "Of course we're all of us glad to
have you back."
"Yes?" he said. "Father?"
"Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?" She did not
turn to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face
directly forward.
"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
She flushed a little. "I expect I ought to've written sometime, or one of
the boys--"

"Oh