"All right," said Bibbs, gently. "I can get along."

Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. "O God," he
said, "this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine
dollars a week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do
nothin' for him?" Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in
a furious gesture of dismissal. "Get out o' this room! You got a
skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang
all the way across! You hated the machine-shop so bad when I sent you
there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I
offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the
shop like a calf for its mammy! You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine
layout here! One son died, one quit, and one's a loon! The loon's
all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they
undertook to keep him at the house. First morning he was there he
walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out into the
yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' That's what
you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the
pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust!
Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are,
I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you
--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of
you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while
I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and
don't let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've
waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"

Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it,
for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by