husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
darkened chamber. At the "old" house they had shared a room, but
the architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had
not known how to formulate an objection, although to both of them
something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.

Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
aperture when he spoke.

"Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."

She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she
explained. "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."

"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.

"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she
continued. "He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I
honestly have to say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll
say something sounds right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't,
and a good deal of the time, when he says things, why, I have to feel
glad we haven't got company, because they'd think he didn't have any
gumption at all. Yet, look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got
hurt. He took right hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself
so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind
o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take
hold, and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much,