"Oh, wait!" cried Mary. "If they'd only make less noise! I want
Mrs. Sheridan to hear."

"She'd say the same," he shouted. "She'd tell me I was mighty slow
if I couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--"

"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim,
who had grown red again. "He's going to tell us how, when he was
your age, he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and
you could see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"

At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. "Look here, young
lady!" he roared. "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--
or I'm goin' to kiss you!"

Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but
Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.

"Both!" she cried. "Both! The one to make me forget the other!"

"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
"Jim," he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll
send you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!"

And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a
rich little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew
what his father's plans were now.