"I--I'm afraid so," he said, ruefully.

"'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean
father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough.
I heard him say something about it the night of the--" The jingle of
a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. "Bobby
Lamhorn! I'm going to motor him out to look at a place in the
country. Afternoon, Bibbs!"

When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf,
his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library
consisted almost entirely of handsome "uniform editions": Irving,
Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson,
Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac,
Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were
shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of "famous
classics," of "Oriental masterpieces," of "masterpieces of oratory,"
and more shelves of "selected libraries" of "literature," of "the
drama," and of "modern science." They made an effective decoration
for the room, all these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding
here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames that crackled
in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an impression that
the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief, and that
white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody else
considered them at all. Himself, he disturbed not one.

There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house,
and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs.
"Awready, Mist' Bibbs," he announced. "You' ma say wrap up wawm