“Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily.  “Why’n’t you go to bed?  It must be goin’ on ’leven o’clock!”

She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the fire.  “What’s the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving sluggishly with each other in her voice.  “I knew you were worried all dinner-time.  You got something new on your mind besides Jim’s bein’ taken away like he was.  What’s worryin’ you now, papa?”

“Nothin’.”

She jeered feebly.  “N’ tell me that!  You sat up to see Bibbs, didn’t you?”

“He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.

“Just the same as he did before?”

“Just pre-CISELY!”

“How—­how long you goin’ to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.

“Until he knows something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he talked.  “He’ll go back to the machine he couldn’t learn to tend properly in the six months he was there, and he’ll stick to it till he does learn it!  Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself why I want him to learn it?  No!  And I ain’t a-goin’ to tell him, either!  When he went there I had ’em set him on the simplest machine we got—­and he stuck there!  How much prospect would there be of his learnin’ to run the whole business if he can’t run the easiest machine in it?  I sent him there to make him thorough.  And what happened?  He didn’t like it!  That boy’s whole life, there’s been a settin’ up o’ something mulish that’s against everything I want him to do.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s got to be worked out of him.  Now, labor ain’t any more a simple question than what it was when we were young.  My idea is that, outside o’ union troubles, the man that can manage workin’-men is the man that’s been one himself.  Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and he set himself to balk on the first job!  That’s what he did, and the balk’s lasted close on to three years.  If he balks again I’m just done with him!  Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!”

“I knew there was something else,” said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a yawn.  “You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now—­ ’less you’ll tell me?”

“Suppose something happened to Roscoe,” he said.  “Then what’d I have to look forward to?  Then what could I depend on to hold things together?  A lummix!  A lummix that hasn’t learned how to push a strip o’ zinc along a groove!”

“Roscoe?” she yawned.  “You needn’t worry about Roscoe, papa.  He’s the strongest child we had.  I never did know anybody keep better health than he does.  I don’t believe he’s even had a cold in five years.  You better go up to bed, papa.”