He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating—­little regarding the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside.  His throat rumbled thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness.  “You think this is a time for young men to be lyin’ on beds of ease?  I tell you there never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity.  The sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps—­yes, by George! if a man lays down they’ll eat him before he wakes!—­but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky!  This is the business man’s day; it used to be the soldier’s day and the statesman’s day, but this is ours!  And it ain’t a Sunday to go fishin’—­it’s turmoil! turmoil!—­ and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and make it yourself, or you’ll only be a dead man walkin’ around dreamin’ you’re alive.  And that’s what my son Bibbs has been doin’ all his life, and what he’d rather do now than go out and do his part by me.  And if anything happens to Roscoe—­”

“Oh, do stop worryin’ over such nonsense,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted, irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment.  “There isn’t anything goin’ to happen to Roscoe, and you’re just tormentin’ yourself about nothin’.  Aren’t you ever goin’ to bed?”

Sheridan halted.  “All right, mamma,” he said, with a vast sigh.  “Let’s go up.”  And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of the fire.

“Did you speak to Roscoe?” she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her drowsiness.  “Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?”

“No.  I will to-morrow.”

But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did Sheridan see fit to enter his son’s house.  He waited.  Then, on the fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father’s office at nine in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.

“They told me down-stairs you’d left word you wanted to see me.”

“Sit down,” said Sheridan, rising.

Roscoe sat.  His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then walked away, smiling bitterly.  “Boh!” he exclaimed.  “Still at it!”

“Yes,” said Roscoe.  “I’ve had a couple of drinks this morning.  What about it?”

“I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,” his father returned.  “I’d bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit.  I would!”

“Better do it,” Roscoe assented, sullenly.

“When’d you begin this thing?”

“I always did drink a little.  Ever since I grew up, that is.”

“Leave that talk out!  You know what I mean.”

“Well, I don’t know as I ever had too much in office hours—­until the other day.”

Sheridan began cutting.  “It’s a lie.  I’ve had Ray Wills up from your office.  He didn’t want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and he came through.  You were drunk twice before and couldn’t work.  You been leavin’ your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks.  I been over your books.  Your office is way behind.  You haven’t done any work, to count, in a month.”