“I came within seven of the shop record to-day,” he said.  “I handled more strips than any other workman has any day this month.  The nearest to me is sixteen behind.”

“There!” exclaimed his father, greatly pleased.  “What’d I tell you?  I’d like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn’t right in sending you there—­I would just like to hear him!  And you—­ain’t you ashamed of makin’ such a fuss about it?  Ain’t you?”

“I didn’t go at it in the right spirit the other time,” Bibbs said, smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight.  “I didn’t know the difference it meant to like a thing.”

“Well, I guess I’ve pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement.  I guess I have!  I said the shop’d be good for you, and it was.  I said it wouldn’t hurt you, and it hasn’t.  It’s been just exactly what I said it would be.  Ain’t that so?”

“Looks like it!” Bibbs agreed, gaily.

“Well, I’d like to know any place I been wrong, first and last!  Instead o’ hurting you, it’s been the makin’ of you—­physically.  You’re a good inch taller’n what I am, and you’d be a bigger man than what I am if you’d get some flesh on your bones; and you are gettin’ a little.  Physically, it’s started you out to be the huskiest one o’ the whole family.  Now, then, mentally—­that’s different.  I don’t say it unkindly, Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like what’s begun physically.  And I’m goin’ to help you.”

Sheridan decided to sit down again.  He brought his chair close to his son’s, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs’s knee confidentially.  “I got plans for you, Bibbs,” he said.

Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed.  He drew back.  “I—­I’m all right now, father.”

“Listen.”  Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of a reasonable man reasoning.  “Listen here, Bibbs.  I had another blow to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I have been expectin’ it some little time back.  Well, it’s got to be met.  Now I’ll be frank with you.  As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn’t ever called you exactly strong.  You been a little weak both ways, most of your life.  Not but what I think you got a mentality, if you’d learn to use it.  You got will-power, I’ll say that for you.  I never knew boy or man that could be stubborner—­never one in my life!  Now, then, you’ve showed you could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop, in no time at all.  That looks to me like you could learn to do other things.  I don’t deny but what it’s an encouragin’ sign.  I don’t deny that, at all.  Well, that helps me to think the case ain’t so hopeless as it looks.  You’re all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain’t as poor material as I thought.  Your tellin’ me about comin’ within seven strips of the shop’s record to-day looks to me like encouragin’ information brought