“No, sir.  I think there’s a great deal in what they say, but that isn’t it.”

Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.  “Then what is it?  What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” his son returned, nervously.  “Nothing—­except that I’m content.  I don’t want to change anything.”

“Why not?”

Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain.  “I’ll tell you, father, if I can.  I know it may be hard to understand—­”

“Yes, I think it may be,” said Sheridan, grimly.  “What you say usually is a little that way.  Go on!”

Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at every possible disadvantage.  He was a sleeper clinging to a dream —­a rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him.  He went to a table and made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his eyes lowered.  “You weren’t altogether right about the shop—­that is, in one way you weren’t, father.”  He glanced up apprehensively.  Sheridan stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.  “That’s difficult to explain,” Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of his finger.  “I—­I believe the shop might have done for me this time if I hadn’t—­if something hadn’t helped me to—­oh, not only to bear it, but to be happy in it.  Well, I am happy in it.  I want to go on just as I am.  And of all things on earth that I don’t want, I don’t want to live a business life—­I don’t want to be drawn into it.  I don’t think it is living—­and now I am living.  I have the healthful toil —­and I can think.  In business as important as yours I couldn’t think anything but business.  I don’t—­I don’t think making money is worth while.”

“Go on,” said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.

“It hasn’t seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,” said Bibbs.  “You think this city is rich and powerful—­but what’s the use of its being rich and powerful?  They don’t teach the children any more in the schools because the city is rich and powerful.  They teach them more than they used to because some people—­not rich and powerful people—­ have thought the thoughts to teach the children.  And yet when you’ve been reading the paper I’ve heard you objecting to the children being taught anything except what would help them to make money.  You said it was wasting the taxes.  You want them taught to make a living, but not to live.  When I was a little boy this wasn’t an ugly town; now it’s hideous.  What’s the use of being big just to be hideous?  I mean I don’t think all this has meant really going ahead—­it’s just been getting bigger and dirtier and noisier.  Wasn’t the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder?  I know you think I’m an utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren’t business and politics just the housekeeping part of