“Well, what about Bibbs?” said Gurney.  “Will you be a really big man now and—­”

“Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!” Sheridan began to walk to and fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair.  He had shot his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target seemed unaware of the marksman.

“I’m tryin’ to make a big man out o’ that poor truck yonder,” Sheridan went on, “and you step in, beggin’ me to let him be Lord knows what—­I don’t!  I suppose you figure it out that now I got a son-in-law, I mightn’t need a son!  Yes, I got a son-in-law now—­a spender!”

“Oh, put your hand back!” said Gurney, wearily.

There was a bronze inkstand upon the table.  Sheridan put his right hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way across the room—­a comet with a destroying black tail.  Mrs. Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.

“Let it lay!” he shouted, fiercely.  “Let it lay!” And, weeping, she obeyed.  “Yes, sir,” he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put upon it.  “I got a spender for a son-in-law!  It’s wonderful where property goes, sometimes.  There was ole man Tracy—­you remember him, Doc—­J.  R. Tracy, solid banker.  He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years more.  He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he died—­over eighty!  Gilt edge, that bank?  It was diamond edge!  He used to eat a bag o’ peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn’t stingy—­he was just livin’ in his business.  He didn’t care for pie or automobiles—­he had his bank.  It was an institution, and it come pretty near bein’ the beatin’ heart o’ this town in its time.  Well, that ole man used to pass one o’ these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets.  Never spoke to him, Tracy didn’t.  Speak to him?  God! he wouldn’t ‘a’ coughed on him!  He wouldn’t ‘a’ let him clean the cuspidors at the bank!  Why, if he’d ‘a’ just seen him standin’ in front the bank he’d ‘a’ had him run off the street.  And yet all Tracy was doin’ every day of his life was workin’ for that cigarette boy!  Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin’ his life and his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn’t.  It was every bit—­from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three—­it was every last lick of it just slavin’ for that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy.  And Tracy didn’t even know his name!  He died, not ever havin’ heard it, though he chased him off the front steps of his house once.  The day after Tracy died his old-maid daughter married the cigarette—­and there ain’t any Tracy bank any more!  And now”—­his voice rose again—­“and now I got a cigarette son-in-law!”