She came and sat by the bed.  “I woke up thinkin’ about it,” she explained.  “And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I knew you’d be tormentin’ yourself if you was awake, so—­well, you got plenty other troubles, but I’m just sure you ain’t goin’ to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like.”

“You bet I ain’t!” he grunted.

“Look how biddable he was about goin’ back to the Works,” she continued.  “He’s a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to say he seems right smart, too.  Now and then he’ll say something sounds right bright.  ’Course, most always it doesn’t, and a good deal of the time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven’t got company, because they’d think he didn’t have any gumption at all.  Yet, look at the way he did when Jim—­when Jim got hurt.  He took right hold o’ things.  ’Course he’d been sick himself so much and all—­and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind o’ green about what to do in that kind o’ trouble—­still, he did take hold, and everything went off all right; you’ll have to say that much, papa.  And Dr. Gurney says he’s got brains, and you can’t deny but what the doctor’s right considerable of a man.  He acts sleepy, but that’s only because he’s got such a large practice—­he’s a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways.  Well, what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein’ asleep, and how much he’d amount to if he ever woke up—­that’s what I got to thinkin’ about.  You heard him, papa; he says, ’Bibbs’ll be a bigger business man than what Jim and Roscoe was put together—­if he ever wakes up,’ he says.  Wasn’t that exactly what he says?”

“I suppose so,” said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.  “Gurney’s crazier’n Bibbs, but if he wasn’t—­if what he says was true—­what of it?”

“Listen, papa.  Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.  You know where he goes all the time—­”

“Oh, Lord, yes!” Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall, leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair.  “You better go back to sleep.  He runs over there—­every minute she’ll let him, I suppose.  Go back to bed.  There’s nothin’ in it.”

“Why ain’t there?” she urged.  “I know better—­there is, too!  You wait and see.  There’s just one thing in the world that’ll wake the sleepiest young man alive up—­yes, and make him jump up—­and I don’t care who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is.  That’s when he takes it into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and chuldern of his own.  Then, I guess, he’ll go out after the money!  You’ll see.  I’ve known dozens o’ cases, and so’ve you—­moony, no-’count young men, all notions and talk, goin’ to be ministers, maybe or something; and there’s just this one thing takes it out of ’em and brings ’em right down to business.  Well,