Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered.  And she was not cast down, for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed—­after some further fragmentary discourse—­visibly elated.  After all, the guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged.  She bestowed a contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the street.

When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while she said, uneasily, “Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs about that letter?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, walking moodily to the window.  “I been thinkin’ about it.”  He came to a decision.  “I reckon I will.”  And he went up to Bibbs’s room.

“Well, you goin’ back on what you said?” he inquired, brusquely, as he opened the door.  “You goin’ to take it back and lay down on me again?”

“No,” said Bibbs.

“Well, perhaps I didn’t have any call to accuse you of that.  I don’t know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord knows you’ve laid down on me enough.  You certainly have!” Sheridan was baffled.  This was not what he wished to say, but his words were unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of him.  “I can’t say I expect much of you—­not from the way you always been, up to now —­unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don’t see any encouragement to think you’re goin’ to do that!  If you go down there and show a spark o’ real git-up, I reckon the whole office’ll fall in a faint.  But if you’re ever goin’ to show any, you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.”

“Yes—­I’ll try.”

“You better, if it’s in you!” Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed.  He had always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed bewitched.  He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary’s letter, and to his own angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold like a drudge-driver.  “You better come down there with your mind made up to hustle harder than the hardest workin’-man that’s under you, or you’ll not get on very good with me, I tell you!  The way to get ahead—­and you better set it down in your books—­the way to get ahead is to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works for you.  But you don’t know what work is, yet.  All you’ve ever done was just stand around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home and take a bath and go callin’.  I tell you you’re up against a mighty different proposition now, and if you’re worth your salt—­and you never showed any signs of it yet—­not any signs that stuck out enough to bang somebody on the head and make ’em sit up and take notice—­well, I want to say, right here and now—­and you better listen, because I want to say just what I do say.  I say—­”