“Well, I guess I better be gettin’ down there,” he said, at last.  “He might worry.”

“Good-by—­and thank you,” said Mary.

“For what?”

“For the letter.”

“Oh,” he said, blankly.  “You’re welcome.  Good-by.”

Mary put out her hand.  “Good-by.”

“You’ll have to excuse my left hand,” he said.  “I had a little accident to the other one.”

She gave a pitying cry as she saw.  “Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!”

“Nothin’ at all!  Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.”  He laughed jovially.  “Did anybody tell you how it happened?”

“I heard you hurt your hand, but no—­not just how.”

“It was this way,” he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down again.  “You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the youngest o’ my boys—­the one that used to come to see you sometimes, after Jim—­that is, I mean Bibbs.  He’s the one I spoke of as my partner; and the truth is that’s what it’s just about goin’ to amount to, one o’ these days—­if his health holds out.  Well, you remember, I expect, I had him on a machine over at a plant o’ mine; and sometimes I’d kind o’ sneak in there and see how he was gettin’ along.  Take a doctor with me sometimes, because Bibbs never was so robust, you might say.  Ole Doc Gurney—­I guess maybe you know him?  Tall, thin man; acts sleepy—­”

“Yes.”

“Well, one day I an’ ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to show Bibbs how to run his machine.  He told me to look out, but I wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t look out—­and that’s how I got my hand hurt, tryin’ to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and I didn’t.  Made me so mad I just wouldn’t even admit to myself it was hurt—­and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o’ radical measures with me.  He’s a right good doctor, too.  Don’t you think so, Miss Vertrees?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, he is so!” Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip with all day on his hands.  “Take him on Bibbs’s case.  I was talkin’ about Bibbs’s case with him this morning.  Well, you’d laugh to hear the way ole Gurney talks about that!  ’Course he is just as much a friend as he is doctor—­and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the family.  He says Bibbs isn’t anyways bad off yet; and he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if—­well, this is what’d made you laugh if you’d been there, Miss Vertrees—­honest it would!” He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her.  She was gazing straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and—­ visibly—­she was breathing heavily and quickly.  He feared that she was growing furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went on, determined now to say it all.  He leaned forward and altered his voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone which indicated that