ole Doc Gurney’s opinion was only a joke he shared with her.  “Yes, sir, you certainly would ‘a’ laughed!  Why, that ole man thinks you got something to do with it.  You’ll have to blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel like startin’ out to whip somebody!  He’s actually got this theory:  he says Bibbs got to gettin’ better while he worked over there at the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin’ good.  And he says if you could manage to just stand him hangin’ around a little—­maybe not much, but just SOMEtimes—­again, he believed it’d do Bibbs a mighty lot o’ good.  ’Course, that’s only what the doctor said.  Me, I don’t know anything about that; but I can say this much—­I never saw any such a mental improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs.  I expect you’d find him a good deal more entertaining than what he used to be—­and I know it’s a kind of embarrassing thing to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to ask you to stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin’ to ole Doc Gurney, he’s got you on his brain so bad—­”

Mary jumped.  “Mr. Sheridan!” she exclaimed.

He sighed profoundly.  “There!  I noticed you were gettin’ mad.  I didn’t—­”

“No, no, no!” she cried.  “But I don’t understand—­and I think you don’t.  What is it you want me to do?”

He sighed again, but this time with relief.  “Well, well!” he said.  “You’re right.  It’ll be easier to talk plain.  I ought to known I could with you, all the time.  I just hoped you’d let that boy come and see you sometimes, once more.  Could you?”

“You don’t understand.”  She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful gesture.  “Yes, we must talk plain.  Bibbs heard that I’d tried to make your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me to marry him—­because he was sorry for me.  And I can’t see him any more,” she cried in distress.  “I can’t!”

Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “You mean because he thought that about you?”

“No, no!  What he thought was true!”

“Well—­you mean he was so much in—­you mean he thought so much of you—­” The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan’s tongue; he seemed to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he bravely repeated them.  “You mean he thought so much of you that you just couldn’t stand him around?”

“No!  He was sorry for me.  He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he’d respected me—­too much!  In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and he’d have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he knew I would.  It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,” she said.  “But the cheap, bad things one has done seem always to come back—­they wait, and pull you down when you’re happiest.  Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn’t ‘in love’ with me at all.”