sir!  They take enough exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball game once or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they’re raisin’ nice families, with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the work—­because the work’s got to go on!  They’re puttin’ their life-blood into it, I tell you, and that’s why we’re gettin’ bigger every minute, and why they’re gettin’ bigger, and why it’s all goin’ to keep on gettin’ bigger!”

He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was impelled to groan.  “Oh, Lord!” he said.  “This is the way you always were.  I don’t believe you understood a darn word I been sayin’!  You don’t look as if you did.  By George! it’s discouraging!”

“I don’t understand about getting—­about getting bigger,” said Bibbs, bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively.  “I don’t see just why—­”

“What?” Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and staring across it incredulously at his son.

“I don’t understand—­exactly—­what you want it all bigger for?”

“Great God!” shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his clenched fist.  “A son of mine asks me that!  You go out and ask the poorest day-laborer you can find!  Ask him that question—­”

“I did once,” Bibbs interrupted; “when I was in the machine-shop.  I—­”

“Wha’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Oh, hell!’” answered Bibbs, mildly.

“Yes, I reckon he would!” Sheridan swung away from the desk.  “I reckon he certainly would!  And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!”

“It’s the same answer, then?” Bibbs’s voice was serious, almost tremulous.

“Damnation!” Sheridan roared.  “Did you ever hear the word Prosperity, you ninny?  Did you ever hear the word Ambition?  Did you ever hear the word progress?”

He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging, his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences.  “Now then,” he said, huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, “what do you want to do?”

“Sir?”

“What do you want to do, I said.”

Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered.  “What—­what do—­I—­what—­”

“If I’d let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?”

Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him—­a profound shyness.  He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to the desk in school.

“What would you do?  Loaf?”

“No, sir.”  Bibbs’s voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it made was unquestionably a guilty sound.  “I suppose I’d—­I’d—­”