The Turmoil Booth Tarkington (best reads .txt) 📖

enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his plate without dropping it and to respond, “Yes⁠—he crows over it.”

Having returned his antagonists’s fire in this fashion, he blushed⁠—for he could blush distinctly now⁠—and his mother looked upon him with pleasure, thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon to her. “Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!” she exclaimed. “I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!”

“He’s got to be such a gadabout,” Edith giggled.

“I found something of his on the floor upstairs this morning, before anybody was up,” said Sheridan. “I reckon if people lose things in this house and expect to get ’em back, they better get up as soon as I do.”

“What was it he lost?” asked Edith.

“He knows!” her father returned. “Seems to me like I forgot to bring it home with me. I looked it over⁠—thought probably it was something pretty important, belongin’ to a busy man like him.” He affected to search his pockets. “What did I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I remember leavin’ it down at the office⁠—in the wastebasket.”

“Good place for it,” Bibbs murmured, still red.

Sheridan gave him a grin. “Perhaps pretty soon you’ll be gettin’ up early enough to find things before I do!”

It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the evening, to Mary Vertrees⁠—they had come to know each other that well.

“My time’s here at last,” he said, as they sat together in the melancholy gaslight of the room which had been denuded of its piano. That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gaslight, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.

“Yes, it’s come. I’ve shirked and put off, but I can’t shirk and put off any longer. It’s really my part to go to him⁠—at least it would save my face. He means what he says, and the time’s come to serve my sentence. Hard labor for life, I think.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s too kind.”

“You think my father’s kind?” And Bibbs stared at her.

“Yes. I’m sure of it. I’ve felt that he has a great, brave heart. It’s only that he has to be kind in his own way⁠—because he can’t understand any other way.”

“Ah yes,” said Bibbs. “If that’s what you mean by ‘kind’!”

She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. “It’s going to be pretty hard for you, isn’t it?”

“Oh⁠—self-pity!” he returned, smiling. “This has been just the last flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work. There’d be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless⁠—so I have to give it up. Tomorrow I’ll be a day-laborer.”

“What is it like⁠—exactly?”

“I get up at six,” he said. “I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty, and I’m at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and work again from one till five.”

“But the work itself?”

“It wasn’t muscularly exhausting⁠—not at all. They couldn’t give me a heavier job because I wasn’t good enough.”

“But what will you do? I want to know.”

“When I left,” said Bibbs, “I was on what they call over there a ‘clipping-machine,’ in one of the ‘byproducts’ departments, and that’s what I’ll be sent back to.”

“But what is it?” she insisted.

Bibbs explained. “It’s very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a certain angle⁠—and yet I was a very bad hand at it.”

He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.

“You do that all day long?” she asked, and as he nodded, “It seems incredible!” she exclaimed. “You feeding a strip of zinc into a machine nine hours a day! No wonder⁠—” She broke off, and then, after a keen glance at his face, she said: “I should think you would have been a bad hand at it!”

He laughed ruefully. “I think it’s the noise, though I’m ashamed to say it. You see, it’s a very powerful machine, and there’s a sort of rhythmical crashing⁠—a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.”

“How often is that?”

“The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute⁠—a little more than one a second.”

“And you’re close to it?”

“Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,” he said, turning to her more gaily. “The others don’t mind. You see, it’s something wrong with me. I have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing⁠—I flinch and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn’t get over it. I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they’ll be glad to see me back. They used to laugh at me all day long.”

Mary’s gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.

“It doesn’t seem possible anyone could do that to you,” she said, in a low voice. “No. He’s not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the leisure