lodging-house without trepidation.  He could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays—­on Sundays in the afternoon.  In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn’t be interrupted by his sister-in-law’s choosing the immediate vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to him.  He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of asking her to go away.  But, as she went on, he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.

“I don’t know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all they got out of it was an agreement that let’s ’em live there a little longer.  Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the streets more’n two years, tryin’ to get a job he could call a ‘position,’ and couldn’t land it.  You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?”

“Well, I did know they been doin’ their own house-work a good while back,” said Mrs. Sheridan.  “And now they’re doin’ the cookin’, too.”

Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge.  “I hope they find something to cook!  She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”

Bibbs jumped up.  He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy —­of all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last would have been what he heard now.  He felt that something incredible was happening, and that he was powerless to stop it.  It seemed to him that heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary’s; it seemed to him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically—­and that something hideous impended.  He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.

“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said Sibyl, sharply.  “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was insane or not!  They’d got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs. Vertrees asked me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan, but listening intently.  There was no sound from within the room.

“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.

“It’s the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly.  “Oh, of course we were all crazy about that girl at first.  We were pretty green when we moved up here, and we thought she’d get us in—­but it didn’t take me long to read her!  Her family were down and out when it came to money—­and they had to go after it, one way or another, somehow!  So she started for Roscoe; but she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around