“What girl? Their cook?”
“That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into this neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan—she's GOT to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on first with YOU. You remember, she just plain TOLD you she was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married one, and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his feet. Oh, Jim was landed—there's no doubt about THAT! But Jim was lucky; he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for him!” Sibyl's mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity. “Well, she couldn't get you, because you were married, and she couldn't get Jim, because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what she did? Do you know what she's DOING?”
“No, I don't,” said Roscoe, gruffly.
Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity. “BIBBS! She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S FUNERAL! Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!”
She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. “Bibbs!” she shrieked. “Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!”
He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that. “And yesterday,” she continued, between paroxysms—“yesterday she came out of the house—just as he was passing. She must have been looking out—waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window! And she got him there last night—to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave that away! And to-day she made him take her out in a machine! And the cream of it is that they didn't even know whether he was INSANE or not—they thought maybe he was, but she went after him just the same! The old lady set herself to pump me about it to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord! BIBBS!”
But Roscoe looked grim. “So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.”
“Oh, it might,” she returned, sobering. “It might, if those people weren't such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny, but to see 'em sit up on their pedestal all the time they're eating dirt—well, I think it's funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until they get near enough for her to give 'em a good kick with her old patched shoes—oh, she'd do THAT, all right!—and then she powders up and goes out to mash—BIBBS SHERIDAN!”
“Look here,” said Roscoe, heavily; “I don't care about that one way or another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about. I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.”
At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. “What is it?”