Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
“What—what you ask me while ago?” he said.
“Nothin'.”
“Yes, you did. What—what was it?”
“Nothin'. You better sit down.”
“You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!”
The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and said, “Right down.” Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and brought them to his son. “Get into this coat,” he said. “You're goin' home.”
“All ri',” Roscoe murmured, obediently.
They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and told the operator to take on no more passengers until they reached the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word in the interval.
Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of song: