Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don't!” he said. “You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a girl.”
“But, father Sheridan, didn't she—”
He cut her short. “That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess wrong. So do you, mamma.”
Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim—”
“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him down cold.”
“But that's impossi—”
“It's not. I KNOW she did.”
Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
“And YOU needn't worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won't have any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow. D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs—after she wouldn't take JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her, but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has—he'd 'a' been at me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife on. There's nothin' in it—and I've got the same old fight with him on my hands I've had all his life—and the Lord knows what he won't do to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as stubborn, but—”
“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That's his step—he's comin' down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I—I wonder—” she said, almost in a whisper—“I wonder what he's goin'—to do.”