"You're so much
better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down
--all the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know."
Bibbs nodded. "Machine-shop."
"Still hate it?"
Bibbs nodded again.
"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted. "Yes, I expect it'll make
a lump in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell
him you've got the old lump there yet? You still want to write,
do you?"
"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. "My kind of writing!"
"Yes," the doctor agreed. "I suppose it you broke away and lived on
roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention
of editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five
hundred dollars a year by the time you're fifty."
"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily. "You
don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise
and jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'
You'd like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and
bask on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets.
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