"
"Well, what have you got?"
"Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you."
"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly. "Now I can't fool
with you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come
last Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when
the women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you
keep sober till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send
Abercrombie down to your office every little while, and he'll let me
know."
Roscoe paused at the door. "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
"TOLD him!" And Sheridan laughed hideously. "Do you suppose there's
an elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
CHAPTER XXI
"WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
Changety, chang, chang! Bash! Crash! BANG!"
So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen
because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago
that the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now,
on the afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying
the swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments,
mingling improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the
zinc-eater's crash with vocal imitations:
Fearless and bold,
Chang! Bash! Behold!
With a leap from the ground
To the saddle in a bound,
And away--and away!
Hi-YAY!
WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
NIGHT'S on the way
EACH time I say,
Hi-YAY!
Crash, chang! Bash, chang! Chang, bang, BANG!
The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the
air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually;
everything was implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the
dizzied eye.
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