His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of
affairs of his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote,
"Who would wake from such a dream as this?" Bibbs was a sympathetic
person, easily touched, but he was indeed living in a dream, and all
things outside of it were veiled and remote--for that is the way of
youth in a dream. And Bibbs, who had never before been of any age,
either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
He went whistling from the house before even his father had come
down-stairs. There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder
of soot, and though Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an
automobile at the curb before Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it
as Dr. Gurney's, but went cheerily on his way through the dingy mist.
And when he was once more installed beside his faithful zinc-eater
he whistled and sang to it, as other workmen did to their own machines
sometimes, when things went well. His comrades in the shop glanced
at him amusedly now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at
noon with a group of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked
of electing him to their association.
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