"Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin' wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a country grocery store?
And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick." He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his bedded spouse.

"My Lord!" he said.

"If a little, teeny bit o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything! It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put on!" "Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs.Sheridan.

"It was when he was here to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything.
Honey, you better come to bed." "Eat!" he snorted.

"Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's imagination that keeps people from eatin'.