This material, such as it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position in the Realty Company as well.

He told her to ask him again in a month.
But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this to be an encouraging sign.

Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner.
Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
"I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms, father," he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him.

"Abercrombie agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him." "You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen," Sheridan returned, "but you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing.

The roof fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions.