Alice Adams .........................................................................................................................................................1

Booth Tarkington .....................................................................................................................................1

The patient, an oldfashioned man, thought the nurse made a mistake in keeping both of the windows open,

and her sprightly disregard of his protests added something to his hatred of her. Every evening he told her

that anybody with ordinary gumption ought to realize that night air was bad for the human frame. "The

human frame won't stand everything, Miss Perry," he warned her, resentfully. "Even a child, if it had just

ordinary gumption, ought to know enough not to let the night air blow on sick people yes, nor well people,

either! 'Keep out of the night air, no matter how well you feel.' That's what my mother used to tell me when I

was a boy. 'Keep out of the night air, Virgil,' she'd say. 'Keep out of the night air.'"

"Oh, I guess your GRANDmother thought so, Mr. Adams! That was when all this flat central country was

swampish and hadn't been drained off yet. I guess the truth must been the swamp mosquitoes bit people and

gave 'em malaria, especially before they began to put screens in their windows. Well, we got screens in these

windows, and no mosquitoes are goin' to bite us; so just you be a good boy and rest your mind and go to sleep

He thought the night air worst of all in April; he hadn't a doubt it would kill him, he declared. "It's miraculous

what the human frame WILL survive," he admitted on the last evening of that month. "But you and the doctor

ought to both be taught it won't stand too dang much! You poison a man and poison and poison him with this

"Can't poison you with much more of it," Miss Perry interrupted him, indulgently. "Tomorrow it'll be May

night air, and I expect that'll be a lot better for you, don't you? Now let's just sober down and be a good boy

She gave him his medicine, and, having set the glass upon the center table, returned to her cot, where, after a

still interval, she snored faintly. Upon this, his expression became that of a man goaded out of overpowering

However, he did sleep intermittently, drowsed between times, and even dreamed; but, forgetting his dreams

before he opened his eyes, and having some part of him all the while aware of his discomfort, he believed, as

usual, that he lay awake the whole night long. He was conscious of the city as of some single great creature

resting fitfully in the dark outside his windows. It lay all round about, in the damp cover of its night cloud of

smoke, and tried to keep quiet for a few hours after midnight, but was too powerful a growing thing ever to

lie altogether still. Even while it strove to sleep it muttered with digestions of the day before, and these

already merged with rumblings of the morrow. "Owl" cars, bringing in last passengers over distant

trolleylines, now and then howled on a curve; faraway metallic stirrings could be heard from factories in the

sooty suburbs on the plain outside the city; east, west, and south, switchengines chugged and snorted on

sidings; and everywhere in the air there seemed to be a faint, voluminous hum as of innumerable wires

In his youth Adams might have been less resentful of sounds such as these when they interfered with his

night's sleep: even during an illness he might have taken some pride in them as proof of his citizenship in a

"live town"; but at fiftyfive he merely hated them because they kept him awake. They "pressed on his

He heard the milkwagon drive into the crossstreet beneath his windows and stop at each house. The

milkman carried his jars round to the "back porch," while the horse moved slowly ahead to the gate of the

next customer and waited there. "He's gone into Pollocks'," Adams thought, following this progress. "I hope

it'll sour on 'em before breakfast. Delivered the Andersons'. Now he's getting out ours. Listen to the darn

brute! What's HE care who wants to sleep!" His complaint was of the horse, who casually shifted weight with

a clink of steel shoes on the worn brick pavement of the street, and then heartily shook himself in his harness,

perhaps to dislodge a fly far ahead of its season. Light had just filmed the windows; and with that the first

sparrow woke, chirped instantly, and roused neighbours in the trees of the small yard, including a

Night sounds were becoming day sounds; the faraway hooting of freightengines seemed brisker than an

hour ago in the dark. A cheerful whistler passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than the milkman's

horse had been; then a group of coloured workmen came by, and although it was impossible to be sure

whether they were homeward bound from nightwork or on their way to day work, at least it was certain

that they were jocose. Loose, aboriginal laughter preceded them afar, and beat on the air long after they had

The sickroom nightlight, shielded from his eyes by a newspaper propped against a waterpitcher, still

showed a thin glimmering that had grown offensive to Adams. In his wandering and enfeebled thoughts,

which were much more often imaginings than reasonings, the attempt of the nightlight to resist the dawn

reminded him of something unpleasant, though he could not discover just what the unpleasant thing was.

Here was a puzzle that irritated him the more because he could not solve it, yet always seemed just on the

point of a solution. However, he may have lost nothing cheerful by remaining in the dark upon the matter; for

if he had been a little sharper in this introspection he might have concluded that the squalor of the nightlight,

in its seeming effort to show against the forerunning of the sun itself, had stimulated some halfburied

perception within him to sketch the painful little synopsis of an autobiography.

In spite of noises without, he drowsed again, not knowing that he did; and when he opened his eyes the nurse

was just rising from her cot. He took no pleasure in the sight, it may be said. She exhibited to him a face

mismodelled by sleep, and set like a clay face left on its cheek in a hot and dry studio. She was still only in

part awake, however, and by the time she had extinguished the nightlight and given her patient his tonic, she

had recovered enough plasticity. "Well, isn't that grand! We've had another good night," she said as she

"Yes, you had another!" he retorted, though not until after she had closed the door.

Presently he heard his daughter moving about in her room across the narrow hall, and so knew that she had

risen. He hoped she would come in to see him soon, for she was the one thing that didn't press on his nerves,

he felt; though the thought of her hurt him, as, indeed, every thought hurt him. But it was his wife who came

She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair escaped to one temple from beneath the

handkerchief she had worn upon her head for the night and still retained; but she did everything possible to

"Oh, you're better again! I can see that, as soon as I look at you," she said. "Miss Perry tells me you've had

He made a sound of irony, which seemed to dispose unfavourably of Miss Perry, and then, in order to be

But his wife's smile persisted. "It's a good sign to be cross; it means you're practically convalescent right

"No doubt in the world!" she exclaimed. "Why, you're practically a well man, Virgilall except getting your

strength back, of course, and that isn't going to take long. You'll be right on your feet in a couple of weeks

"Of course you will!" She laughed briskly, and, going to the table in the center of the room, moved his glass

of medicine an inch or two, turned a book over so that it lay upon its other side, and for a few moments

occupied herself with similar futilities, having taken on the air of a person who makes things neat, though she

produced no such actual effect upon them. "Of course you will," she repeated, absently. "You'll be as strong

as you ever were; maybe stronger." She paused for a moment, not looking at him, then added, cheerfully, "So

Something important between them came near the surface here, for though she spoke with what seemed but a

casual cheerfulness, there was a little betraying break in her voice, a trembling just perceptible in the

utterance of the final word. And she still kept up the affectation of being helpfully preoccupied with the table,

and did not look at her husband perhaps because they had been married so many years that without looking

she knew just what his expression would be, and preferred to avoid the actual sight of it as long as possible.

Meanwhile, he stared hard at her, his lips beginning to move with little distortions not lacking in the pathos of

"'Hinting?' " Mrs. Adams looked surprised and indulgent. "Why, I'm not doing any hinting, Virgil."

"What did you say about my finding 'something good to get into?'" he asked, sharply. "Don't you call that

Mrs. Adams turned toward him now; she came to the bedside and would have taken his hand, but he quickly

"You mustn't let yourself get nervous," she said. "But of course when you get well there's only one thing to

"'Old hole?' That's what you call it, is it?" In spite of his weakness, anger made his voice strident, and upon

"You just mustn't go back to it, Virgil. It's not fair to any of us, and you know it isn't."

She clasped her hands, suddenly carrying her urgency to plaintive entreaty. "Virgil, you WON'T go back to

"Virgil, if you don't owe it to me to look for something different, don't you owe it to your children? Don't tell

me you won't do what we all want you to, and what you know in your heart you ought to! And if you HAVE

got into one of your stubborn fits and are bound to go back there for no other reason except to have your own

He looked up at her fiercely. "You've got a fine way to cure a sick man!" he said; but she had concluded her

appealfor that timeand instead of making any more words in the matter, let him see that there were tears

Alone, he lay breathing rapidly, his emaciated chest proving itself equal to the demands his emotion put upon

it. "Fine!" he repeated, with husky indignation. "Fine way to cure a sick man! Fine!" Then, after a silence, he

gave forth whispering sounds as of laughter, his expression the while remaining sore and far from humour.

"And give us our daily bread!" he added, meaning that his wife's little performance was no novelty.

In fact, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was genuine, but so well under her control that its traces vanished during

the three short steps she took to cross the narrow hall between her husband's door and the one opposite. Her

expression was matterofcourse, rather than pathetic, as she entered the pretty room where her daughter,

half dressed, sat before a dressingtable and played with the reflections of a threeleafed mirror framed in

blue enamel. That is, just before the moment of her mother's entrance, Alice had been playing with the

mirror's reflectionsposturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her hands behind her neck, and tilting

back her head to foreshorten the face in a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one of smiling

weariness, then one of scornful toleration, and all very piquant; but as the door opened she hurriedly resumed

the practical, and occupied her hands in the arrangement of her plentiful brownish hair.

They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The best things she's got!" a cold blooded girl

friend said of them, and meant to include Alice's mind and character in the implied list of possessions

surpassed by the notable hands. However that may have been, the rest of her was well enough. She was often

called "a right pretty girl"temperate praise meaning a girl rather pretty than otherwise, and this she

deserved, to say the least. Even in repose she deserved it, though repose was anything but her habit, being

seldom seen upon her except at home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said to make her

lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders

ever giving them their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon, at the same time, for eloquence.

So much liveliness took proper place as only accessory to that of the face, where her vivacity reached its

climax; and it was unfortunate that an ungifted young man, new in the town, should have attempted to define

the effect upon him of all this generosity of emphasis. He said that "the way she used her cute hazel eyes and

the wonderful glow of her facial expression gave her a mighty spiritual quality." His actual rendition of the

word was "spirichul"; but it was not his pronunciation that embalmed this outburst in the perennial laughter

Her mother comforted her too heartily, insisting that Alice had "plenty enough spiritual qualities," certainly

more than possessed by the other girls who flung the phrase at her, wooden things, jealous of everything they

were incapable of themselves; and then Alice, getting more championship than she sought, grew uneasy lest

Mrs. Adams should repeat such defenses "outside the family"; and Mrs. Adams ended by weeping because

the daughter so distrusted her intelligence. Alice frequently thought it necessary to instruct her mother.

Her morning greeting was an instruction today; or, rather, it was an admonition in the style of an entreaty,

the more petulant as Alice thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the posturings to the mirror.

This was a needless worry; the mother had caught a thousand such glimpses, with Alice unaware, and she

"For heaven's sake, mama, come clear inside the room and shut the door! PLEASE don't leave it open for

"There isn't anybody to see you," Mrs. Adams explained, obeying. "Miss Perry's gone downstairs, and"

"Mama, I heard you in papa's room," Alice said, not dropping the note of complaint. "I could hear both of

you, and I don't think you ought to get poor old papa so upsetnot in his present condition, anyhow."

Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. "He's better all the time," she said, not disturbed. "He's

almost well. The doctor says so and Miss Perry says so; and if we don't get him into the right frame of mind

now we never will. The first day he's outdoors he'll go back to that old holeyou'll see! And if he once does

that, he'll settle down there and it'll be too late and we'll never get him out."

"I do try to," the mother sighed. "It never was much use with him. I don't think you understand him as well as

"There's one thing I don't understand about either of you," Alice returned, crisply. "Before people get married

they can do anything they want to with each other. Why can't they do the same thing after they're married?

When you and papa were young people and engaged, he'd have done anything you wanted him to. That must

have been because you knew how to manage him then. Why can't you go at him the same way now?"

Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, making no other response; but Alice persisted. "Well, WHY

can't you? Why can't you ask him to do things the way you used to ask him when you were just in love with

"'Dingdonging at him,' Alice?" Mrs. Adams said, with a pathos somewhat emphasized. "Is that how my

"Never mind that; it's nothing to hurt your feelings." Alice disposed of the pathos briskly. "Why don't you

answer my question? What's the matter with using a little more tact on papa? Why can't you treat him the way

you probably did when you were young people, before you were married? I never have understood why

"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently. "Maybe you will when you've been

"You mean because we're too young to understand the answer? I don't see that at all. At twentytwo a girl's

supposed to have some intelligence, isn't she? And intelligence is the ability to understand, isn't it? Why do I

have to wait till I've lived with a man twentyfive years to understand why you can't be tactful with papa?"

"You may understand some things before that," Mrs. Adams said, tremulously. "You may understand how

you hurt me sometimes. Youth can't know everything by being intelligent, and by the time you could

understand the answer you're asking for you'd know it, and wouldn't need to ask. You don't understand your

father, Alice; you don't know what it takes to change him when he's made up his mind to be stubborn."

Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. "Well, I don't think making scenes ever changes anybody,"

"'A little jolly persuasion!' " Her mother turned the echo of this phrase into an ironic lament. "Yes, there was

For the second time that morningit was now a little after seven o'clocktears seemed about to offer their

solace to Mrs. Adams. "I might have expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss a chance," she said,

But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to be little concerned. "Oh, well, I think there are better ways

"If you'd left it entirely to me," her daughter went on, briskly, "I believe papa'd already be willing to do

"That's it; tell me I spoil everything. Well, I won't interfere from now on, you can be sure of it."

"Please don't talk like that," Alice said, quickly. "I'm old enough to realize that papa may need pressure of all

sorts; I only think it makes him more obstinate to get him cross. You probably do understand him better, but

that's one thing I've found out and you haven't. There!" She gave her mother a friendly tap on the shoulder

As she went, she continued the fastening of her blouse, and appeared in her father's room with one hand still

"Poor old papadaddy!" she said, gaily. "Every time he's better somebody talks him into getting so mad he

Her father's eyes, beneath their melancholy brows, looked up at her wistfully. "I suppose you heard your

"You mean she wants you to try something new when you get well?" Alice asked, with cheerful innocence.

At this his sorrowful forehead was more sorrowful than ever. The deep horizontal lines moved upward to a

pattern of suffering so familiar to his daughter that it meant nothing to her; but he spoke quietly. "Yes; so we

"Oh, no!" she laughed, and, finishing with her blouse, patted his cheeks with both hands. "Just think how

many grand openings there must be for a man that knows as much as you do! I always did believe you could

But upon his forehead the painful pattern still deepened. "Don't you think we've always had enough, the way

"Not the way things ARE!" She patted his cheeks again; laughed again. "It used to be enough, maybe anyway

we did skimp along on it but the way things are now I expect mama's really pretty practical in her ideas,

though, I think it's a shame for her to bother you about it while you're so weak. Don't you worry about it,

"You know," he said; "you know it isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world for a man of my age to find

these grand openings you speak of. And when you've passed halfway from fifty to sixty you're apt to see

"My, what a frown!" she cried, blithely. "Didn't I tell you to stop thinking about it till you get ALL well?"

She bent over him, giving him a gay little kiss on the bridge of his nose. "There! I must run to breakfast.

Cheer up now! Au 'voir!" And with her pretty hand she waved further encouragement from the closing door

Lightsomely descending the narrow stairway, she whistled as she went, her fingers drumming time on the

rail; and, still whistling, she came into the diningroom, where her mother and her brother were already at the

table. The brother, a thin and sallow boy of twenty, greeted her without much approval as she took her place.

"No; nothing much," she made airy response. "What's troubling yourself, Walter?"

"Don't let that worry you!" he returned, seeming to consider this to be repartee of an effective sort; for he

furnished a short laugh to go with it, and turned to his coffee with the manner of one who has satisfactorily

"Walter always seems to have so many secrets!" Alice said, studying him shrewdly, but with a friendly

enough amusement in her scrutiny. "Everything he does or says seems to be acted for the benefit of some

mysterious audience inside himself, and he always gets its applause. Take what he said just now: he seems to

think it means something, but if it does, why, that's just another secret between him and the secret audience

Walter laughed again, in a manner that sustained her theory well enough; then after finishing his coffee, he

took from his pocket a flattened packet in glazed blue paper; extracted with stained fingers a bent and

wrinkled little cigarette, lighted it, hitched up his belted trousers with the air of a person who turns from

Alice laughed as the door closed. "He's ALL secrets," she said. "Don't you think you really ought to know

"I'm sure he's a good boy," Mrs. Adams returned, thoughtfully. "He's been very brave about not being able to

have the advantages that are enjoyed by the boys he's grown up with. I've never heard a word of complaint

"About his not being sent to college?" Alice cried. "I should think you wouldn't! He didn't even have enough

Mrs. Adams sighed. "It seemed to me Walter lost his ambition when nearly all the boys he'd grown up with

went to Eastern schools to prepare for college, and we couldn't afford to send him. If only your father would

Alice interrupted: "What nonsense! Walter hated books and studying, and athletics, too, for that matter. He

doesn't care for anything nice that I ever heard of. What do you suppose he does like, mama? He must like

something or other somewhere, but what do you suppose it is? What does he do with his time?"

"Why, the poor boy's at Lamb and Company's all day. He doesn't get through until five in the afternoon; he

"Well, we never have dinner until about seven, and he's always late for dinner, and goes out, heaven knows

where, right afterward!" Alice shook her head. "He used to go with our friends' boys, but I don't think he does

"Why, how could he?" Mrs. Adams protested. "That isn't his fault, poor child! The boys he knew when he

"Yes, but he doesn't see anything of 'em when they're here at holidaytime or vacation. None of 'em come to

"I suppose he's made other friends. It's natural for him to want companions, at his age."

"Yes," Alice said, with disapproving emphasis. "But who are they? I've got an idea he plays pool at some

"Oh, no; I'm sure he's a steady boy," Mrs. Adams protested, but her tone was not that of thoroughgoing

conviction, and she added, "Life might be a very different thing for him if only your father can be brought to

"Never mind, mama! It isn't me that has to be convinced, you know; and we can do a lot more with papa if

we just let him alone about it for a day or two. Promise me you won't say any more to him untilwell, until

Mrs. Adams bit her lip, which had begun to tremble. "I think you can trust me to know a FEW things, Alice,"

"That's a good girl!" Alice jumped up, laughing. "Don't forget it's the same as a promise, and do just cheer

"Oh, I've got lots to do. I thought I'd run out to Mildred's to see what she's going to wear tonight, and then I

want to go down and buy a yard of chiffon and some narrow ribbon to make new bows for my

"If he'll give it to me!" her mother lamented, as they went toward the front stairs together; but an hour later

"He has some money in his bureau drawer," she said. "He finally told me where it was."

There were traces of emotion in her voice, and Alice, looking shrewdly at her, saw moisture in her eyes.

"Mama!" she cried. "You didn't do what you promised me you wouldn't, did youNOT before Miss Perry!"

"Miss Perry's getting him some broth," Mrs. Adams returned, calmly. "Besides, you're mistaken in saying I

promised you anything; I said I thought you could trust me to know what is right."

"So you did bring it up again!" And Alice swung away from her, strode to her father's door, flung it open,

"Poor old papa!" she said. "It's a shame how everybody wants to trouble him. He shan't be bothered any more

at all! He doesn't need to have everybody telling him how to get away from that old hole he's worked in so

Thereupon she kissed him a consoling goodbye, and made another gay departure, the charming hand again

Mrs. Adams had remained in Alice's room, but her mood seemed to have changed, during her daughter's little

"'Say?' " Alice repeated, impatiently. "Why, nothing. I didn't let him. Really, mama, I think the best thing for

you to do would be to just keep out of his room, because I don't believe you can go in there and not talk to

him about it, and if you do talk we'll never get him to do the right thing. Never!"

The mother's response was a grieving silence; she turned from her daughter and walked to the door.

"Now, for goodness' sake!" Alice cried. "Don't go making tragedy out of my offering you a little practical

"I'm not," Mrs. Adams gulped, halting. "I'm justjust going to dust the downstairs, Alice." And with her

face still averted, she went out into the little hallway, closing the door behind her. A moment later she could

be heard descending the stairs, the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an effect of resignation.

Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, "Oh, murder!" turned to cheerier matters. She put on a little

applegreen turban with a dim gold band round it, and then, having shrouded the turban in a white veil,

which she kept pushed up above her forehead, she got herself into a tan coat of soft cloth fashioned with

rakish severity. After that, having studied herself gravely in a long glass, she took from one of the drawers of

her dressing table a black leather cardcase cornered in silver filigree, but found it empty.

She opened another drawer wherein were two white pasteboard boxes of cards, the one set showing simply

"Miss Adams," the other engraved in Gothic characters, "Miss Alys Tuttle Adams." The latter belonged to

Alice's "Alys" periodmost girls go through it; and Alice must have felt that she had graduated, for, after

frowning thoughtfully at the exhibit this morning, she took the box with its contents, and let the white shower

fall from her fingers into the wastebasket beside her small desk. She replenished the cardcase from the

"Miss Adams" box; then, having found a pair of fresh white gloves, she tucked an ivorytopped Malacca

She went down the stairs, buttoning her gloves and still wearing the frown with which she had put "Alys"

finally out of her life. She descended slowly, and paused on the lowest step, looking about her with an

expression that needed but a slight deepening to betoken bitterness. Its connection with her dropping "Alys"

The small frame house, about fifteen years old, was already inclining to become a new Colonial relic. The

Adamses had built it, moving into it from the "Queen Anne" house they had rented until they took this step in

fashion. But fifteen years is a long time to stand still in the midland country, even for a house, and this one

was lightly made, though the Adamses had not realized how flimsily until they had lived in it for some time.

"Solid, compact, and convenient" were the instructions to the architect, and he had made it compact

successfully. Alice, pausing at the foot of the stairway, was at the same time fairly in the "livingroom," for

the only separation between the "living room" and the hall was a demarcation suggested to willing

imaginations by a pair of wooden columns painted white. These columns, pine under the paint, were bruised

and chipped at the base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a split; the "hardwood" floor

had become uneven; and in a corner the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wallpaper had

The furniture was in great part an accumulation begun with the wedding gifts; though some of it was older,

two large patent rockingchairs and a footstool having belonged to Mrs. Adams's mother in the days of hard

brown plush and veneer. For decoration there were pictures and vases. Mrs. Adams had always been fond of

vases, she said, and every year her husband's Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or

anotherwhatever the clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or fourteen dollars. The pictures were

some of them etchings framed in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners grouped against a wharf; and Alice

could remember how, in her childhood, her father sometimes pointed out the watery reflections in this last as

very fine. But it was a long time since he had shown interest in such things"or in anything much," as she

Other pictures were two watercolours in baroque frames; one being the Amalfi monk on a pergola wall,

while the second was a yardwide display of iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at fourteen, as a birthday

gift to her mother. Alice's glance paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed more approval of an

enormous photograph of the Colosseum. This she thought of as "the only good thing in the room"; it

possessed and bestowed distinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won her struggle to get it hung in

its conspicuous place of honour over the mantelpiece. Formerly that place had been held for years by a

steelengraving, an accurate representation of the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls. It was almost as large

as its successor, the "Colosseum," and it had been presented to Mr. Adams by colleagues in his department at

Lamb and Company's. Adams had shown some feeling when Alice began to urge its removal to obscurity in

the "upstairs hall"; he even resisted for several days after she had the "Colosseum" charged to him, framed in

oak, and sent to the house. She cheered him up, of course, when he gave way; and her heart never misgave

her that there might be a doubt which of the two pictures was the more dismaying.

Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rockingchairs and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over

the new chintzcovered easy chair and the gray velure sofaover everything everywhere, was the familiar

coating of smoke grime. It had worked into every fibre of the lace curtains, dingying them to an unpleasant

gray; it lay on the window sills and it dimmed the glass panes; it covered the walls, covered the ceiling, and

was smeared darker and thicker in all corners. Yet here was no fault of housewifery; the curse could not be

lifted, as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork proved. The grime was perpetually

This particular ugliness was small part of Alice's discontent, for though the coating grew a little deeper each

year she was used to it. Moreover, she knew that she was not likely to find anything better in a thousand

miles, so long as she kept to cities, and that none of her friends, however opulent, had any advantage of her

here. Indeed, throughout all the great softcoal country, people who consider themselves comparatively poor

may find this consolation: cleanliness has been added to the virtues and beatitudes that money can not buy.

Alice brightened a little as she went forward to the front door, and she brightened more when the spring

breeze met her there. Then all depression left her as she walked down the short brick path to the sidewalk,

looked up and down the street, and saw how bravely the maple shadetrees, in spite of the black powder they

She turned north, treading the new little shadows on the pavement briskly, and, having finished buttoning her

gloves, swung down her Malacca stick from under her arm to let it tap a more leisurely accompaniment to her

quick, short step. She had to step quickly if she was to get anywhere; for the closeness of her skirt, in spite of

its little length, permitted no natural stride; but she was pleased to be impeded, these brevities forming part of

Other pedestrians found them not without charm, though approval may have been lacking here and there, and

at the first crossing Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury, had she allowed herself to

be so sensitive. An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a

globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frostbitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was

uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed roused to bitter life as they rose from

the curved high heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little skirt, and thence with startled ferocity to the

Malacca cane, which plainly appeared to her as a decoration not more astounding than it was insulting.

Perceiving that the girl was bowing to her, the globular lady hurriedly made shift to alter her injurious

expression. "Good morning, Mrs. Dowling," Alice said, gravely. Mrs. Dowling returned the salutation with a

smile as convincingly benevolent as the ghastly smile upon a Santa Claus face; and then, while Alice passed

The sound was eloquently audible, though Mrs. Dowling remained unaware that in this or any manner

whatever she had shed a light upon her thoughts; for it was her lifelong innocent conviction that other people

saw her only as she wished to be seen, and heard from her only what she intended to be heard. At home it was

Alice looked serious for a few moments after the little encounter, then found some consolation in the

behaviour of a gentleman of forty or so who was coming toward her. Like Mrs. Dowling, he had begun to

show consciousness of Alice's approach while she was yet afar off; but his tokens were of a kind pleasanter to

her. He was like Mrs. Dowling again, however, in his conception that Alice would not realize the significance

of what he did. He passed his hand over his neckscarf to see that it lay neatly to his collar, smoothed a lapel

of his coat, and adjusted his hat, seeming to be preoccupied the while with problems that kept his eyes to the

pavement; then, as he came within a few feet of her, he looked up, as in a surprised recognition almost

dramatic, smiled winningly, lifted his hat decisively, and carried it to the full arm's length.

Alice's response was all he could have asked. The cane in her right hand stopped short in its swing, while her

left hand moved in a pretty gesture as if an impulse carried it toward the heart; and she smiled, with her under

lip caught suddenly between her teeth. Months ago she had seen an actress use this smile in a play, and it

came perfectly to Alice now, without conscious direction, it had been so well acquired; but the pretty hand's

little impulse toward the heart was an original bit all her own, on the spur of the moment.

The gentleman went on, passing from her forward vision as he replaced his hat. Of himself he was nothing to

Alice, except for the gracious circumstance that he had shown strong consciousness of a pretty girl. He was

middleaged, substantial, a family man, securely married; and Alice had with him one of those long

acquaintances that never become emphasized by so much as five minutes of talk; yet for this inconsequent

meeting she had enacted a little part like a fragment in a pantomime of Spanish wooing.

It was not for himnot even to impress him, except as a messenger. Alice was herself almost unaware of her

thought, which was one of the running thousands of her thoughts that took no deliberate form in words.

Nevertheless, she had it, and it was the impulse of all her pretty bits of pantomime when she met other

acquaintances who made their appreciation visible, as this substantial gentleman did. In Alice's unworded

thought, he was to be thus encouraged as in some measure a champion to speak well of her to the world; but

more than this: he was to tell some magnificent unknown bachelor how wonderful, how mysterious, she was.

She hastened on gravely, a little stirred reciprocally with the supposed stirrings in the breast of that shadowy

ducal mate, who must be somewhere "waiting," or perhaps already seeking her; for she more often thought of

herself as "waiting" while he sought her; and sometimes this view of things became so definite that it shaped

into a murmur on her lips. "Waiting. Just waiting." And she might add, "For him!" Then, being twentytwo,

she was apt to conclude the mystic interview by laughing at herself, though not without a continued

She came to a group of small coloured children playing waywardly in a puddle at the mouth of a muddy

alley; and at sight of her they gave over their pastime in order to stare. She smiled brilliantly upon them, but

they were too struck with wonder to comprehend that the manifestation was friendly; and as Alice picked her

way in a little detour to keep from the mud, she heard one of them say, "Lady got cane! Jeez'!"

She knew that many coloured children use impieties familiarly, and she was not startled. She was disturbed,

however, by an unfavourable hint in the speaker's tone. He was six, probably, but the sting of a criticism is

not necessarily allayed by knowledge of its ignoble source, and Alice had already begun to feel a slight

uneasiness about her cane. Mrs. Dowling's stare had been strikingly projected at it; other women more than

merely glanced, their brows and lips contracting impulsively; and Alice was aware that one or two of them

She had seen in several magazines pictures of ladies with canes, and on that account she had bought this one,

never questioning that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. On the contrary, these

staring women obviously failed to realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric outburst, but

the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks

before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a ready colour of her own, which now mounted

Then a splendidly shining closed black automobile, with windows of polished glass, came silently down the

street toward her. Within it, as in a luxurious little apartment, three comely ladies in mourning sat and

gossiped; but when they saw Alice they clutched one another. They instantly recovered, bowing to her

solemnly as they were borne by, yet were not gone from her sight so swiftly but the edge of her side glance

caught a flash of teeth in mouths suddenly opened, and the dark glisten of black gloves again clutching to

The colour that outdid the rouge on Alice's cheek extended its area and grew warmer as she realized how all

too cordial had been her nod and smile to these humorous ladies. But in their identity lay a significance

causing her a sharper smart, for they were of the family of that Lamb, chief of Lamb and Company, who had

"And know his salary! They'd be SURE to find out about that!" was her thought, coupled with another bitter

one to the effect that they had probably made instantaneous financial estimates of what she wore though

She tucked it under her arm, not swinging it again; and her breath became quick and irregular as emotion

beset her. She had been enjoying her walk, but within the space of the few blocks she had gone since she met

the substantial gentleman, she found that more than the walk was spoiled: suddenly her life seemed to be

spoiled, too; though she did not view the ruin with complaisance. These Lamb women thought her and her

cane ridiculous, did they? she said to herself. That was their parvenu blood: to think because a girl's father

worked for their grandfather she had no right to be rather striking in style, especially when the striking WAS

her style. Probably all the other girls and women would agree with them and would laugh at her when they

got together, and, what might be fatal, would try to make all the men think her a silly pretender. Men were

just like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as shepherds and pen them in a fold. "To

keep out outsiders," Alice thought. "And make 'em believe I AM an outsider. What's the use of living?"

All seemed lost when a trim young man appeared, striding out of a crossstreet not far before her, and,

turning at the corner, came toward her. Visibly, he slackened his gait to lengthen the time of his approach,

and, as he was a stranger to her, no motive could be ascribed to him other than a wish to have a longer time to

She lifted a pretty hand to a pin at her throat, bit her lipnot with the smile, but mysteriouslyand at the

last instant before her shadow touched the stranger, let her eyes gravely meet his. A moment later, having

arrived before the house which was her destination, she halted at the entrance to a driveway leading through

fine lawns to the intentionally important mansion. It was a pleasant and impressive place to be seen entering,

but Alice did not enter at once. She paused, examining a tiny bit of mortar which the masons had forgotten to

scrape from a brick in one of the massive gateposts. She frowned at this tiny defacement, and with an air of

annoyance scraped it away, using the ferrule of her cane an act of fastidious proprietorship. If any one had

Alice did not turn to see whether anything of the sort happened or not, but she may have surmised that it did.

At all events, it was with an invigorated step that she left the gateway behind her and went cheerfully up the

Adams had a restless morning, and toward noon he asked Miss Perry to call his daughter; he wished to say

"I thought I heard her leaving the house a couple of hours agomaybe longer," the nurse told him. "I'll go

see." And she returned from the brief errand, her impression confirmed by information from Mrs. Adams.

"Yes. She went up to Miss Mildred Palmer's to see what she's going to wear tonight."

Adams looked at Miss Perry wearily, but remained passive, making no inquiries; for he was long accustomed

to what seemed to him a kind of jargon among ladies, which became the more incomprehensible when they

tried to explain it. A man's best course, he had found, was just to let it go as so much sound. His sorrowful

eyes followed the nurse as she went back to her rockingchair by the window, and her placidity showed him

that there was no mystery for her in the fact that Alice walked two miles to ask so simple a question when

there was a telephone in the house. Obviously Miss Perry also comprehended why Alice thought it important

to know what Mildred meant to wear. Adams understood why Alice should be concerned with what she

herself wore "to look neat and tidy and at her best, why, of course she'd want to," he thought but he

realized that it was forever beyond him to understand why the clothing of other people had long since become

Her excursion this morning was no novelty; she was continually going to see what Mildred meant to wear, or

what some other girl meant to wear; and when Alice came home from wherever other girls or women had

been gathered, she always hurried to her mother with earnest descriptions of the clothing she had seen. At

such times, if Adams was present, he might recognize "organdie," or "taffeta," or "chiffon," as words defining

certain textiles, but the rest was too technical for him, and he was like a dismal boy at a sermon, just waiting

for it to get itself finished. Not the least of the mystery was his wife's interest: she was almost indifferent

about her own clothes, and when she consulted Alice about them spoke hurriedly and with an air of apology;

but when Alice described other people's clothes, Mrs. Adams listened as eagerly as the daughter talked.

"There they go!" he muttered today, a moment after he heard the front door closing, a sound recognizable

throughout most of the thinly built house. Alice had just returned, and Mrs. Adams called to her from the

"She was sort of snippy about it," Alice returned, ascending the stairs. "She gets that way sometimes, and

pretended she hadn't made up her mind, but I'm pretty sure it'll be the maize Georgette with Malines

"Didn't you say she wore that at the Pattersons'?" Mrs. Adams inquired, as Alice arrived at the top of the

"Certainly not," Alice interrupted, rather petulantly. "She's never worn it but once, and of course she wouldn't

Miss Perry opened the door of Adams's room and stepped out. "Your father wants to know if you'll come and

"Poor old thing! Of course!" Alice exclaimed, and went quickly into the room, Miss Perry remaining outside.

"What's the matter, papa? Getting awful sick of lying on his tired old back, I expect."

"I've had kind of a poor morning," Adams said, as she patted his hand comfortingly. "I been thinking"

"Didn't I tell you not to?" she cried, gaily. "Of course you'll have poor times when you go and do just exactly

He smiled ruefully, closing his eyes; was silent for a moment, then asked her to sit beside the bed. "I been

"Well, it's nothingmuch," he said, with something deprecatory in his tone, as if he felt vague impulses

toward both humour and apology. "I just thought maybe I ought to've said more to you some time or other

"Now, papa!" She leaned forward in the chair she had taken, and pretended to slap his hand crossly. "Isn't that

exactly what I said you couldn't think one single think about till you get ALL well?"

"Well" he said, and went on slowly, not looking at her, but at the ceiling. "I just thought maybe it

wouldn't been any harm if some time or other I told you something about the way they sort of depend on me

"Why don't they show it, then?" she asked, quickly. "That's just what mama and I have been feeling so much;

"Why, yes, they do," he said. "Yes, they do. They began h'isting my salary the second year I went in there,

and they've h'isted it a little every two years all the time I've worked for 'em. I've been head of the sundries

department for seven years now, and I could hardly have more authority in that department unless I was a

"Well, why don't they make you a member of the firm? That's what they ought to've done! Yes, and long

Adams laughed, but sighed with more heartiness than he had laughed. "They call me their 'oldest standby'

down there." He laughed again, apologetically, as if to excuse himself for taking a little pride in this title.

"Yes, sir; they say I'm their 'oldest standby'; and I guess they know they can count on my department's

turning in as good a report as they look for, at the end of every month; but they don't have to take a man into

"So they do; but of course not so's they couldn't get along without me." He paused, reflecting. "I don't just

seem to know how to put itI mean how to put what I started out to say. I kind of wanted to tell youwell,

it seems funny to me, these last few years, the way your mother's taken to feeling about it. I'd like to see a

better established wholesale drug business than Lamb and Company this side the AlleghaniesI don't say

bigger, I say better establishedand it's kind of funny for a man that's been with a business like that as long

as I have to hear it called a 'hole.' It's kind of funny when you think, yourself, you've done pretty fairly well in

a business like that, and the men at the head of it seem to think so, too, and put your salary just about as high

as anybody could consider customary well, what I mean, Alice, it's kind of funny to have your mother

His voice had become tremulous in spite of him; and this sign of weakness and emotion had sufficient effect

upon Alice. She bent over him suddenly, with her arm about him and her cheek against his. "Poor papa!" she

"No, no," he said. "I didn't mean anything to trouble you. I just thought" He hesitated. "I just

wonderedI thought maybe it wouldn't be any harm if I said something about how things ARE down there. I

got to thinking maybe you didn't understand it's a pretty good place. They're fine people to work for; and

they've always seemed to think something of me;the way they took Walter on, for instance, soon as I asked

'em, last year. Don't you think that looked a good deal as if they thought something of me, Alice?"

"And the work's right pleasant," he went on. "Mighty nice boys in our department, Alice. Well, they are in all

the departments, for that matter. We have a good deal of fun down there some days."

She lifted her head. "More than you do at home 'some days,' I expect, papa!" she said.

She looked at him through winking eyelashes. "I'm sorry I called it a 'hole,' papa."

She shook her head, then kissed him. "I'm going to talk to her," she said, and rose decisively.

But at this, her father's troubled voice became quickly louder: "You better let her alone. I just wanted to have

"Now, papa!" Alice spoke cheerfully again, and smiled upon him. "I want you to quit worrying! Everything's

going to be all right and nobody's going to bother you any more about anything. You'll see!"

She carried her smile out into the hall, but after she had closed the door her face was all pity; and her mother,

"Wait a minute, mama." Alice found a handkerchief, used it for eyes and suffused nose, gulped, then

suddenly and desolately sat upon the bed. "Poor, poor, POOR papa!" she whispered.

"Why?" Mrs. Adams inquired, mildly. "What's the matter with him? Sometimes you act as if he weren't

"Papa? No, indeed! What I mean is, maybe we're both a little selfish to try to make him go out and hunt

"I don't mean by SAYING things," Mrs. Adams explained, impatiently. "There are more ways than that of

hurting people. When a man sticks to a salary that doesn't provide for his family, isn't that hurting them?"

"Oh, it 'provides' for us well enough, mama. We have what we needif I weren't so extravagant. Oh, _I_

But at this admission her mother cried out sharply. "'Extravagant!' You haven't one tenth of what the other

girls you go with have. And you CAN'T have what you ought to as long as he doesn't get out of that horrible

"You don't?" Mrs. Adams came and stood before her. "Listen, Alice: your father's asleep; that's his trouble,

and he's got to be waked up. He doesn't know that things have changed. When you and Walter were little

children we did have enough at least it seemed to be about as much as most of the people we knew. But

the town isn't what it was in those days, and times aren't what they were then, and these fearful PRICES aren't

the old prices. Everything else but your father has changed, and all the time he's stood still. He doesn't know

it; he thinks because they've given him a hundred dollars more every two years he's quite a prosperous man!

And he thinks that because his children cost him more than he and I cost our parents he gives them

"But Walter" Alice faltered. "Walter doesn't cost him anything at all any more." And she concluded, in

"Why shouldn't it be?" her mother cried. "You're youngyou're just at the time when your life should be

Alice's lip quivered; she was not unsusceptible to such an appeal, but she contrived the semblance of a

protest. "I don't have such a bad time not a good DEAL of the time, anyhow. I've got a good MANY of the

"You have?" Mrs. Adams was piteously satirical. "I suppose you've got a limousine to go to that dance

tonight? I suppose you've only got to call a florist and tell him to send you some orchids? I suppose

But Alice interrupted this list. Apparently in a single instant all emotion left her, and she became

businesslike, as one in the midst of trifles reminded of really serious matters. She got up from the bed and

went to the door of the closet where she kept her dresses. "Oh, see here," she said, briskly. "I've decided to

wear my white organdie if you could put in a new lining for me. I'm afraid it'll take you nearly all afternoon."

She brought forth the dress, displayed it upon the bed, and Mrs. Adams examined it attentively.

"I don't see why not," Mrs. Adams answered, passing a thoughtful hand over the fabric. "It oughtn't to take

"It's a shame to have you sit at the machine that long," Alice said, absently, adding, "And I'm sure we ought

Mrs. Adams continued her thoughtful examination of the dress. "Did you buy the chiffon and ribbon, Alice?"

"Let's both agree that we'll NEVER say another single word to him about it," said Alice. "It'll be a great deal

With this, having more immediately practical questions before them, they dropped the subject, to bend their

entire attention upon the dress; and when the lunchgong sounded downstairs Alice was still sketching

"I suppose we'd better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said, absently. "She's at the gong again." In a minute,

mama. Now about the sleeves" And she went on with her planning. Unfortunately the gong was

inexpressive of the mood of the person who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon a string;

they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically

pleasant. It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass "dinnerbell" in use throughout her

childhood; and neither she nor the others of her family realized that the substitution of sweeter sounds had

made the life of that household more difficult. In spite of dismaying increases in wages, the Adamses still

strove to keep a cook; and, as they were unable to pay the higher rates demanded by a good one, what they

usually had was a whimsical coloured woman of nomadic impulses. In the hands of such a person the

oldfashioned "dinnerbell" was satisfying; life could instantly be made intolerable for any one dawdling on

his way to a meal; the bell was capable of every desirable profanity and left nothing bottled up in the breast of

the ringer. But the chamoiscovered stick might whack upon Alice's little Chinese bowls for a considerable

length of time and produce no great effect of urgency upon a hearer, nor any other effect, except fury in the

cook. The ironical impossibility of expressing indignation otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony

proved exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, so that explosive resignations, never rare, were

Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be only another manifestation of the inexplicable new

difficulties that beset all housekeeping. You paid a cook double what you had paid one a few years before;

and the cook knew half as much of cookery, and had no gratitude. The more you gave these people, it

seemed, the worse they behaveda condition not to be remedied by simply giving them less, because you

couldn't even get the worst unless you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams remained

fitfully an optimist in the matter. Brought up by her mother to speak of a female cook as "the girl," she had

been instructed by Alice to drop that definition in favour of one not an improvement in accuracy: "the maid."

Almost always, during the first day or so after every cook came, Mrs. Adams would say, at intervals, with an

air of triumph: "I believeof course it's a little soon to be surebut I do really believe this new maid is the

treasure we've been looking for so long!" Much in the same way that Alice dreamed of a mysterious perfect

mate for whom she "waited," her mother had a fairy theory that hidden somewhere in the universe there was

the treasure, the perfect "maid," who would come and cook in the Adamses' kitchen, not four days or four

The present incumbent was not she. Alice, profoundly interested herself, kept her mother likewise so

preoccupied with the dress that they were but vaguely conscious of the gong's soft warnings, though these

were repeated and protracted unusually. Finally the sound of a hearty voice, independent and enraged,

"I couldn't make her listen to reason," she said. "She rang the gong four or five times and got to talking to

herself; and then she went up to her room and packed her bag. I told her she had no business to go out the

Mrs. Adams took the news philosophically. "I thought she had something like that in her eye when I paid her

this morning, and I'm not surprised. Well, we won't let Mr. Adams know anything's the matter till I get a new

They lunched upon what the late incumbent had left chilling on the table, and then Mrs. Adams prepared to

wash the dishes; she would "have them done in a jiffy," she said, cheerfully. But it was Alice who washed the

"I DON'T like to have you do that, Alice," her mother protested, following her into the kitchen. "It roughens

"I know, mama." Alice looked troubled, but shook her head. "It can't be helped this time; you'll need every

Mrs. Adams went away lamenting, while Alice, no expert, began to splash the plates and cups and saucers in

the warm water. After a while, as she worked, her eyes grew dreamy: she was making little gaycoloured

pictures of herself, unfounded prophecies of how she would look and what would happen to her that evening.

She saw herself, charming and demure, wearing a fluffy idealization of the dress her mother now

determinedly struggled with upstairs; she saw herself framed in a garlanded archway, the entrance to a

ballroom, and saw the people on the shining floor turning dramatically to look at her; then from all points a

rush of young men shouting for dances with her; and she constructed a superb stranger, tall, dark, masterfully

smiling, who swung her out of the clamouring group as the music began. She saw herself dancing with him,

saw the halftroubled smile she would give him; and she accurately smiled that smile as she rinsed the knives

These hopeful fragments of drama were not to be realized, she knew; but she played that they were true, and

went on creating them. In all of them she wore or carried flowersher mother's sorrow for her in this detail

but made it the more important and she saw herself glamorous with orchids; discarded these for an armful

of longstemmed, heavy roses; tossed them away for a great bouquet of white camellias; and so wandered

down a lengthening hothouse gallery of floral beauty, all costly and beyond her reach except in such a wistful

daydream. And upon her present whole horizon, though she searched it earnestly, she could discover no

Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear that night emerged definitely and became poignant; she

began to feel that it might be particularly important to have them. "This might be the night!" She was still at

the age to dream that the night of any dance may be the vital point in destiny. No matter how commonplace

or disappointing other dance nights have been this one may bring the great meeting. The unknown magnifico

Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in which this being appearedreveries often so transitory that

they developed and passed in a few seconds. And in some of them the being was not wholly a stranger; there

were moments when he seemed to be composed of recognizable fragments of young men she knewa smile

she had liked, from one; the figure of another, the hair of anotherand sometimes she thought he might be

concealed, so to say, within the person of an actual acquaintance, someone she had never suspected of being

the right seeker for her, someone who had never suspected that it was she who "waited" for him. Anything

might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of the head, a singular wordperhaps some flowers upon her

She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the operation by dropping a saucer upon the floor and dreamily

sweeping the fragments under the stove. She sighed and replaced the broom near a window, letting her glance

wander over the small yard outside. The grass, repulsively besooted to the colour of coalsmoke all winter,

had lately come to life again and now sparkled with green, in the midst of which a tiny shot of blue suddenly

fixed her absent eyes. They remained upon it for several moments, becoming less absent.

Alice ran upstairs, put on her hat, went outdoors and began to search out the violets. She found twentytwo, a

bright omensince the number was that of her yearsbut not enough violets. There were no more; she had

She looked dubiously at the little bunch in her hand, glanced at the lawn next door, which offered no

favourable prospect; then went thoughtfully into the house, left her twentytwo violets in a bowl of water,

and came quickly out again, her brow marked with a frown of decision. She went to a trolleyline and took a

Here she resumed her search, but it was not an easily rewarded one, and for an hour after her arrival she

found no violets. She walked conscientiously over the whole stretch of meadow, her eyes roving

discontentedly; there was never a blue dot in the groomed expanse; but at last, as she came near the borders

of an old grove of trees, left untouched by the municipal landscapers, the little flowers appeared, and she

began to gather them. She picked them carefully, loosening the earth round each tiny plant, so as to bring the

roots up with it, that it might live the longer; and she had brought a napkin, which she drenched at a hydrant,

The turf was too damp for her to kneel; she worked patiently, stooping from the waist; and when she got

home in a drizzle of rain at five o'clock her knees were tremulous with strain, her back ached, and she was

tired all over, but she had three hundred violets. Her mother moaned when Alice showed them to her, fragrant

"Oh, you POOR child! To think of your having to: work so hard to get things that other girls only need; lift

"Never mind," said Alice, huskily. "I've got 'em and I AM going to have a good time tonight!"

"You've just got to!" Mrs. Adams agreed, intensely sympathetic. "The Lord knows you deserve to, after

picking all these violets, poor thing, and He wouldn't be mean enough to keep you from it. I may have to get

dinner before I finish the dress, but I can get it done in a few minutes afterward, and it's going to look right

"I wonder" Alice began, paused, then went on, fragmentarily: "I supposewell, I wonderdo you

"Don't worry," Mrs. Adams reassured her. "He'll be a little cross, but he won't be stubborn; just let me talk to

These references to Walter concerned some necessary manoeuvres which took place at dinner, and were

conducted by the mother, Alice having accepted her advice to sit in silence. Mrs. Adams began by laughing

cheerfully. "I wonder how much longer it took me to cook this dinner than it does Walter to eat it?" she said.

He smiled in benevolent pity. "YOU know, do you? If you made any coffeedon't bother if you didn't. Get

some downtown." He seemed about to rise and depart; whereupon Alice, biting her lip, sent a

But Mrs. Adams seemed not at all disturbed; and laughed again. "Why, what nonsense, Walter! I'll bring your

"Doe' want 'ny canned peaches," said the frank Walter, moving back his chair. "G'night."

"Why, you haven't forgotten it's TONIGHT, have you?" Mrs. Adams cried. "What a boy!"

"I told you a week ago I wasn't going to that ole dance," he returned, frowning. "You heard me."

"Walter!" she exclaimed. "Of COURSE you're going. I got your clothes all out this afternoon, and brushed

"See here!" Walter said, decisively. "Don't get any wrong ideas in your head. I'm just as liable to go up to that

Walter was beginning to be seriously annoyed. "Don't 'Walter' me! I'm no s'ciety snake. I wouldn't jazz with

At this Mrs. Adams abandoned her air of amusement, looked hurt, and glanced at the demure Miss Perry

across the table. "I'm afraid Miss Perry won't think you have very good manners, Walter."

"You're right she won't," he agreed, grimly. "Not if I haf to hear any more about me goin' to"

But his mother interrupted him with some asperity: "It seems very strange that you always object to going

"YOUR friends!" he said, and, rising from his chair, gave utterance to an ironical laugh strictly monosyllabic.

"Your friends!" he repeated, going to the door. "Oh, yes! Certainly! GoodNIGHT!"

And looking back over his shoulder to offer a final brief view of his derisive face, he took himself out of the

"I'll stop him!" her mother responded, sharply; and hurried after the truant, catching him at the front door

"Told you had a date downtown," he said, gruffly, and would have opened the door, but she caught his arm

"Walter, please come back and finish your dinner. When I take all the trouble to cook it for you, I think you

"Now, now!" he said. "That isn't what you're up to. You don't want to make me eat; you want to make me

"Well, you MUST listen!" She retained her grasp upon his arm, and made it tighter. "Walter, please!" she

entreated, her voice becoming tremulous. "PLEASE don't make me so much trouble!"

He drew back from her as far as her hold upon him permitted, and looked at her sharply. "Look here!" he

said. "I get you, all right! What's the matter of Alice GOIN' to that party by herself?"

"It makes things too MEAN for her, Walter. All the other girls have somebody to depend on after they get

"Well, why doesn't she have somebody?" he asked, testily. "Somebody besides ME, I mean! Why hasn't

somebody asked her to go? She ought to be THAT popular, anyhow, I sh'd thinkshe TRIES enough!"

"I don't understand how you can be so hard," his mother wailed, huskily. "You know why they don't run after

her the way they do the other girls she goes with, Walter. It's because we're poor, and she hasn't got any

"You WILL go with her tonight, Walter?" his mother pleaded, not stopping to enlighten him. "You don't

understand how hard things are for her and how brave she is about them, or you COULDN'T be so selfish!

It'd be more than I can bear to see her disappointed tonight! She went clear out to Belleview Park this

Walter's heart was not iron, and the episode of the violets may have reached it. "Oh, BLUB!" he said, and

His mother beamed with delight. "THAT'S a good boy, darling! You'll never be sorry you"

"No, I couldn't; I'm not goin' to throw away my good money like that, and you can't tell what time o' night it'll

She shook her head dolefully. "I got some from him this morning, and I can't bother him for any more; it

"I guess he couldn't help that," Walter observed. "We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well,

"Well, it's only a drizzle and we can take a streetcar to within a block of the house."

"Well, darn the luck, all right!" he consented, explosively. "I'll get her something to ride in. It means

"Why, Walter!" Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. "Do you know how to get a cab for that little? How

"Tain't a cab," Walter informed her crossly. "It's a tin Lizzie, but you don't haf' to tell her what it is till I get

Alice was busy with herself for two hours after dinner; but a little before nine o'clock she stood in front of her

long mirror, completed, brighteyed and solemn. Her hair, exquisitely arranged, gave all she asked of it; what

artificialities in colour she had used upon her face were only bits of emphasis that made her prettiness the

more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of

loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of violets, each with the stems wrapped in tinfoil

shrouded by a bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and the other she carried in her

Miss Perry, called in by a rapturous mother for the free treat of a look at this radiance, insisted that Alice was

a vision. "Purely and simply a vision!" she said, meaning that no other definition whatever would satisfy her.

"I never saw anybody look a vision if she don't look one tonight," the admiring nurse declared. "Her papa'll

think the same I do about it. You see if he doesn't say she's purely and simply a vision."

Adams did not fulfil the prediction quite literally when Alice paid a brief visit to his room to "show " him and

"You look mighty fineMIGHTY fine!" And he waggled a bony finger at her two bouquets. "Why, Alice,

"Never you mind!" she laughed, archly brushing his nose with the violets in her hand. "He treats me pretty

"Must like to throw his money around! These violets smell mighty sweet, and they ought to, if they're going

"I mean to!" she cried; and she repeated this gaily, but with an emphasis expressing sharp determination as

"What was he talking about?" her mother inquired, smoothing the rather worn and old evening wrap she had

Alice went back to her triple mirror for the last time, then stood before the long one. "That I mean to have a

good time tonight," she said; and as she turned from her reflection to the wrap Mrs. Adams held up for her,

"You'll just be a queen tonight," her mother whispered in fond emotion. "You mustn't doubt yourself."

"Well, there's one thing," said Alice. "I think I do look nice enough to get along without having to dance with

that Frank Dowling! All I ask is for it to happen just once; and if he comes near me tonight I'm going to

treat him the way the other girls do. Do you suppose Walter's got the taxi out in front?"

"Hehe's waiting down in the hall," Mrs. Adams answered, nervously; and she held up another garment to

"You will to get in and out, and you needn't take it into the Palmers'. You can leave it in thein the It's

"Oh, well," Alice consented; and a few minutes later, as with Walter's assistance she climbed into the vehicle

"Never mind; it'll keep you dry enough with the top up," he returned, taking his seat beside her. Then for a

time, as they went rather jerkily up the street, she was silent; but finally she repeated her question: "What IS

"It's a secondhand tin Lizzie," said Walter. "D'you know what that means? It means a flivver."

"Why, no, dear," she said, placatively. "Is it yours, Walter? Have you bought it?"

"Me?" he laughed. "_I_ couldn't buy a used wheelbarrow. I rent this sometimes when I'm goin' out among

"I guess it is! The feller owes me some money, and this is the only way I'd ever get it off him."

"Not exactly!" Walter uttered husky sounds of amusement. "You'll be just as happy, I guess, if you don't

His tone misgave her; and she said truthfully that she was content not to know who owned the car. "I joke

sometimes about how you keep things to yourself," she added, "but I really never do pry in your affairs,

"Yes, you're mighty nice and cooing when you got me where you want me," he jeered. "Well, _I_ just as soon

But Walter meant to tell her. "Why, there's nothin' exactly CRIMINAL about it," he said. "It belongs to old J.

"Sure I do! I can get it any night when the coon isn't goin' to use it himself. He's drivin' their limousine

tonightthat little Henrietta Lamb's goin' to the party, no matter if her father HAS only been dead less'n a

She did not speak, and he began to be remorseful for having imparted so much information, though his way

of expressing regret was his own. "Well, you WILL make the folks make me take you to parties!" he said. "I

Then as she made no response, "Oh, the car's CLEAN enough," he said. "This coon, he's as particular as any

white man; you needn't worry about that." And as she still said nothing, he added gruffly, "I'd of had a better

"I don't understand" she said in a low voice "I don't understand how you know such people."

"Oh, look here, now!" he protested, loudly. "Don't you know this is a democratic country?"

"The trouble with you," he retorted, "you don't know there's anybody in town except just this silkshirt

crowd." He paused, seeming to await a refutation; but as none came, he expressed himself definitely: "They

They were coming near their destination, and the glow of the big, brightly lighted house was seen before

them in the wet night. Other cars, not like theirs, were approaching this center of brilliance; long triangles of

light near the ground swept through the fine drizzle; small red taillights gleamed again from the moist

pavement of the street; and, through the myriads of little glistening leaves along the curving driveway,

glimpses were caught of lively colours moving in a white glare as the limousines released their occupants

Alice clutched Walter's arm in a panic; they were just at the driveway entrance. "Walter, we mustn't go in

The little car was between the entrance posts; but Walter backed it out, avoiding a collision with an

impressive machine which swerved away from them and passed on toward the portecochere, showing a

man's face grinning at the window as it went by. "Flivver runabout got the wrong number!" he said.

"No; he couldn't tell who we were under this top," Walter assured her as he brought the little car to a

standstill beside the curbstone, out in the street. "What's it matter if he did, the big fish?"

"Well, then, what's the matter our drivin' on up to the portecochere? There's room for me to park just the

"_I_ don't care where we leave it," he said. "Sit still till I lock her, so none o' these millionaires around here'll

run off with her." He got out with a padlock and chain; and, having put these in place, offered Alice his hand.

"Wait," she said, and, divesting herself of the raincoat, handed it to Walter. "Please leave this with your

things in the men's dressingroom, as if it were an extra one of your own, Walter."

As they reached the portecochere she began to laugh airily, and spoke to the impassive man in livery who

stood there. "Joke on us!" she said, hurrying by him toward the door of the house. "Our car broke down

The man remained impassive, though he responded with a faint gleam as Walter, looking back at him,

produced for his benefit a cynical distortion of countenance which offered little confirmation of Alice's

account of things. Then the door was swiftly opened to the brother and sister; and they came into a

marblefloored hall, where a dozen sleeked young men lounged, smoked cigarettes and fastened their gloves,

as they waited for their ladies. Alice nodded to one or another of these, and went quickly on, her face uplifted

"Listen here," he said. "I suppose you want me to dance the first dance with you"

"I'll be out before you're ready yourself," she promised him; and kept her word, she was so eager for her good

time to begin. When he came for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening upon three great rooms

which had been thrown open together, with the furniture removed and the broad floors waxed. At one end of

the corridor musicians sat in a green grove, and Walter, with some interest, turned toward these; but his sister,

"What's the matter now?" he asked. "That's Jazz Louie and his halfbreed bunchthree white and four

He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her to take him down the corridor toward a floral

bower where the hostess stood with her father and mother. Other couples and groups were moving in the

same direction, carrying with them a hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterings; and Alice, smiling all

the time, greeted people on every side of her eagerlya little more eagerly than most of them

respondedwhile Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said nothing, and yawned

audibly, the last resource of a person who finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and

was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him understand that he must abandon

Mildred was giving her hand to one and another of her guests as rapidly as she could, passing them on to her

father and mother, and at the same time resisting the efforts of three or four detached bachelors who besought

She was a large, fair girl, with a kindness of eye somewhat withheld by an expression of fastidiousness; at

first sight of her it was clear that she would never in her life do anything "incorrect," or wear anything

"incorrect." But her correctness was of the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or achieved; conduct

would never offer her a problem to be settled from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that

she was unconscious of them. And behind this perfection there was an even ampler perfection of what Mrs.

Adams called "background." The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and Mildred's father and mother were

part of it. They stood beside her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously and gently inclining their

handsome heads as they gave their hands to the guests; and even the youngest and most ebullient of these

When the opportunity came for Alice and Walter to pass within this precinct, Alice, going first, leaned

forward and whispered in Mildred's ear. "You DIDN'T wear the maize georgette! That's what I thought you

Others were crowding decorously forward, anxious to be done with ceremony and get to the dancing; and

Mildred did not prolong the intimacy of Alice's enthusiastic whispering. With a faint accession of colour and

a smile tending somewhat in the direction of rigidity, she carried Alice's hand immediately onward to Mrs.

Palmer's. Alice's own colour showed a little heightening as she accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was

that emotional tint in any wise decreased, a moment later, by an impression that Walter, in concluding the

brief exchange of courtesies between himself and the stately Mr. Palmer, had again reassured himself with a

But she did not speak of it to Walter; she preferred not to confirm the impression and to leave in her mind a

possible doubt that he had done it. He followed her out upon the waxed floor, said resignedly: "Well, come

Alice danced gracefully and well, but not so well as Walter. Of all the steps and runs, of all the whimsical

turns and twirlings, of all the rhythmic swayings and dips commanded that season by such blarings as were

the barbaric product, loud and wild, of the Jazz Louies and their halfbreed bunches, the thin and sallow

youth was a master. Upon his face could be seen contempt of the easy marvels he performed as he moved in

swift precision from one smooth agility to another; and if some toodainty or jealous cavalier complained

that to be so much a stylist in dancing was "not quite like a gentleman," at least Walter's style was what the

music called for. No other dancer in the room could be thought comparable to him. Alice told him so.

"It's wonderful!" she said. "And the mystery is, where you ever learned to DO it! You never went to

dancingschool, but there isn't a man in the room who can dance half so well. I don't see why, when you

He sounded his brief laugh, a jeering bark out of one side of the mouth, and swung her miraculously through

a closing space between two other couples. "You know a lot about what goes on, don't you? You prob'ly

think there's no other place to dance in this town except these frozenface joints."

"'Frozen face?' " she echoed, laughing. "Why, everybody's having a splendid time. Look at them."

"Oh, they holler loud enough," he said. "They do it to make each other think they're havin' a good time. You

"Yeuh!" said Walter. "They're dignified, 'specially when you tried to whisper to Mildred to show how IN

with her you were, and she moved you on that way. SHE'S a hot friend, isn't she!"

"Ole Palmer's a hearty, slap youontheback ole berry," Walter interrupted; adding in a casual tone, "All I'd

"Walter! By the way, you mustn't forget to ask Mildred for a dance before the evening is over."

"Me?" He produced the lopsided appearance of his laugh, but without making it vocal. "You watch me do

"Because, in the first place, you're supposed to, and, in the second place, she's my most intimate friend."

"Yeuh? Is she? I've heard you pull that 'most intimatefriend' stuff often enough about her. What's SHE

"Never mind. You really must ask her, Walter. I want you to; and I want you to ask several other girls

"Listen!" he said. "I'm just as liable to dance with any of these fairies as I am to buy a bucket o' rusty tacks

Forget it! Soon as I get rid of you I'm goin' back to that room where I left my hat and overcoat and smoke

"Well," she said, a little ruefully, as the frenzy of Jazz Louie and his halfbreeds was suddenly abated to

They stood near one of the wide doorways, remaining where they had stopped. Other couples, everywhere,

joined one another, forming vivacious clusters, but none of these groups adopted the brother and sister, nor

did any one appear to be hurrying in Alice's direction to ask her for the next dance. She looked about her, still

maintaining that jubilance of look and manner she felt so necessary for it is to the girls who are "having a

good time" that partners are attractedand, in order to lend greater colour to her impersonation of a lively

belle, she began to chatter loudly, bringing into play an accompaniment of frolicsome gesture. She brushed

Walter's nose saucily with the bunch of violets in her hand, tapped him on the shoulder, shook her pretty

forefinger in his face, flourished her arms, kept her shoulders moving, and laughed continuously as she

"You NAUGHTY old Walter!" she cried. "AREN'T you ashamed to be such a wonderful dancer and then

only dance with your own little sister! You could dance on the stage if you wanted to. Why, you could made

your FORTUNE that way! Why don't you? Wouldn't it be just lovely to have all the rows and rows of people

clapping their hands and shouting, 'Hurrah! Hurrah, for Walter Adams! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"Cut it out," he said. "You better be givin' some of these berries the eye so they'll ask you to dance."

She was not to be so easily checked, and laughed loudly, flourishing her violets in his face again. "You

WOULD like it; you know you would; you needn't pretend! Just think! A whole big audience shouting,

"The place'll be pulled if you get any noisier," he interrupted, not ungently. "Besides, I'm no muley cow."

"I can't eat dead violets," he explained. "So don't keep tryin' to make me do it."

This had the effect he desired, and subdued her; she abandoned her unsisterly coquetries, and looked

beamingly about her, but her smile was more mechanical than it had been at first.

At home she had seemed beautiful; but here, where the other girls competed, things were not as they had been

there, with only her mother and Miss Perry to give contrast. These crowds of other girls had all done their

best, also, to look beautiful, though not one of them had worked so hard for such a consummation as Alice

had. They did not need to; they did not need to get their mothers to make old dresses over; they did not need

At home her dress had seemed beautiful; but that was different, too, where there were dozens of brilliant

fabrics, fashioned in new wayssome of these new ways startling, which only made the wearers centers of

interest and shocked no one. And Alice remembered that she had heard a girl say, not long before, "Oh,

ORGANDIE! Nobody wears organdie for evening gowns except in midsummer." Alice had thought little of

this; but as she looked about her and saw no organdie except her own, she found greater difficulty in keeping

her smile as arch and spontaneous as she wished it. In fact, it was beginning to make her face ache a little.

Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily attended. She carried a great bouquet of violets laced with lilies

ofthevalley; and the violets were lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in cloth of gold, with silken

cords dependent, ending in long tassels. She and her convoy passed near the two young Adamses; and it

appeared that one of the convoy besought his hostess to permit "cutting in"; they were "doing it other places"

of late, he urged; but he was denied and told to console himself by holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his

third of the sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked dubiously at her own bouquet.

Suddenly she felt that the violets betrayed her; that any one who looked at them could see how rustic, how

innocent of any florist's craft they were "I can't eat dead violets," Walter said. The little wild flowers, dying

indeed in the warm air, were drooping in a forlorn mass; and it seemed to her that whoever noticed them

Walter was becoming restive. "Look here!" he said. "Can't you flag one o' these longtailed birds to take you

on for the next dance? You came to have a good time; why don't you get busy and have it? I want to get out

"You MUSTN'T leave me, Walter," she whispered, hastily. "Somebody'll come for me before long, but until

"Well, why not? Look at those ole dames in the corners. What's the matter your tyin' up with some o' them

In fact, that indomitable smile of hers was the more difficult to maintain because of these very elders to

whom Walter referred. They were mothers of girls among the dancers, and they were there to fend and

contrive for their offspring; to keep them in countenance through any trial; to lend them diplomacy in the

carrying out of all enterprises; to be "background" for them; and in these essentially biological functionings

to imitate their own matings and renew the excitement of their nuptial periods. Older men, husbands of these

ladies and fathers of eligible girls, were also to be seen, most of them with Mr. Palmer in a billiardroom

across the corridor. Mr. and Mrs. Adams had not been invited. "Of course papa and mama just barely know

Mildred Palmer," Alice thought, "and most of the other girls' fathers and mothers are old friends of Mr. and

Mrs. Palmer, but I do think she might have ASKED papa and mama, anywayshe needn't have been afraid

just to ask them; she knew they couldn't come." And her smiling lip twitched a little threateningly, as she

concluded the silent monologue. "I suppose she thinks I ought to be glad enough she asked Walter!"

Walter was, in fact, rather noticeable. He was not Mildred's only guest to wear a short coat and to appear

without gloves; but he was singular (at least in his present surroundings) on account of a kind of coiffuring he

favoured, his hair having been shaped after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. Only upon the top of the head

was actual hair perceived, the rest appearing to be nudity. And even more than by any difference in mode he

was set apart by his look and manner, in which there seemed to be a brooding, secretive and jeering

superiority and this was most vividly expressed when he felt called upon for his loud, short, lopsided laugh.

"Well," he said. "How long we goin' to stand here? My feet are sproutin' roots."

Alice took his arm, and they began to walk aimlessly through the rooms, though she tried to look as if they

had a definite destination, keeping her eyes eager and her lips parted;people had called jovially to them

from the distance, she meant to imply, and they were going to join these merry friends. She was still upon

this ghostly errand when a furious outbreak of drums and saxophones sounded a prelude for the second

Walter danced with her again, but he gave her a warning. "I don't want to leave you high and dry," he told

her, "but I can't stand it. I got to get somewhere I don't haf' to hurt my eyes with these berries; I'll go blind if I

got to look at any more of 'em. I'm goin' out to smoke as soon as the music begins the next time, and you

Alice tried to get fixed for it. As they danced she nodded sunnily to every man whose eye she caught, smiled

her smile with the under lip caught between her teeth; but it was not until the end of the intermission after the

Across the room sat the globular lady she had encountered that morning, and beside the globular lady sat a

roundheaded, roundbodied girl; her daughter, at first glance. The family contour was also as evident a

characteristic of the short young man who stood in front of Mrs. Dowling, engaged with her in a discussion

which was not without evidences of an earnestness almost impassioned. Like Walter, he was declining to

Alice from a sidelong eye watched the controversy: she saw the globular young man glance toward her, over

his shoulder; whereupon Mrs. Dowling, following this glance, gave Alice a look of open fury, became much

more vehement in the argument, and even struck her knee with a round, fat fist for emphasis.

"I'm on my way," said Walter. "There's the music startin' up again, and I told you"

The globular young man, red with annoyance, had torn himself from his family and was hastening across the

Nature has not designed everyone for dancing, though sometimes those she has denied are the last to discover

her niggardliness. But the round young man was at least vigorous enoughtoo much so, when his knees

collided with Alice'sand he was too sturdy to be thrown off his feet, himself, or to allow his partner to fall

when he tripped her. He held her up valiantly, and continued to beat a path through the crowd of other

He paid no attention to anything suggested by the efforts of the musicians, and appeared to be unaware that

there should have been some connection between what they were doing and what he was doing; but he may

have listened to other music of his own, for his expression was of high content; he seemed to feel no doubt

whatever that he was dancing. Alice kept as far away from him as under the circumstances she could; and

when they stopped she glanced down, and found the execution of unseen manoeuvres, within the protection

of her skirt, helpful to one of her insteps and to the toes of both of her slippers.

Her cheery partner was paddling his rosy brows with a fine handkerchief. "That was great!" he said. "Let's go

"Welllet's not," she returned. "I believe I'd rather stay in here and look at the crowd."

"No; that isn't it," he said, chiding her with a waggish forefinger. "You think if you go out there you'll miss a

chance of someone else asking you for the next dance, and so you'll have to give it to me."

"How absurd!" Then, after a look about her that revealed nothing encouraging, she added graciously, "You

"Great!" he exclaimed, mechanically. "Now let's get out of hereout of THIS room, anyhow."

"My mother," Mr. Dowling explained. "But don't look at her. She keeps motioning me to come and see after

Alice laughed. "I don't believe it's so much that," she said, and consented to walk with him to a point in the

next room from which Mrs. Dowling's continuous signalling could not be seen. "Your mother hates me."

"Oh, no; I wouldn't say that. No, she don't," he protested, innocently. "She don't know you more than just to

A frown appeared upon his rounded brow. "No; I'll tell you the way she feels. It's like this: Ella isn't TOO

popular, you knowit's hard to see why, because she's a right nice girl, in her wayand mother thinks I

ought to look after her, you see. She thinks I ought to dance a whole lot with her myself, and stir up other

fellows to dance with herit's simply impossible to make mother understand you CAN'T do that, you see.

And then about me, you see, if she had her way I wouldn't get to dance with anybody at all except girls like

Mildred Palmer and Henrietta Lamb. Mother wants to run my whole programme for me, you understand, but

the trouble of it isabout girls like that, you see well, I couldn't do what she wants, even if I wanted to

myself, because you take those girls, and by the time I get Ella off my hands for a minute, why, their dances

Alice nodded, her amiability undamaged. "I see. So that's why you dance with me."

"No, I like to," he protested. "I rather dance with you than I do with those girls." And he added with a

retrospective determination which showed that he had been through quite an experience with Mrs. Dowling

He looked at her shrewdly. "Now you're trying to tease me," he said. "I don't care; I WOULD rather dance

with you! In the first place, you're a perfectly beautiful dancer, you see, and in the second, a man feels a lot

more comfortable with you than he does with them. Of course I know almost all the other fellows get along

with those girls all right; but I don't waste any time on 'em I don't have to. _I_ like people that are always

"Suppose we sit it out?" she suggested. "I believe I'd like to go out in the corridor, after allit's pretty warm

Assenting cheerfully, Dowling conducted her to a pair of easychairs within a secluding grove of box trees,

and when they came to this retreat they found Mildred Palmer just departing, under escort of a wellfavoured

gentleman about thirty. As these two walked slowly away, in the direction of the dancing floor, they left it

not to be doubted that they were on excellent terms with each other; Mildred was evidently willing to make

their progress even slower, for she halted momentarily, once or twice; and her upward glances to her tall

companion's face were of a gentle, almost blushing deference. Never before had Alice seen anything like this

"What Arthur Russell? I never heard of him." Mr. Dowling was puzzled. "Why, THAT'S funny! Only the last

"That's what makes it seem so funny you haven't heard anything about this Russell, because everybody says

even if she isn't engaged to him right now, she most likely will be before very long. I must say it looks a good

The young man glanced at her dubiously and passed a finger over the tiny prong that dashingly composed the

"Well, you see, Mildred IS pretty reserved," he remarked. "This Russell is some kind of cousin of the Palmer

"Yessecond or third or something, the girls say. You see, my sister Ella hasn't got much to do at home, and

don't read anything, or sew, or play solitaire, you see; and she hears about pretty much everything that goes

on, you see. Well, Ella says a lot of the girls have been talking about Mildred and this Arthur Russell for

quite a while back, you see. They were all wondering what he was going to look like, you see; because he

only got here yesterday; and that proves she must have been talking to some of 'em, or else how"

Alice laughed airily, but the pretty sound ended abruptly with an audible intake of breath. "Of course, while

Mildred IS my most intimate friend," she said, "I don't mean she tells me everythingand naturally she has

other friends besides. What else did your sister say she told them about this Mr. Russell?"

"Well, it seems he's VERY well off; at least Henrietta Lamb told Ella he was. Ella says"

Alice interrupted again, with an increased irritability. "Oh, never mind what Ella says! Let's find something

"Well, I'M willing," Mr. Dowling assented, ruefully. "What you want to talk about?"

But this liberal offer found her unresponsive; she sat leaning back, silent, her arms along the arms of her

chair, and her eyes, moist and bright, fixed upon a wide doorway where the dancers fluctuated. She was

disquieted by more than Mildred's reserve, though reserve so marked had certainly the significance of a

warning that Alice's definition, "my most intimate friend," lacked sanction. Indirect notice to this effect could

not well have been more emphatic, but the sting of it was left for a later moment. Something else preoccupied

Alice: she had just been surprised by an odd experience. At first sight of this Mr. Arthur Russell, she had said

to herself instantly, in words as definite as if she spoke them aloud, though they seemed more like words

spoken to her by some unknown person within her: "There! That's exactly the kind of looking man I'd like to

In the eyes of the restless and the longing, Providence often appears to be worse than inscrutable: an

unreliable Omnipotence given to haphazard whimsies in dealing with its own creatures, choosing at random

some among them to be rent with tragic deprivations and others to be petted with blessing upon blessing.

In Alice's eyes, Mildred had been blessed enough; something ought to be left over, by this time, for another

girl. The final touch to the heaping perfection of Christmasineverything for Mildred was that this Mr.

Arthur Russell, goodlooking, kind looking, graceful, the perfect fiance, should be also "VERY well off."

Of course! These rich always married one another. And while the Mildreds danced with their Arthur Russells

the best an outsider could do for herself was to sit with Frank Dowlingthe one last course left her that was

"Nothing," she said. "Suppose we just sit, Frank." But a moment later she remembered something, and, with a

sudden animation, began to prattle. She pointed to the musicians down the corridor. "Oh, look at them! Look

at the leader! Aren't they FUNNY? Someone told me they're called 'Jazz Louie and his halfbreed bunch.'

She continued to chatter, and, while thus keeping his glance away from herself, she detached the forlorn

bouquet of dead violets from her dress and laid it gently beside the one she had carried.

The latter already reposed in the obscurity selected for it at the base of one of the boxtrees.

"You certainly are a funny girl," Dowling remarked. "You say you don't want to talk about anything at all,

and all of a sudden you break out and talk a blue streak; and just about the time I begin to get interested in

what you're saying you shut off! What's the matter with girls, anyhow, when they do things like that?"

But even as he made his amiability clear in this matter, the peace was threatenedhis mother came down the

corridor like a rolling, ominous cloud. She was looking about her on all sides, in a fidget of annoyance,

searching for him, and to his dismay she saw him. She immediately made a horrible face at his companion,

beckoned to him imperiously with a dumpy arm, and shook her head reprovingly. The unfortunate young

man tried to repulse her with an icy stare, but this effort having obtained little to encourage his feeble hope of

driving her away, he shifted his chair so that his back was toward her discomfiting pantomime. He should

have known better, the instant result was Mrs. Dowling in motion at an impetuous waddle.

She entered the boxtree seclusion with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the

resemblance of an overbenevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality

"I think your mother wants to speak to you, Frank," Alice said, upon this advent.

Mrs. Dowling nodded to her. "Good evening, Miss Adams," she said. "I just thought as you and Frank

Mr. Dowling seemed of a different mind. "Well, what DO you want?" he inquired, whereupon his mother

"Bad fellow!" She turned to Alice. "I'm sure you won't mind excusing him to let him do something for his old

"Two very nice things," Mrs. Dowling informed him. "Everybody is so anxious for Henrietta Lamb to have a

pleasant evening, because it's the very first time she's been anywhere since her father's death, and of course

"Well, well!" her son interrupted. "Miss Adams isn't interested in all this, mother."

"But Henrietta came to speak to Ella and me, and I told her you were so anxious to dance with her"

"Yes; that's just it," Mrs. Dowling explained. "I just thought it was such a good opportunity; and Henrietta

said she had most of her dances taken, but she'd give you one if you asked her before they were all gone. So I

"Bad fellow!" said his mother, gaily. "I thought this would be the best time for you to see Henrietta, because

it won't be long till all her dances are gone, and you've promised on your WORD to dance the next with Ella,

and you mightn't have a chance to do it then. I'm sure Miss Adams won't mind if you"

"Well, _I_ mind!" he said. "I wish you COULD understand that when I want to dance with any girl I don't

He spoke with too much vehemence, and Mrs. Dowling at once saw how to have her way. As with husbands

and wives, so with many fathers and daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the man will himself be

cross in public and think nothing of it, nor will he greatly mind a little crossness on the part of the woman;

but let her show agitation before any spectator, he is instantly reduced to a coward's slavery. Women

understand that ancient weakness, of course; for it is one of their most important means of defense, but can be

Mrs. Dowling permitted a tremulousness to become audible in her voice. "It isn't veryvery pleasant to

"Oh, my! Look here!" the stricken Dowling protested. "_I_ didn't say anything, mother. I was just joking

Mrs. Dowling continued: "I just thought I was doing you a little favour. I didn't think it would make you so

"I suppose," Mrs. Dowling interrupted, piteously, "I suppose it doesn't matter what _I_ think!"

Alice interfered; she perceived that the ruthless Mrs. Dowling meant to have her way. "I think you'd better

"There!" his mother cried. "Miss Adams says so, herself! What more do you want?"

"Oh, gracious!" he lamented again, and, with a sick look over his shoulder at Alice, permitted his mother to

take his arm and propel him away. Mrs. Dowling's spirits had strikingly recovered even before the pair

passed from the corridor: she moved almost bouncingly beside her embittered son, and her eyes and all the

Alice went in search of Walter, but without much hope of finding him. What he did with himself at

frozenface dances was one of his most successful mysteries, and her present excursion gave her no clue

leading to its solution. When the musicians again lowered their instruments for an interval she had returned,

She had now to practice an art that affords but a limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the art of

seeming to have an escort or partner when there is none. The practitioner must imply, merely by expression

and attitude, that the supposed companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him

upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand

of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She

Other people desired to sit in Alice's nook, but discovered her in occupancy. She had moved the vacant chair

closer to her own, and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace kerchief, rested upon

the back of this second chair, claiming it. Such a preemption, like that of a traveller's bag in the rack, was

unquestionable; and, for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously

moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her

halfsmile, with the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against repression, as if she found the service

engaging her absent companion even more amusing than she would let him see when he returned: there was

jovial intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, beaming with secret fun, were averted from intruders,

but sometimes, when couples approached, seeking possession of the nook, her thoughts about the absentee

appeared to threaten her with outright laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her skeptically, as they

turned away, their escorts felt no such doubts, and merely wondered what importantly funny affair Alice

She had learned it during the last two years; she was twenty when for the first time she had the shock of

finding herself without an applicant for one of her dances. When she was sixteen "all the nice boys in town,"

as her mother said, crowded the Adamses' small veranda and steps, or sat near by, crosslegged on the lawn,

on summer evenings; and at eighteen she had replaced the boys with "the older men." By this time most of

"the other girls," her contemporaries, were away at school or college, and when they came home to stay, they

"came out"that feeble revival of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial inspection of the

tribe. Alice neither went away nor "came out," and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to

lack freshness of lustrejewels are richest when revealed all new in a white velvet box. And Alice may have

been too eager to secure new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones. She had been a belle too

The device of the absentee partner has the defect that it cannot be employed for longer than ten or fifteen

minutes at a time, and it may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: a single repetition, indeed, is

weak, and may prove a betrayal. Alice knew that her present performance could be effective during only this

interval between dances; and though her eyes were guarded, she anxiously counted over the partnerless

young men who lounged together in the doorways within her view. Every one of them ought to have asked

her for dances, she thought, and although she might have been put to it to give a reason why any of them

For a girl who has been a belle, it is harder to live through these bad times than it is for one who has never

known anything better. Like a figure of painted and brightly varnished wood, Ella Dowling sat against the

wall through dance after dance with glassy imperturbability; it was easier to be wooden, Alice thought, if you

had your mother with you, as Ella had. You were left with at least the shred of a pretense that you came to sit

with your mother as a spectator, and not to offer yourself to be danced with by men who looked you over and

rejected younot for the first time. "Not for the first time": there lay a sting! Why had you thought this time

might be different from the other times? Why had you broken your back picking those hundreds of violets?

Hating the fatuous young men in the doorways more bitterly for every instant that she had to maintain her

tableau, the smiling Alice knew fierce impulses to spring to her feet and shout at them, "You IDIOTS!"

Hands in pockets, they lounged against the pilasters, or faced one another, laughing vaguely, each one of

them seeming to Alice no more than so much mean beef in clothes. She wanted to tell them they were no

better than that; and it seemed a cruel thing of heaven to let them go on believing themselves young lords.

They were doing nothing, killing time. Wasn't she at her lowest value at least a means of killing time?

Evidently the mean beeves thought not. And when one of them finally lounged across the corridor and spoke

"Waiting for somebody, Lady Alicia?" he asked, negligently; and his easy burlesque of her name was like the

familiarity of the rest of him. He was one of those fullbodied, grossly handsome men who are powerful and

active, but never submit themselves to the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and fish from

expensive camps. Gloss is the most shining outward mark of the type. Nowadays these men no longer use

brilliantine on their moustaches, but they have gloss bought from manicuregirls, from masseurs, and from

automobilemakers; and their eyes, usually large, are glossy. None of this is allowed to interfere with

business; these are "good business men," and often make large fortunes. They are men of imagination about

two thingswomen and money, and, combining their imaginings about both, usually make a wise first

marriage. Later, however, they are apt to imagine too much about some little woman without whom life

seems duller than need be. They run away, leaving the first wife well enough dowered. They are never

intentionally unkind to women, and in the end they usually make the mistake of thinking they have had their

money's worth of life. Here was Mr. Harvey Malone, a young specimen in an earlier stage of development,

trying to marry Henrietta Lamb, and now sauntering over to speak to Alice, as a timekiller before his next

Alice made no response to his question, and he dropped lazily into the vacant chair, from which she sharply

withdrew her hand. "I might as well use his chair till he comes, don't you think? You don't MIND, do you,

"Oh, no," Alice said. "It doesn't matter one way or the other. Please don't call me that."

"So that's how you feel?" Mr. Malone laughed indulgently, without much interest. "I've been meaning to

come to see you for a long time honestly I havebecause I wanted to have a good talk with you about old

times. I know you think it was funny, after the way I used to come to your house two or three times a week,

and sometimes oftenerwell, I don't blame you for being hurt, the way I stopped without explaining or

anything. The truth is there wasn't any reason: I just happened to have a lot of important things to do and

couldn't find the time. But I AM going to call on you some eveninghonestly I am. I don't wonder you

"Well, well!" he said, and looked at her languidly. "What's the use of being cross with this old man? He

always means well." And, extending his arm, he would have given her a friendly pat upon the shoulder but

she evaded it. "Well, well!" he said. "Seems to me you're getting awful tetchy! Don't you like your old friends

"Who's the new one?" he asked, teasingly. "Come on and tell us, Alice. Who is it you were holding this chair

"Well, all I've got to do is to sit here till he comes back; then I'll see who it is."

"Guess you got me THAT time," Malone admitted, laughing as he rose. "They're tuning up, and I've got this

dance. I AM coming around to see you some evening." He moved away, calling back over his shoulder,

She had held her tableau as long as she could; it was time for her to abandon the boxtrees; and she stepped

forth frowning, as if a little annoyed with the absentee for being such a time upon her errand; whereupon the

two chairs were instantly seized by a coquetting pair who intended to "sit out" the dance. She walked quickly

down the broad corridor, turned into the broader hall, and hurriedly entered the dressingroom where she had

She stayed here as long as she could, pretending to arrange her hair at a mirror, then fidgeting with one of her

slipperbuckles; but the intelligent elderly woman in charge of the room made an indefinite sojourn

impracticable. "Perhaps I could help you with that buckle, Miss," she suggested, approaching. "Has it come

loose?" Alice wrenched desperately; then it was loose. The competent woman, producing needle and thread,

deftly made the buckle fast; and there was nothing for Alice to do but to express her gratitude and go.

She went to the door of the cloakroom opposite, where a coloured man stood watchfully in the doorway. "I

wonder if you know which of the gentlemen is my brother, Mr. Walter Adams," she said.

"Well, if you see him, would you please tell him that his sister, Miss Adams, is looking for him and very

As she went away he stared after her and seemed to swell with some bursting emotion. In fact, it was too

much for him, and he suddenly retired within the room, releasing strangulated laughter.

Walter remonstrated. Behind an excellent screen of coats and hats, in a remote part of the room, he was

kneeling on the floor, engaged in a game of chance with a second coloured attendant; and the laughter

became so vehement that it not only interfered with the pastime in hand, but threatened to attract frozenface

"I cain' he'p it, man," the laughter explained. "I cain' he'p it! You sut'n'y the beatin'es' white boy 'n 'is city!"

The dancers were swinging into an "encore" as Alice halted for an irresolute moment in a doorway. Across

the room, a cluster of matrons sat chatting absently, their eyes on their dancing daughters; and Alice, finding

a refugee's courage, dodged through the scurrying couples, seated herself in a chair on the outskirts of this

colony of elders, and began to talk eagerly to the matron nearest her. The matron seemed unaccustomed to so

much vivacity, and responded but dryly, whereupon Alice was more vivacious than ever; for she meant now

to present the picture of a jolly girl too much interested in these wise older women to bother about every

Her matron was constrained to go so far as to supply a tolerant nod, now and then, in complement to the girl's

animation, and Alice was grateful for the nods. In this fashion she supplemented the exhausted resources of

the dressingroom and the boxtree nook; and lived through two more dances, when again Mr. Frank

She needed no pretense to seek the dressingroom for repairs after that number; this time they were

necessary and genuine. Dowling waited for her, and when she came out he explained for the fourth or fifth

time how the accident had happened. "It was entirely those other people's fault," he said. "They got me in a

kind of a corner, because neither of those fellows knows the least thing about guiding; they just jam ahead

and expect everybody to get out of their way. It was Charlotte Thom's diamond crescent pin that got caught

"Never mind," Alice said in a tired voice. "The maid fixed it so that she says it isn't very noticeable."

"Well, it isn't," he returned. "You could hardly tell there'd been anything the matter. Where do you want to

go? Mother's been interfering in my affairs some more and I've got the next taken."

He left her with the matron, and Alice returned to her picturemaking, so that once more, while two numbers

passed, whoever cared to look was offered the sketch of a jolly, clever girl preoccupied with her elders. Then

she found her friend Mildred standing before her, presenting Mr. Arthur Russell, who asked her to dance with

Alice looked uncertain, as though not sure what her engagements were; but her perplexity cleared; she

nodded, and swung rhythmically away with the tall applicant. She was not grateful to her hostess for this

alms. What a young hostess does with a fiance, Alice thought, is to make him dance with the unpopular girls.

The loan of a lover, under these circumstances, may be painful to the lessee, and Alice, smiling never more

brightly, found nothing to say to Mr. Russell, though she thought he might have found something to say to

her. "I wonder what Mildred told him," she thought. "Probably she said, 'Dearest, there's one more girl you've

got to help me out with. You wouldn't like her much, but she dances well enough and she's having a rotten

When the music stopped, Russell added his applause to the handclapping that encouraged the uproarious

instruments to continue, and as they renewed the tumult, he said heartily, "That's splendid!"

Alice gave him a glance, necessarily at short range, and found his eyes kindly and pleased. Here was a

friendly soul, it appeared, who probably "liked everybody." No doubt he had applauded for an "encore" when

he danced with Ella Dowling, gave Ella the same genial look, and said, "That's splendid!"

"Mildred will be looking for you," she said. "I think you'd better take me back to where you found me."

"I'm sure Mildred will be needing you," Alice said, and as she took his arm and they walked toward Mrs.

Dresser, she thought it might be just possible to make a further use of the loan. "Oh, I wonder if you"

"You don't know my brother, Walter Adams," she said. "But he's somewhere I think possibly he's in a

smokingroom or some place where girls aren't expected, and if you wouldn't think it too much trouble to

"I'll find him," Russell said, promptly. "Thank you so much for that dance. I'll bring your brother in a

It was to be a long moment, Alice decided, presently. Mrs. Dresser had grown restive; and her nods and

vague responses to her young dependent's gaieties were as meager as they could well be. Evidently the

matron had no intention of appearing to her world in the light of a chaperone for Alice Adams; and she

finally made this clear. With a word or two of excuse, breaking into something Alice was saying, she rose

and went to sit next to Mildred's mother, who had become the nucleus of the cluster. So Alice was left very

much against the wall, with short stretches of vacant chairs on each side of her. She had come to the end of

her picturemaking, and could only pretend that there was something amusing the matter with the arm of her

She supposed that Mildred's Mr. Russell had forgotten Walter by this time. "I'm not even an intimate enough

friend of Mildred's for him to have thought he ought to bother to tell me he couldn't find him," she thought.

And then she saw Russell coming across the room toward her, with Walter beside him. She jumped up gaily.

"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "I know this naughty boy must have been terribly hard to find. Mildred'll NEVER

"Not at all," he said, amiably, and went away, leaving the brother and sister together.

"Walter, let's dance just once more," Alice said, touching his arm placatively. "I thoughtwell, perhaps we

But Walter's expression was that of a person upon whom an outrage has just been perpetrated. "No," he said.

"We've stayed THIS long, I'm goin' to wait and see what they got to eat. And you look here!" He turned upon

"Send somebody after me that pokes his nose into every corner of the house till he finds me! 'Are you Mr.

Walter Adams?' he says. I guess he must asked everybody in the place if they were Mr. Walter Adams! Well,

I'll bet a few iron men you wouldn't send anybody to hunt for me again if you knew where he found me!"

Walter decided that her fit punishment was to know. "I was shootin' dice with those coons in the

"Unless he was blind!" said Walter. "Come on, I'll dance this one more dance with you. Supper comes after

Mrs. Adams heard Alice's key turning in the front door and hurried down the stairs to meet her.

"Just lovely!" Alice said, cheerily, and after she had arranged the latch for Walter, who had gone to return the

"Oh, I'm so glad you had a nice time," Mrs. Adams said, as they reached the door of her daughter's room

But at this, without warning, Alice threw herself into her mother's arms, sobbing so loudly that in his room,

close by, her father, half drowsing through the night, started to full wakefulness.

On a morning, a week after this collapse of festal hopes, Mrs. Adams and her daughter were concluding a

threedays' disturbance, the "Spring housecleaning" postponed until now by Adams's long illnessand

Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in her mother's room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a

packet of letters wrapped in worn muslin. She called to her mother, who was scrubbing the floor of the

"These old letters you had in the bottom drawer, weren't they some papa wrote you before you were

Mrs. Adams laughed and said, "Yes. Just put 'em back where they wereor else up in the attic anywhere

Mrs. Adams laughed again. "Oh, I guess you can if you want to. I expect they're pretty funny!"

Alice laughed in response, and chose the topmost letter of the packet. "My dear, beautiful girl," it began; and

she stared at these singular words. They gave her a shock like that caused by overhearing some bewildering

impropriety; and, having read them over to herself several times, she went on to experience other shocks.

This time yesterday I had a mighty bad case of blues because I had not had a word from you in two whole

long days and when I do not hear from you every day things look mighty down in the mouth to me. Now it is

all so different because your letter has arrived and besides I have got a piece of news I believe you will think

as fine as I do. Darling, you will be surprised, so get ready to hear about a big effect on our future. It is this

way. I had sort of a suspicion the head of the firm kind of took a fancy to me from the first when I went in

there, and liked the way I attended to my work and so when he took me on this business trip with him I felt

pretty sure of it and now it turns out I was about right. In return I guess I have got about the best boss in this

world and I believe you will think so too. Yes, sweetheart, after the talk I have just had with him if J. A.

Lamb asked me to cut my hand off for him I guess I would come pretty near doing it because what he says

means the end of our waiting to be together. From New Years on he is going to put me in entire charge of the

sundries dept. and what do you think is going to be my salary? Eleven hundred cool dollars a year

($1,100.00). That's all! Just only a cool eleven hundred per annum! Well, I guess that will show your mother

whether I can take care of you or not. And oh how I would like to see your dear, beautiful, loving face when

I would like to go out on the public streets and just dance and shout and it is all I can do to help doing it,

especially when I know we will be talking it all over together this time next week, and oh my darling, now

that your folks have no excuse for putting it off any longer we might be in our own little home before Xmas.

Well, darling, this settles everything and makes our future just about as smooth for us as anybody could ask. I

can hardly realize after all this waiting life's troubles are over for you and me and we have nothing to do but

to enjoy the happiness granted us by this wonderful, beautiful thing we call life. I know I am not any poet and

the one I tried to write about you the day of the picnic was fearful but the way I THINK about you is a poem.

I'll get it before we start home and I can be reading it over all the time on the tram.

The sound of her mother's diligent scrubbing in the hall came back slowly to Alice's hearing, as she restored

the letter to the packet, wrapped the packet in its muslin covering, and returned it to the drawer. She had

remained upon her knees while she read the letter; now she sank backward, sitting upon the floor with her

hands behind her, an unconscious relaxing for better ease to think. Upon her face there had fallen a look of

For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is everlasting movement. Youth really believes what is

running water to be a permanent crystallization and sees time fixed to a point: some people have dark hair,

some people have blond hair, some people have gray hair. Until this moment, Alice had no conviction that

there was a universe before she came into it. She had always thought of it as the background of herself: the

But this old letter, through which she saw still flickering an ancient starlight of young love, astounded her.

Faintly before her it revealed the whole lives of her father and mother, who had been young, after allthey

REALLY hadand their youth was now so utterly passed from them that the picture of it, in the letter, was

like a burlesque of them. And so she, herself, must pass to such changes, too, and all that now seemed vital to

When her work was finished, that afternoon, she went into her father's room. His recovery had progressed

well enough to permit the departure of Miss Perry; and Adams, wearing one of Mrs. Adams's wrappers over

his nightgown, sat in a high backed chair by a closed window. The weather was warm, but the closed

window and the flannel wrapper had not sufficed him: round his shoulders he had an old crocheted scarf of

Alice's; his legs were wrapped in a heavy comfort; and, with these swathings about him, and his eyes closed,

his thin and grizzled head making but a slight indentation in the pillow supporting it, he looked old and little

Alice would have gone out softly, but without opening his eyes, he spoke to her: "Don't go, dearie. Come sit

He looked at her vaguely. "Oh, I don't know. Kind of pictures. They get a little mixed upold times with

times still ahead, like planning what to do, you know. That's as near a nap as I get when the pictures mix

She took one of his hands and stroked it. "What do you mean when you say you have pictures like 'planning

"But that doesn't need any planning," Alice said, quickly. "You're going back to your old place at Lamb's, of

His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the eyes, open in a haggard stare. "I heard you the other night

"Indeed, you don't," she assured him. "You don't know anything about it, because there wasn't anything the

"Don't you suppose I heard you crying? What'd you cry for if there wasn't anything the matter?"

At that Adams laughed mournfully. "It wouldn't be very likely I'd hear you so upset and not ask about it, even

if she didn't come and tell me on her own hook. You needn't try to fool me; I tell you I know what was the

"The only matter was I had a silly fit," Alice protested. "It did me good, too."

"That isn't the way your mother looks at it," Adams said, ruefully. "She thinks it's our place to do something

about it. Well, I don't knowI don't know; everything seems so changed these days. You've always been a

good daughter, Alice, and you ought to have as much as any of these girls you go with; she's convinced me

she's right about THAT. The trouble is" He faltered, apologetically, then went on, "I mean the question

"No!" she cried. "I had no business to make such a fuss just because a lot of idiots didn't break their necks to

get dances with me and because I got mortified about WalterWalter WAS pretty terrible"

"Oh, me, my!" Adams lamented. "I guess that's something we just have to leave work out itself. What you

going to do with a boy nineteen or twenty years old that makes his own living? Can't whip him. Can't keep

"Of course he didn't want to go to the Palmers'," Alice explained, tolerantly"and as mama and I made him

take me, and he thought that was pretty selfish in me, why, he felt he had a right to amuse himself any way he

could. Of course it was awful that thisthat this Mr. Russell should" In spite of her, the recollection

But Alice recovered herself at once, and showed him a cheerful face. "Well, just a few years from now I

probably won't even remember it! I believe hardly anything amounts to as much as we think it does at the

She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as she told him: "Well, I mean I ought to be something besides

"I want to go on the stage: I know I could act." At this, her father abruptly gave utterance to a feeble cackling

of laughter; and when Alice, surprised and a little offended, pressed him for his reason, he tried to evade,

saying, "Nothing, dearie. I just thought of something." But she persisted until he had to explain.

"It made me think of your mother's sister, your Aunt Flora, that died when you were little," he said. "She was

always telling how she was going on the stage, and talking about how she was certain she'd make a great

actress, and all so on; and one day your mother broke out and said she ought 'a' gone on the stage, herself,

because she always knew she had the talent for itand, well, they got into kind of a spat about which one'd

"Maybe you were wrong," Alice said, gravely. "If they both felt it, why wouldn't that look as if there was

"No, dearie," he said, with a final chuckle. "Your mother and Flora weren't different from a good many

others. I expect ninety per cent. of all the women I ever knew were just sure they'd be mighty fine actresses if

they ever got the chance. Well, I guess it's a good thing; they enjoy thinking about it and it don't do anybody

Alice was piqued. For several days she had thought almost continuously of a career to be won by her own

genius. Not that she planned details, or concerned herself with first steps; her picturings overleaped all that.

Principally, she saw her name great on all the billboards of that unkind city, and herself, unchanged in age

but glamorous with fame and Paris clothes, returning in a private car. No doubt the pleasantest development

of her vision was a dialogue with Mildred; and this became so real that, as she projected it, Alice assumed the

proper expressions for both parties to it, formed words with her lips, and even spoke some of them aloud.

"No, I haven't forgotten you, Mrs. Russell. I remember you quite pleasantly, in fact. You were a Miss Palmer,

I recall, in those funny old days. Very kind of you, I'm shaw. I appreciate your eagerness to do something for

me in your own little home. As you say, a reception WOULD renew my acquaintanceship with many old

friends but I'm shaw you won't mind my mentioning that I don't find much inspiration in these provincials.

I really must ask you not to press me. An artist's time is not her own, though of course I could hardly expect

Thus Alice illuminated the dull time; but she retired from the interview with her father still manfully

displaying an outward cheerfulness, while depression grew heavier within, as if she had eaten soggy cake.

Her father knew nothing whatever of the stage, and she was aware of his ignorance, yet for some reason his

innocently skeptical amusement reduced her bright project almost to nothing. Something like this always

happened, it seemed; she was continually making these illuminations, all gay with gildings and colourings;

and then as soon as anybody else so much as glanced at themeven her father, who loved herthe pretty

designs were stricken with a desolating pallor. "Is this LIFE?" Alice wondered, not doubting that the question

was original and all her own. "Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren't so, and never will be?

Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never CAN happen to?"

The mood lasted overnight; and was still upon her the next afternoon when an errand for her father took her

downtown. Adams had decided to begin smoking again, and Alice felt rather degraded, as well as

embarrassed, when she went into the large shop her father had named, and asked for the cheap tobacco he

used in his pipe. She fell back upon an air of amused indulgence, hoping thus to suggest that her purchase

was made for some faithful old retainer, now infirm; and although the calmness of the clerk who served her

called for no such elaboration of her sketch, she ornamented it with a little laugh and with the remark, as she

dropped the package into her coatpocket, "I'm sure it'll please him; they tell me it's the kind he likes."

Still playing Lady Bountiful, smiling to herself in anticipation of the joy she was bringing to the simple old

negro or Irish follower of the family, she left the shop; but as she came out upon the crowded pavement her

Next to the door of the tobaccoshop, there was the open entrance to a stairway, and, above this rather bleak

and dark aperture, a signboard displayed in begrimed gilt letters the information that Frincke's Business

College occupied the upper floors of the building. Furthermore, Frincke here publicly offered "personal

instruction and training in practical mathematics, bookkeeping, and all branches of the business life,

Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this signboard as though it were something surprising and distasteful

which she had never seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she almost always passed it when

she came downtown, and never without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused to lift toward

The building was not what the changeful city defined as a modern one, and the dusty wooden stairway, as

seen from the pavement, disappeared upward into a smoky darkness. So would the footsteps of a girl

ascending there lead to a hideous obscurity, Alice thought; an obscurity as dreary and as permanent as death.

And like dry leaves falling about her she saw her wintry imaginings in the May air: pretty girls turning into

withered creatures as they worked at typingmachines; old maids "taking dictation" from men with double

chins; Alice saw old maids of a dozen different kinds "taking dictation." Her mind's eye was crowded with

them, as it always was when she passed that stairway entrance; and though they were all different from one

She hated the place, and yet she seldom hurried by it or averted her eyes. It had an unpleasant fascination for

her, and a mysterious reproach, which she did not seek to fathom. She walked on thoughtfully today; and

when, at the next corner, she turned into the street that led toward home, she was given a surprise. Arthur

"Are you walking north, Miss Adams?" he asked. "Do you mind if I walk with you?"

She was not delighted, but seemed so. "How charming!" she cried, giving him a little flourish of the shapely

hands; and then, because she wondered if he had seen her coming out of the tobaccoshop, she laughed and

"To order some cigars for my father. He's been quite ill, poor man, and he's so particularbut what in the

Russell laughed. "Well, what DO you know about 'em? Did you select by the price?"

"Mercy, no!" she exclaimed, and added, with an afterthought, "Of course he wrote down the name of the kind

In her pocket as she spoke her hand rested upon the little sack of tobacco, which responded accusingly to the

touch of her restless fingers; and she found time to wonder why she was building up this fiction for Mr.

Arthur Russell. His discovery of Walter's device for whiling away the dull evening had shamed and

distressed her; but she would have suffered no less if almost any other had been the discoverer. In this

gentleman, after hearing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur Russell, Alice felt not the slightest "personal

interest"; and there was yet to develop in her life such a thing as an interest not personal. At twentytwo this

So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard, "Engaged." She looked upon him as diners

entering a restaurant look upon tables marked "Reserved": the glance, slightly discontented, passes on at

once. Or so the eye of a prospector wanders querulously over staked and established claims on the

mountainside, and seeks the virgin land beyond; unless, indeed, the prospector be dishonest. But Alice was

Though she was indifferent now, habit ruled her: and, at the very time she wondered why she created

fictitious cigars for her father, she was also regretting that she had not boldly carried her Malacca stick

"Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the cigars for yourself," Russell suggested. "He may have taken you

"I'm sure he did!" Alice agreed, gaily; and she hummed a bar or two of "LaPaloma," snapping her fingers as

castanets, and swaying her body a little, to suggest the accepted stencil of a "Spanish Dancer." "Would you

have taken me for one, Mr. Russell?" she asked, as she concluded the impersonation.

"Why, what a speech!" she cried, and, laughing, gave him a quick glance in which there glimmered some real

surprise. He was looking at her quizzically, but with the liveliest appreciation. Her surprise increased; and she

To be seen walking with such a companion added to her pleasure. She would have described him as

"altogether quite stunninglooking"; and she liked his tall, dark thinness, his gray clothes, his soft hat, and his

"Shouldn't I have said it?" he asked. "Would you rather not be taken for a Spanish countess?"

"Well" She hesitated, having the mischievous impulse to say, "Such as Mildred!" But she decided to

omit this reference, and became serious, remembering Russell's service to her at Mildred's house. "Speaking

of what I want to be taken for," she said;"I've been wondering ever since the other night what you did take

me for! You must have taken me for the sister of a professional gambler, I'm afraid!"

Russell's look of kindness was the truth about him, she was to discover; and he reassured her now by the

promptness of his friendly chuckle. "Then your young brother told you where I found him, did he? I kept my

face straight at the time, but I laughed afterward to myself. It struck me as original, to say the least: his

"Walter IS original," Alice said; and, having adopted this new view of her brother's eccentricities, she

impulsively went on to make it more plausible. "He's a very odd boy, and I was afraid you'd misunderstand.

He tells wonderful 'darky stories,' and he'll do anything to draw coloured people out and make them talk; and

that's what he was doing at Mildred's when you found him for mehe says he wins their confidence by

playing dice with them. In the family we think he'll probably write about them some day. He's rather literary."

"I? Oh" She paused, lifting both hands in a charming gesture of helplessness. "Oh, I'm just me!"

His glance followed the lightly waved hands with keen approval, then rose to the lively and colourful face,

with its hazel eyes, its small and pretty nose, and the lipcaught smile which seemed the climax of her

Here was a contrast to his cousin Mildred, who was not wistful, and controlled any impulses toward

With that, there leaped in her such an impulse of roguish gallantry as she could never resist. She turned her

"How did you know I was thinking you were different from my cousin, Mildred Palmer?"

"Yes," she said with cool humour. "How intimate that seems to make us all at once!"

Russell left no doubt that he was delighted with these gaieties of hers. "By George!" he exclaimed again. "I

"What sort of girl? Didn't Mildred tell you what sort of girl I am when she asked you to dance with me?"

"She didn't ask me to dance with youI'd been looking at you. You were talking to some old ladies, and I

"No. I thought I'd save myself from some of the girls Mildred was getting me to dance with. There was a

"Poor man!" Alice said, gently, and her impulsive thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, and that

as a matter of selfdefense her carefulness might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur Russell was a

"So, Mr. Russell, you don't know anything about me except what you thought when you first saw me?"

"Not very definite, is it? I'm afraid you shed more light a minute or so ago, when you said how different from

"I didn't say it," Russell explained. "I thought it, and you read my mind. That's the sort of girl I thought you

wereone that could read a man's mind. Why do you say 'unfortunately' you're not like Mildred?"

Alice's smooth gesture seemed to sketch Mildred. "Because she's perfectwhy, she's PERFECTLY perfect!

She never makes a mistake, and everybody looks up to heroh, yes, we all fairly adore her! She's like some

big, noble, cold statue'way above the rest of usand she hardly ever does anything mean or treacherous.

Of all the girls I know I believe she's played the fewest really petty tricks. She's"

Russell interrupted; he looked perplexed. "You say she's perfectly perfect, but that she does play

Alice laughed, as if at his sweet innocence. "Men are so funny!" she informed him. "Of course girls ALL do

My own career's just one long brazen smirch of 'em! What I mean is, Mildred's perfectly perfect compared to

"I see," he said, and seemed to need a moment or two of thoughtfulness. Then he inquired, "What sort of

"I? Oh, the very worst kind! Most people bore me particularly the men in this townand I show it."

"Well, THEY do," Alice laughed. "It's made me a terribly unpopular character! I do a lot of things they hate.

For instance, at a dance I'd a lot rather find some clever old woman and talk to her than dance with

"This flattery of yours doesn't quite turn my head, Mr. Russell," Alice interrupted. "Particularly since Mildred

"Oh, of course, yes. I forgot that. Well" She paused, then added, "I certainly OUGHT to dance well."

"When I think of the dancingteachers and the expense to papa! All sorts of fancy instructorsI suppose

that's what daughters have fathers for, though, isn't it? To throw money away on them?"

"You don't" Russell began, and his look was one of alarm. "You haven't taken up"

She understood his apprehension and responded merrily, "Oh, murder, no! You mean you're afraid I break

out sometimes in a piece of cheesecloth and run around a fountain thirty times, and then, for an encore, show

"I SAID you were a mindreader!" he exclaimed. "That's exactly what I was pretending to be afraid you

"Oh, nothing in particular that I know of just now. Of course I've had the usual one: the one that every girl

"Good heavens, Mr. Russell, you can't expect me to believe you're really a man of the world if you don't

know that every girl has a time in her life when she's positive she's divinely talented for the stage! It's the

only universal rule about women that hasn't got an exception. I don't mean we all want to go on the stage, but

we all think we'd be wonderful if we did. Even Mildred. Oh, she wouldn't confess it to you: you'd have to

"I see," he said. "Girls are always telling us we can't know them. I wonder if you"

She took up his thought before he expressed it, and again he was fascinated by her quickness, which indeed

seemed to him almost telepathic. "Oh, but DON'T we know one another, though!" she cried.

"No. Not even too much honour among thieves, Mr. Russell. We don't tell you about our tricks against one

another because we know it wouldn't make any impression on you. The tricks aren't played against you, and

"Oh, no. It was just a modest little sign in a pretty flowerbed: 'Gentlemen, beware!'"

"Thanks! But I mean, beware of the whole bloomin' garden!" Then, picking up a thread that had almost

disappeared: "You needn't think you'll ever find out whether I'm right about Mildred's not being an exception

by asking her," she said. "She won't tell you: she's not the sort that ever makes a confession."

But Russell had not followed her shift to the former topic. "'Mildred's not being an exception?' " he said,

"An exception about thinking she could be wonderful thing on the stage if she only cared to. If you asked her

I'm pretty sure she'd say, 'What nonsense!' Mildred's the dearest, finest thing anywhere, but you won't find out

Russell's expression became more serious, as it did whenever his cousin was made their topic. "You think

"No. But it's not because she isn't sincere exactly. It's only because she has such a lot to live up to. She has to

live up to being a girl on the grand style to herself, I mean, of course." And without pausing Alice rippled on,

"You ought to have seen ME when I had the stagefever! I used to play 'Juliet' all alone in my room.' She

"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest thy love

She broke off abruptly with a little flourish, snapping thumb and finger of each outstretched hand, then

laughed and said, "Papa used to make such fun of me! Thank heaven, I was only fifteen; I was all over it by

"No wonder you had the fever," Russell observed. "You do it beautifully. Why didn't you finish the line?"

"Which one? 'Lest thy love prove likewise variable'? Juliet was saying it to a MAN, you know. She seems to

Her companion was again thoughtful. "Yes," he said, seeming to be rather irksomely impressed with Alice's

Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an audacious temptation. "You mustn't take it so hard," she

"See here!" he exclaimed. "You aren't at your mindreading again, are you? There are times when it won't

She leaned toward him a little, as if companionably: they were walking slowly, and this geniality of hers

brought her shoulder in light contact with his for a moment. "Do you dislike my mindreading?" she asked,

and, across their two just touching shoulders, gave him her sudden look of smiling wistfulness. "Do you hate

He shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, gravely. "It's quite pleasant. But I think it says, 'Gentlemen,

She instantly moved away from him, with the lawless and frank laugh of one who is delighted to be caught in

a piece of hypocrisy. "How lovely!" she cried. Then she pointed ahead. "Our walk is nearly over. We're

coming to the foolish little house where I live. It's a queer little place, but my father's so attached to it the

family have about given up hope of getting him to build a real house farther out. He doesn't mind our being

extravagant about anything else, but he won't let us alter one single thing about his precious little old house.

"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked: "I couldn't come in with you for a little while?"

"Almost any time." She turned and walked slowly up the path, but he waited. "You can come in the evening

"As soon as you like!" She waved her hand; then ran indoors and watched him from a window as he went up

the street. He walked rapidly, a fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that suggested exhilaration.

Alice, staring after him through the irregular apertures of a lace curtain, showed no similar buoyancy. Upon

the instant she closed the door all sparkle left her: she had become at once the simple and sometimes troubled

"What is going on out there?" her mother asked, approaching from the diningroom.

"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she turned away. "That Mr. Russell met me downtown and walked

"WellI don't know for certain. He didn't seem so much like an engaged man to me." And she added, in the

Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it.

After that, she went to her room and sat down before her threeleaved mirror. There was where she nearly

always sat when she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She went to that chair as naturally

She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be her mood. But after a long, almost

motionless scrutiny, she began to produce dramatic sketches upon that everready stage, her countenance:

she showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness, appreciation of a companion and loveinhiding all studied

in profile first, then repeated for a "three quarter view." Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself

In this manner she outlined a playful scenario for her next interview with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn

again, thinking of the impression she had already sought to give him. She had no twinges for any

underminings of her "most intimate friend"in fact, she felt that her work on a new portrait of Mildred for

Russell had been honest and accurate. But why had it been her instinct to show him an Alice Adams who

Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous impulse, springing to her lips on the instant;

yet it all seemed to have been founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden self kept such designs in

stock and handed them up to her, readymade, to be used for its own purpose. What appeared to be the

desired result was a falsecoloured image in Russell's mind; but if he liked that image he wouldn't be liking

Alice Adams; nor would anything he thought about the image be a thought about her.

Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with her false, fancy colourings of this nothing as soon as she saw

him again; she had just been practicing them. "What's the idea?" she wondered. "What makes me tell such

lies? Why shouldn't I be just myself?" And then she thought, "But which one is myself?"

Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips, disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to

The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but now, as she subsided to a complete stillness,

that aspect changed to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs. The nucleus of some queer

thing seemed to gather and shape itself behind the nothingness of the reflected eyes until it became almost an

actual strange presence. If it could be identified, perhaps the presence was that of the hidden designer who

handed up the false, readymade pictures, and, for unknown purposes, made Alice exhibit them; but

whatever it was, she suddenly found it monkey like and terrifying. In a flutter she jumped up and went to

A moment or two later she was whistling softly as she hung her light coat over a wooden triangle in her

closet, and her musing now was quainter than the experience that led to it; for what she thought was this, "I

certainly am a queer girl!" She took a little pride in so much originality, believing herself probably the only

person in the world to have such thoughts as had been hers since she entered the room, and the first to be

disturbed by a strange presence in the mirror. In fact, the effect of the tiny episode became apparent in that

look of preoccupied complacency to be seen for a time upon any girl who has found reason to suspect that

This slight glow, still faintly radiant, was observed across the dinnertable by Walter, but he misinterpreted

it. "What YOU lookin' so selfsatisfied about?" he inquired, and added in his knowing way, "I saw you, all

"Yes, 'this afternoon, I mean, Walter,' " he returned, burlesquing her voice at least happily enough to please

himself; for he laughed applausively. "Oh, you never saw me! I passed you close enough to pull a tooth, but

you were awful busy. I never did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when you're towin' a barge. My, but

you keep your hands goin'! Looked like the air was full of 'em! That's why I'm onto why you look so tickled

Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently; she was not displeased with this rallying. "Well, what of it, Walter?" she

asked. "If you happen to see your sister on the street when some nice young man is being attentive to

Walter barked and then cackled. "Whoa, Sal!" he said. "You got the parts mixed. It's little Alice that was

"Yes," his sister retorted, quietly. "I should think you might have recognized him, Walter."

Walter looked annoyed. "Still harpin' on THAT!" he complained. "The kind of women I like, if they get sore

they just hit you somewhere on the face and then they're through. By the way, I heard this Russell was

supposed to be your dear, old, sweet friend Mildred's steady. What you doin' walkin' as close to him as all

"Get out!" Walter protested, carelessly. "I heard all about this Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb's

such a talker I wonder he don't ruin his grandfather's business; he keeps all us cheap help standin' round

listening to him ninetenths of our time. Well, Joe told me this Russell's some kin or other to the Palmer

family, and he's got some little money of his own, and he's puttin' it into ole Palmer's trust company and

Palmer's goin' to make him a vicepresident of the company. Sort of a keep themoneyinthefamily

"Why, this Russell's supposed to be tied up to Mildred," her son explained. "When ole Palmer dies this

Russell will be his soninlaw, and all he'll haf' to do'll be to barely lift his feet and step into the ole man's

shoes. It's certainly a mighty fat handme out for this Russell! You better lay off o' there, Alice. Pick

Mrs. Adams's air of thoughtfulness had not departed. "But you say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own

Walter laughed his laugh. "Cut it out," he bade her. "Alice wouldn't run in fourth place."

Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though estimating the value of a specimen in a collection

He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to her and patted her goodnaturedly on the

shoulder. "Good ole Allie!" he said. "HONEST, you wouldn't run in fourth place. If I was you I'd never even

start in the class. That frozenface; gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours."

"Well, ain't I her brother?" he returned, seeming to be entirely serious and direct, for the moment, at least.

"_I_ like the ole girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I'm kind of sorry for her."

"But what's it all ABOUT?" Alice cried. "Simply because you met me downtown with a man I never saw

"'Why?'" he repeated, grinning. "Well, I've seen you start before, you know!" He went to the door, and

"Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at that frozenface joint. I'll get you some chop

"All right," he responded and waved a flippant adieu. "As the barber says, 'The better the advice, the worse

Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door went

through the house, she shook her head, reconsidering. "Perhaps I ought to have gone with him. It might have

kept him away from whatever dreadful people are his friendsat least for one night."

"Oh, I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy," Mrs. Adams said, soothingly; and this was what she almost always said

when either her husband or Alice expressed such misgivings. "He's odd, and he's picked up right queer

manners; but that's only because we haven't given him advantages like the other young men. But I'm sure he's

She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. "Of course

Walter could take his place with the other nice boys of the town even yet," she said. "I mean, if we could

afford to help him financially. They all belong to the country clubs and have cars and"

"Let's don't go into that any more, mama," the daughter begged her. "What's the use?"

"But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a business he's been in practically all his life,

and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he's right about it, too, of

Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour heightened by an old bitterness. "Oh, yes," she

Mrs. Adams tossed her head. "You don't suppose I'm such a fool I'd be urging him to give up something for

nothing, do you, Alice? Do you suppose I'd want him to just go 'groping around' like he was telling you? That

would be crazy, of course. Little as his work at Lamb's brings in, I wouldn't be so silly as to ask him to give it

up just on a CHANCE he could find something else. Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a

"Well, I do," her mother interrupted, decisively. "That man could make us all well off right now if he wanted

to. We could have been rich long ago if he'd ever really felt as he ought to about his family."

"You know how as well as I do," Mrs. Adams said, crossly. "I guess you haven't forgotten how he treated me

She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden violence inspired by the recollection; but Alice,

enlightened, gave utterance to a laugh of lugubrious derision. "Oh, the GLUE factory again!" she cried. "How

So often do the great projects of parents appear ignominious to their children. Mrs. Adams's conception of a

glue factory as a fairy godmother of this family was an absurd old story which Alice had never taken

seriously. She remembered that when she was about fifteen her mother began now and then to say something

to Adams about a "glue factory," rather timidly, and as a vague suggestion, but never without irritating him.

Then, for years, the preposterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly because of some explosion on the

part of Adams, when his daughter had not been present. But during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly

gone back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and also reviving her husband's irritation. Alice's

bored impression was that her mother wanted him to found, or buy, or do something, or other, about a glue

factory; and that he considered the proposal so impracticable as to be insulting. The parental conversations

took place when neither Alice nor Walter was at hand, but sometimes Alice had come in upon the conclusion

of one, to find her father in a shouting mood, and shocking the air behind him with profane monosyllables as

he departed. Mrs. Adams would be left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympathizing with the goaded

man, inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings had been renewed, she always got the brooding

and cryptic answer, "He COULD do itif he wanted to." Alice failed to comprehend the desirability of a

glue factoryto her mind a father engaged in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a

father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams knew better than her mother whether

such an enterprise would be profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for she had heard him

shouting at the end of one of these painful interviews, "You can keep up your dang talk till YOU die and _I_

There had been a culmination. Returning from church on the Sunday preceding the collapse with which

Adams's illness had begun, Alice found her mother downstairs, weeping and intimidated, while her father's

stamping footsteps were loudly audible as he strode up and down his room overhead. So were his endless

repetitions of invective loudly audible: "That woman! Oh, that woman; Oh, that danged woman!"

Mrs. Adams admitted to her daughter that it was "the old glue factory" and that her husband's wildness had

frightened her into a "solemn promise" never to mention the subject again so long as she had breath. Alice

laughed. The "glue factory" idea was not only a bore, but ridiculous, and her mother's evident seriousness

about it one of those inexplicable vagaries we sometimes discover in the people we know best. But this

Sunday rampage appeared to be the end of it, and when Adams came down to dinner, an hour later, he was

unusually cheerful. Alice was glad he had gone wild enough to settle the glue factory once and for all; and

she had ceased to think of the episode long before Friday of that week, when Adams was brought home in the

middle of the afternoon by his old employer, the "great J. A. Lamb," in the latter's car.

During the long illness the "glue factory" was completely forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh was

rueful as well as derisive now, in the kitchen, when she realized that her mother's mind again dwelt upon this

abandoned nuisance. "I thought you'd got over all that nonsense, mama," she said.

Mrs. Adams smiled, pathetically. "Of course you think it's nonsense, dearie. Young people think everything's

"Good gracious!" Alice cried. "I should think I used to hear enough about that horrible old glue factory to

"No," her mother returned patiently. "You've never heard anything about it at all."

"No. Your father and I didn't discuss it before you children. All you ever heard was when he'd get in such a

rage, after we'd been speaking of it, that he couldn't control himself when you came in. Wasn't _I_ always

"No; perhaps not. But you're talking about it now, mama, after you promised never to mention it again."

"I promised not to mention it to your father," said Mrs. Adams, gently. "I haven't mentioned it to him, have

"Ah, but if you mention it to me I'm afraid you WILL mention it to him. You always do speak of things that

you have on your mind, and you might get papa all stirred up again about" Alice paused, a light of

"No!" Alice cried. "Not a WORD, but that's what you've meant all along! You haven't spoken the words to

him, but all this urging him to change, to 'find something better to go into'it's all been about nothing on

earth but your foolish old glue factory that you know upsets him, and you gave your solemn word never to

speak to him about again! You didn't say it, but you meant itand he KNOWS that's what you meant! Oh,

Mrs. Adams, with her hands still automatically at work in the flooded dishpan, turned to face her daughter.

"I say, What do I ask for myself? Do you suppose _I_ want anything? Don't you know I'd be perfectly content

on your father's present income if I were the only person to be considered? What do I care about any pleasure

for myself? I'd be willing never to have a maid again; _I_ don't mind doing the work. If we didn't have any

children I'd be glad to do your father's cooking and the housework and the washing and ironing, too, for the

rest of my life. I wouldn't care. I'm a poor cook and a poor housekeeper; I don't do anything well; but it would

"It's about this," said Mrs. Adams, swallowing. "You and Walter are a new generation and you ought to have

the same as the rest of the new generation get. Poor Walterasking you to go to the movies and a Chinese

restaurant: the best he had to offer! Don't you suppose _I_ see how the poor boy is deteriorating? Don't you

suppose I know what YOU have to go through, Alice? And when I think of that man upstairs" The

agitated voice grew louder. "When I think of him and know that nothing in the world but his

STUBBORNNESS keeps my children from having all they want and what they OUGHT to have, do you

suppose I'm going to hold myself bound to keep to the absolute letter of a silly promise he got from me by

behaving like a crazy man? I can't! I can't do it! No mother could sit by and see him lock up a horn of plenty

"Oh, goodness, goodness me!" Alice protested. "We aren't precisely 'starving,' are we?"

Mrs. Adams began to weep. "It's just the same. Didn't I see how flushed and pretty you looked, this

afternoon, after you'd been walking with this young man that's come here? Do you suppose he'd LOOK at a

girl like Mildred Palmer if you had what you ought to have? Do you suppose he'd be going into business with

"Good heavens, mama; you're worse than Walter: I just barely know the man! DON'T be so absurd!"

"Yes, I'm always 'absurd,' " Mrs. Adams moaned. "All I can do is cry, while your father sits upstairs, and his

But Alice interrupted with a peal of desperate laughter. "Oh, that 'horn of plenty!' Do come down to earth,

mama. How can you call a GLUE factory, that doesn't exist except in your mind, a 'horn of plenty'? Do let's

"It COULD be a horn of plenty," the tearful Mrs, Adams insisted. "It could! You don't understand a thing

"Well, I'm willing," Alice said, with tired skepticism. "Make me understand, then. Where'd you ever get the

Mrs. Adams withdrew her hands from the water, dried them on a towel, and then wiped her eyes with a

handkerchief. "Your father could make a fortune if he wanted to," she said, quietly. "At least, I don't say a

"Yes, I've heard that before, mama, and you think he could make it out of a glue factory. What I'm asking is:

"How? Why, by making glue and selling it. Don't you know how bad most glue is when you try to mend

anything? A good glue is one of the rarest things there is; and it would just sell itself, once it got started.

Alice was not interested. "What of it? I suppose probably anybody could make it if they wanted to."

"I SAID you didn't know anything about it. Nobody else could make it. Your father knows a formula for

"It's a secret formula. It isn't even down on paper. It's worth any amount of money."

"'Any amount?'" Alice said, remaining incredulous. "Why hasn't papa sold it then?"

"He got it before you were born, just after we were married. I didn't think much about it then: it wasn't till

"Yes, but how did papa get it?" Alice began to feel a little more curious about this possible buried treasure.

"Partly," Mrs. Adams said, looking somewhat preoccupied. "He and another man invented it."

"I don't think he left any family," Mrs. Adams said. "Anyhow, it belongs to your father. At least it belongs to

him as much as it does to any one else. He's got an absolutely perfect right to do anything he wants to with it,

and it would make us all comfortable if he'd do what I want him toand he KNOWS it would, too!"

Alice shook her head pityingly. "Poor mama!" she said. "Of course he knows it wouldn't do anything of the

"He would, you say?" her mother cried. "That only shows how little you know him!"

"Poor mama!" Alice said again, soothingly. "If papa were like what you say he is, he'd bewhy, he'd be

Mrs. Adams agreed with a vehemence near passion. "You're right about him for once: that's just what he is!

He sits up there in his stubbornness and lets us slave here in the kitchen when if he wanted toif he'd so

"Oh, come, now!" Alice laughed. "You can't build even a glue factory with just one little finger."

Mrs. Adams seemed about to reply that finding fault with a figure of speech was beside the point; but a

ringing of the front door bell forestalled the retort. "Now, who do you suppose that is?" she wondered aloud,

"No, he wouldn't be coming this evening," Alice said. "Probably it's the great J. A. Lamb: he usually stops for

She tossed her apron off, and as she went through the house her expression was thoughtful. She was thinking

vaguely about the glue factory and wondering if there might be "something in it" after all. If her mother was

right about the rich possibilities of Adams's secretbut that was as far as Alice's speculations upon the

matter went at this time: they were checked, partly by the thought that her father probably hadn't enough

money for such an enterprise, and partly by the fact that she had arrived at the front door.

The fine old gentleman revealed when she opened the door was probably the last great merchant in America

to wear the chin beard. White as white frost, it was trimmed short with exquisite precision, while his upper lip

and the lower expanses of his cheeks were clean and rosy from fresh shaving. With this trim white chin

beard, the white waistcoat, the white tie, the suit of fine gray cloth, the broad and brilliantly polished black

shoes, and the widebrimmed gray felt hat, here was a man who had found his style in the seventies of the

last century, and thenceforth kept it. Files of old magazines of that period might show him, in woodcut, as,

"Type of Boston Merchant"; Nast might have drawn him as an honest statesman. He was eighty, hale and

sturdy, not aged; and his quick blue eyes, still unflecked, and as brisk as a boy's, saw everything.

"Well, well, well!" he said, heartily. "You haven't lost any of your good looks since last week, I see, Miss

Alice, so I guess I'm to take it you haven't been worrying over your daddy. The young feller's getting along

"Well, I don't know but I might." He turned to call toward twin disks of light at the curb, "Be out in a minute,

Billy"; and the silhouette of a chauffeur standing beside a car could be seen to salute in response, as the old

gentleman stepped into the hall. "You don't suppose your daddy's receiving callers yet, is he?"

"He's a good deal stronger than he was when you were here last week, but I'm afraid he's not very

"'Presentable?'" The old man echoed her jovially. "Pshaw! I've seen lots of sick folks. _I_ know what they

look like and how they love to kind of nest in among a pile of old blankets and wrappers. Don't you worry

"Of course he wouldif" Alice hesitated; then said quickly," Of course he'd love to see you and he's

She ran up the stairs ahead of him, and had time to snatch the crocheted wrap from her father's shoulders.

Swathed as usual, he was sitting beside a table, reading the evening paper; but when his employer appeared in

"Sit still!" the old gentleman shouted. "What do you mean? Don't you know you're weak as a cat? D'you

think a man can be sick as long as you have and NOT be weak as a cat? What you trying to do the polite with

Adams gratefully protracted the handshake that accompanied these inquiries. "This is certainly mighty fine of

you, Mr. Lamb," he said. "I guess Alice has told you how much our whole family appreciate your coming

here so regularly to see how this old bag o' bones was getting along. Haven't you, Alice?"

"Stay right here, Miss Alice; I'm not even going to sit down. I know how it upsets sick folks when people

"You don't upset me," Adams said. "I'll feel a lot better for getting a glimpse of you, Mr. Lamb."

The visitor's laugh was husky, but hearty and re assuring, like his voice in speaking. "That's the way all my

boys blarney me, Miss Alice," he said. "They think I'll make the work lighter on 'em if they can get me kind

of flattered up. You just tell your daddy it's no use; he doesn't get on MY soft side, pretending he likes to see

"Oh, I'm not so sick any more," Adams said. "I expect to be back in my place ten days from now at the

"Well, now, don't hurry it, Virgil; don't hurry it. You take your time; take your time."

This brought to Adams's lips a feeble smile not lacking in a kind of vanity, as feeble. "Why?" he asked. "I

His employer's response was another husky laugh. "Well, well, well!" he cried, and patted Adams's shoulder

with a strong pink hand. "Listen to this young feller, Miss Alice, will you! He thinks we can't get along

without him a minute! Yes, sir, this daddy of yours believes the whole works 'll just take and run down if he

isn't there to keep 'em wound up. I always suspected he thought a good deal of himself, and now I know he

Adams looked troubled. "Well, I don't like to feel that my salary's going on with me not earning it."

"Listen to him, Miss Alice! Wouldn't you think, now, he'd let me be the one to worry about that? Why, on my

word. if your daddy had his way, _I_ wouldn't be anywhere. He'd take all my worrying and everything else

"It seems to me I've been soldiering on you a pretty long while, Mr. Lamb," the convalescent said,

querulously. "I don't feel right about it; but I'll be back in ten days. You'll see."

The old man took his hand in parting. "All right; we'll see, Virgil. Of course we do need you, seriously

speaking; but we don't need you so bad we'll let you come down there before you're fully fit and able." He

went to the door. "You hear, Miss Alice? That's what I wanted to make the old feller understand, and what I

want you to kind of enforce on him. The old place is there waiting for him, and it'd wait ten years if it took

She went down the stairs with him, and he continued to impress this upon her until he had gone out of the

front door. And even after that, the husky voice called back from the darkness, as he went to his car, "Don't

forget, Miss Alice; let him take his own time. We always want him, but we want him to get good and well

When she closed the door her mother came from the farther end of the "livingroom," where there was no

"I can't help liking that old man, mama," she said. "He always sounds sowell, so solid and honest and

But Mrs. Adams failed in sympathy upon this point. "He didn't say anything about raising your father's

She would have said more, but Alice, indisposed to listen, began to whistle, ran up the stairs, and went to sit

with her father. She found him brighteyed with the excitement a first caller brings into a slow

convalescence: his cheeks showed actual hints of colour; and he was smiling tremulously as he filled and lit

his pipe. She brought the crocheted scarf and put it about his shoulders again, then took a chair near him.

"I believe seeing Mr. Lamb did do you good. papa," she said. "I sort of thought it might, and that's why I let

Adams exhaled a breathy "Ha!" with the smoke from his pipe as he waved the match to extinguish it. "That's

fine," he said. "The smoke I had before dinner didn't taste the way it used to, and I kind of wondered if I'd lost

my liking for tobacco, but this one seems to be all right. You bet it did me good to see J. A. Lamb! He's the

biggest man that's ever lived in this town or ever will live here; and you can take all the Governors and

Senators or anything they've raised here, and put 'em in a pot with him, and they won't come out

And to think as big a man as that, with all his interests and everything he's got on his mindto think he'd

never let anything prevent him from coming here once every week to ask how I was getting along, and then

walk right upstairs and kind of CALL on me, as it were well, it makes me sort of feel as if I wasn't so much

Adams chuckled faintly upon his pipestem, what vanity he had seeming to be further stimulated by his

daughter's applause. "I guess there aren't a whole lot of people in this town that could claim J. A. showed that

much interest in 'em," he said. "Of course I don't set up to believe it's all because of merit, or anything like

that. He'd do the same for anybody else that'd been with the company as long as I have, but still it IS

something to be with the company that long and have him show he appreciates it."

"Yes, sir," Adams said, reflectively. "Yes, sir, I guess that's so. And besides, it all goes to show the kind of a

man he is. Simon pure, that's what that man is, Alice. Simon pure! There's never been anybody work for him

that didn't respect him more than they did any other man in the world, I guess. And when you work for him

you know he respects you, too. Right from the start you get the feeling that J. A. puts absolute confidence in

you; and that's mighty stimulating: it makes you want to show him he hasn't misplaced it. There's great big

moral values to the way a man like him gets you to feeling about your relations with the business: it ain't all

He was silent for a time, then returned with increasing enthusiasm to this theme, and Alice was glad to see so

much renewal of life in him; he had not spoken with a like cheerful vigour since before his illness. The visit

of his idolized great man had indeed been good for him, putting new spirit into him; and liveliness of the

body followed that of the spirit. His improvement carried over the night: he slept well and awoke late,

declaring that he was "pretty near a well man and ready for business right now." Moreover, having slept

again in the afternoon, he dressed and went down to dinner, leaning but lightly on Alice, who conducted him.

"My! but you and your mother have been at it with your scrubbing and dusting!" he said, as they came

through the "livingroom." "I don't know I ever did see the house so spick and span before!" His glance fell

upon a few carnations in a vase, and he chuckled admiringly. "Flowers, too! So THAT'S what you coaxed

Other embellishments brought forth his comment when he had taken his old seat at the head of the small

dinnertable. "Why, I declare, Alice!" he exclaimed. "I been so busy looking at all the spick

andspanishness after the housecleaning, and the flowers out in the parlour'livingroom' I suppose you

want me to call it, if I just GOT to be fashionable I been so busy studying over all this soandso, I

declare I never noticed YOU till this minute! My, but you ARE all dressed up! What's goin' on? What's it

"Don't you see, papa? It's in honour of your coming downstairs again, of course."

But Walter looked sidelong at his father, and gave forth his sly and knowing laugh. "Neither would I!" he

Adams lifted his eyebrows jocosely. "You're jealous, are you, sonny? You don't want the old man to think our

"Go on thinkin' it's over you," Walter retorted, amused. "Go on and think it. It'll do you good."

"Of course I'll think it," Adams said. "It isn't anybody's birthday. Certainly the decorations are on account of

"I was walkin' out on Monday with my sweet thing. She's my neat thing, My sweet thing: I'll go round on

"Walter!" his mother cried. "WHERE do you learn such vulgar songs?" However, she seemed not greatly

"So that's it, Alice!" said Adams. "Playing the hypocrite with your old man, are you? It's some new beau, is

"I only wish it were," she said, calmly. "No. It's just what I said: it's all for you. dear."

"Don't let her con you," Walter advised his father. "She's got expectations. You hang around downstairs a

But the prophecy failed, though Adams went to his own room without waiting to test it. No one came.

Alice stayed in the "livingroom" until halfpast nine, when she went slowly upstairs. Her mother, almost

"Mustn't mind what?" Alice asked, and then, as she went on her way, laughed scornfully. "What utter

Next day she cut the stems of the rather scant show of carnations and refreshed them with new water. At

dinner, her father, still in high spirits, observed that she had again "dressed up" in honour of his second

descent of the stairs; and Walter repeated his fragment of objectionable song; but these jocularities were

rendered pointless by the eventless evening that followed; and in the morning the carnations began to appear

Alice gave them a long look, then threw them away; and neither Walter nor her father was inspired to any

rallying by her plain costume for that evening. Mrs. Adams was visibly depressed.

When Alice finished helping her mother with the dishes, she went outdoors and sat upon the steps of the little

front veranda. The night, gentle with warm air from the south, surrounded her pleasantly, and the perpetual

smoke was thinner. Now that the furnaces of dwellinghouses were no longer fired, life in that city had

begun to be less like life in a railway tunnel; people were aware of summer in the air, and in the thickened

foliage of the shadetrees, and in the sky. Stars were unveiled by the passing of the denser smoke fogs, and

tonight they could be seen clearly; they looked warm and near. Other girls sat upon verandas and stoops in

Alice could hear them from time to time; thin sopranos persistent in laughter that fell dismally upon her ears.

She had set no lines or nets herself, and what she had of "expectations," as Walter called them, were

vanished. For Alice was experienced; and one of the conclusions she drew from her experience was that

when a man says, "I'd take you for anything you wanted me to," he may mean it or, he may not; but, if he

does, he will not postpone the first opportunity to say something more. Little affairs, once begun, must be

But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. When she tossed away the carnations she likewise tossed away

her thoughts of that young man. She had been like a boy who sees upon the street, some distance before him,

a bit of something round and glittering, a possible dime. He hopes it is a dime, and, until he comes near

enough to make sure, he plays that it is a dime. In his mind he has an adventure with it: he buys something

delightful. If he picks it up, discovering only some tinfoil which has happened upon a round shape, he feels

So Alice was dull with the loss of an adventure; and when the laughter of other girls reached her,

intermittently, she had not sprightliness enough left in her to be envious of their gaiety. Besides, these

neighbours were ineligible even for her envy, being of another caste; they could never know a dance at the

Palmers', except remotely, through a newspaper. Their laughter was for the encouragement of snappy young

men of the stores and offices downtown, clerks, bookkeepers, what notsome of them probably graduates

Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway mounting between close walls to disappear in

the upper shadows, her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was a picture often

in her reverie; and sometimes it came suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts, as if it

leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still

roaming the world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his family burial lot: "I wonder if I

The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the streetlamp revealed a tall and easy figure

approaching from the north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given Russell up and he came.

Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving. "I'm glad it happened so," she said. "Let's stay

out here, shall we? Do you think it's too provincial to sit on a girl's front steps with her?"

"'Provincial?' Why, it's the very best of our institutions," he returned, taking his place beside her. "At least, I

"I'm glad to be so accurate; I've spent two evenings wanting to come, Miss Adams, instead of doing what I

"Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow citizens are immensely hospitable to a newcomer."

"Oh, no," Alice said. "We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you find yourself charmed?"

"One was a men's dinner," he explained. "Mr. Palmer seemed to think I ought to be shown to the principal

"Oh, DID she!" Alice said, sharply, but she recovered herself in the same instant, and laughed. "She wanted

"I don't know. At all events, I shouldn't give myself out to be so much feted by your 'fellow citizens,' after

all, seeing these were both done by my relatives, the Palmers. However, there are others to follow, I'm afraid.

"I rather doubt it," Alice said, slowly. "Mildred's dance was almost the only evening I've gone out since my

father's illness began. He seemed better that day; so I went. He was better the other day when he wanted those

cigars. He's very much up and down." She paused. "I'd almost forgotten that Mildred is your cousin."

She laughed. "No. You wouldn't. I mean it's an advantage over the rest of us who might like to compete for

some of your time; and the worst of it is we can't accuse her of being unfair about it. We can't prove she

showed any trickiness in having you for a cousin. Whatever else she might plan to do with you, she didn't

"The 'rest of you!' " he laughed. "It's going to mean a great deal of suffering!"

"No, not now. I've taken an apartment. I'm going to live here; I'm permanent. Didn't I tell you?"

"I think I'd heard somewhere that you were," she said. "Do you think you'll like living here?"

"Why, good gracious!" she cried. "Haven't you got the most perfect creature in town for youryour cousin?

SHE expects to make you like living here, doesn't she? How could you keep from liking it, even if you tried

"Well, you see, there's such a lot of circumstances," he explained; "I'm not sure I'll like getting back into a

business again. I suppose most of the men of my age in the country have been going through the same

"You were in the War?" she asked, quickly, and as quickly answered herself, "Of course you were!'

"I was a leftover; they only let me out about four months ago," he said. "It's quite a shakeup trying to settle

"Oh, yes; but I didn't get up to the front much only two or three times, and then just for a day or so. I was

Russell was amused. "Well, you see," he informed her, "as it happened, we had at least several other majors

"You're related to the Palmers. Don't you notice they always affect the pretty grand?"

"Yes, you seem to be the most successful one they've got!" Alice said, lightly. "You certainly do belong to

"But you've just excused me for that," he protested. "You said nobody could be blamed for my being their

She shook her head again. "Let's keep first to the kind of man you are. I'm glad you were in the War."

"Oh, I don't know." She was quiet a moment, for she was thinking that here she spoke the truth: his service

put about him a little glamour that helped to please her with him. She had been pleased with him during their

walk; pleased with him on his own account; and now that pleasure was growing keener. She looked at him,

and though the light in which she saw him was little more than starlight, she saw that he was looking steadily

at her with a kindly and smiling seriousness. All at once it seemed to her that the night air was sweeter to

breathe, as if a distant fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to her. She smiled back to him, and said,

"You forget everything;" said Alice. "You told me what kind of a girl I am. You seemed to think you'd taken

She mocked him. "'I don't know; I've often wondered!' What kind of a girl does Mildred tell you I am? What

"Because she's such a perfect creature and I'm such an imperfect one. Perfect creatures have the most perfect

"Oh, yes, they remain perfectly perfect," she assured him. "That's because they never go into details. They're

not so vulgar as to come right out and TELL that you've been in jail for stealing chickens. They just look

absentminded and say in a low voice, 'Oh, very; but I scarcely think you'd like her particularly'; and then

His smile had disappeared. "Yes," he said, somewhat ruefully. "That does sound like Mildred. You certainly

"Not myself," Alice said. "I don't know myself at all. I got to wondering about thatabout who I wasthe

He uttered an exclamation, and added, explaining it, "You do give a man a chance to be fatuous, though! As

"It was," Alice informed him, coolly. "I was wondering what I wanted to make you think of me, in case I

"You mustn't be astonished," she said. "What I decided then was that I would probably never dare to be just

myself with younot if I cared to have you want to see me againand yet here I am, just being myself after

"You ARE the cheeriest series of shocks," Russell exclaimed, whereupon Alice added to the series.

"Tell me: Is it a good policy for me to follow with you?" she asked, and he found the mockery in her voice

delightful. "Would you advise me to offer you shocks as a sort of vacation from suavity?"

"Suavity" was yet another sketch of Mildred; a recognizable one, or it would not have been humorous. In

Alice's hands, so dexterous in this work, her statuesque friend was becoming as ridiculous as a fine figure of

But the lively young sculptress knew better than to overdo: what she did must appear to spring all from mirth;

so she laughed as if unwillingly, and said, "I MUSTN'T laugh at Mildred! In the first place, she's youryour

cousin. And in the second place, she's not meant to be funny; it isn't right to laugh at really splendid people

who take themselves seriously. In the third place, you won't come again if I do."

"'Whatever I do?' " she echoed. "That sounds as if you thought I COULD be terrific! Be careful; there's one

"Then let's both be mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify

"I'll not tell you thatyet," she said. "In fact" She paused, reflecting, with her head to one side. "In fact,

I won't tell you not to come, probably, until I see that's what you want me to tell you. I'll let you out

"That arrangement suits me," Russell returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become

serious. "It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can comeoh, not whenever I want to; I

"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "But before I say you can come 'pretty often,' I'd like to know how much

of my time you'd need if you did come 'whenever you want to'; and of course you wouldn't dare make any

"Lean toward me a little," Alice said. "I want you to understand." And as he obediently bent his head near

hers, she inclined toward him as if to whisper; then, in a halfshout, she cried,

"Well, for the first reason, because you have such gaieties as that one. I should think your father would

"You mean by that," Alice inquired, "I keep my family cheerful with my amusing little ways?"

For a moment he puzzled over her meaning, then saw it, and was more delighted with her than ever. "I can

"It's the question I asked you about whether you were going to like living here," she said. "You're about to

"More telepathy!" he exclaimed. "Yes, that was it, precisely. I suppose the same thing's been said to you so

"No, it hasn't," Alice said, a little confused for the moment. "Not at all. I meant" She paused, then asked

"See here," he said. "I did mean it. I told you it was being pretty difficult for me to settle down to things

again. Well, it's more difficult than you know, but I think I can pull through in fair spirits if I can see a girl

"All right," she said, in a businesslike tone. "I've told you that you can if you want to."

"That's splendid!" he said. "You'll walk with me day after tomorrow, and the night after that I'll see you at

But this fell rather chillingly upon Alice. "Miss Lamb's dance? Which Miss Lamb?" she asked.

Alice did not respond at once, and he urged her again: "Please do promise you'll be there."

"No, I can't promise anything," she said, slowly. "You see, for one thing, papa might not be well enough."

"But if he is?" said Russell. "If he is you'll surely come, won't you? Or, perhaps" He hesitated, then

went on quickly, "I don't know the rules in this place yet, and different places have different rules; but do you

have to have a chaperone, or don't girls just go to dances with the men sometimes? If they do, would

"Don't you think your relatives Aren't you expected to go with Mildredand Mrs. Palmer?"

"Not necessarily. It doesn't matter what I might be expected to do," he said. "Will you go with me?"

"Papa's not really any better," Alice said, huskily. "I'm too worried about him to go to a dance." Her voice

sounded emotional, genuinely enough; there was something almost like a sob in it. "Let's talk of other things,

He acquiesced gently; but Mrs. Adams, who had been listening to the conversation at the open window, just

overhead, did not hear him. She had correctly interpreted the sob in Alice's voice, and, trembling with sudden

He had not undressed, and he sat beside the table, smoking his pipe and reading his newspaper. Upon his

forehead the lines in that old pattern, the historical map of his troubles, had grown a little vaguer lately;

relaxed by the complacency of a man who not only finds his health restored, but sees the days before him

As his wife came in, closing the door behind her, he looked up cheerfully, "Well, mother," he said, "what's

Adams lowered his newspaper to his knee and peered over his spectacles at her. She had remained by the

door, standing, and the great greenish shadow of the small lampshade upon his table revealed her but

"Don't worry: I'm going to tell you," she said, her grimness not relaxed. "There's matter enough, Virgil

With that, the markings on his brows began to emerge again in all their sharpness; the old pattern reappeared.

"Oh, my, my!" he lamented. "I thought maybe we were all going to settle down to a little peace for a while.

Like some ready old machine, always in order, his irritability responded immediately and automatically to her

emotion. "How in thunder could I think what it's about, or who it's for? SAY it, and get it over!"

"Oh, I'll 'say' it," she promised, ominously. "What I've come to ask you is, How much longer do you expect

She came at him, fiercely accusing. "You know well enough what old man, Virgil Adams! That old man who

"Yes; 'Mister Lamb!' " She mocked his voice. "What other old man would I be likely to mean except J. A.

"What's he been doing now?" her husband inquired, satirically. "Where'd you get something new against him

"Just this!" she cried. "The other night when that man was here, if I'd known how he was going to make my

Adams leaned back in his chair as though her absurdity had eased his mind. "Oh, I see," he said. "You've just

gone plain crazy. That's the only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case."

"Hasn't that man made us all suffer every day of our lives?" she demanded. "I'd like to know why it is that my

"Because you keep on working for him! Because you keep on letting him hand out whatever miserable little

pittance he chooses to give you; that's why! It's as if he were some horrible old Juggernaut and I had to see

"You'd better listen to me," she admonished him. "You might be sorry you didn't, in case he ever tried to set

At this, Adams slapped the newspaper down upon his knee. "Oh, the devil! What's it matter what you think of

"It had better matter to you!" she cried. "Do you suppose I'm going to submit forever to him and his family

Mrs. Adams came out with it. "That snippy little Henrietta Lamb has always snubbed Alice every time she's

ever had the chance. She's followed the lead of the other girls; they've always all of 'em been jealous of Alice

because she dared to try and be happy, and because she's showier and better looking than they are, even

though you do give her only about thirtyfive cents a year to do it on! They've all done everything on earth

they could to drive the young men away from her and belittle her to 'em; and this mean little Henrietta Lamb's

"What for?"Adams asked, incredulously. "Why should she or anybody else pick on Alice?"

"'Why?' 'What for?'" his wife repeated with a greater vehemence. "Do YOU ask me such a thing as that? Do

"Then I'll tell you," she said in a cold fury. "It's on account of you, Virgil, and nothing else in the world."

"Quit your palavering and evading," she said. "A crowd of girls like that, when they get a pretty girl like

Alice among them, they act just like wild beasts. They'll tear her to pieces, or else they'll chase her and run

her out, because they know if she had half a chance she'd outshine 'em. They can't do that to a girl like

Mildred Palmer because she's got money and family to back her. Now you listen to me, Virgil Adams: the

way the world is now, money IS family. Alice would have just as much 'family' as any of 'em every single

"Yes, you did!" she cried. "Twentyfive years ago when we were starting and this town was smaller, you and

I could have gone with any of 'em if we'd tried hard enough. Look at the people we knew then that do hold

their heads up alongside of anybody in this town! WHY can they? Because the men of those families made

money and gave their children everything that makes life worth living! Why can't we hold our heads up?

Because those men passed you in the race. They went up the ladder, and youyou're still a clerk down at

"You leave that out, please," he said. "I thought you were going to tell me something Henrietta Lamb had

"You BET I'm going to tell you," she assured him, vehemently. "But first I'm telling WHY she does it. It's

because you've never given Alice any backing nor any background, and they all know they can do anything

If she had the hundredth part of what THEY have to fall back on she'd have made 'em sing a mighty different

"Oh, my heavens, but you're slow!" Mrs. Adams moaned. "Look here! You remember how practically all the

nicest boys in this town used to come here a few years ago. Why, they were all crazy over her; and the girls

HAD to be nice to her then. Look at the difference now! There'll be a whole month go by and not a young

man come to call on her, let alone send her candy or flowers, or ever think of TAKING her any place and yet

she's prettier and brighter than she was when they used to come. It isn't the child's fault she couldn't hold 'em,

is it? Poor thing, SHE tried hard enough! I suppose you'd say it was her fault, though."

"Because as they got older a good many of 'em began to think more about money; that's one thing. Money's at

the bottom of it all, for that matter. Look at these country clubs and all such things: the other girls' families

belong and we don't, and Alice don't; and she can't go unless somebody takes her, and nobody does any more.

Look at the other girls' houses, and then look at our house, so shabby and oldfashioned she'd be pretty near

ashamed to ask anybody to come in and sit down nowadays! Look at her clothesoh, yes; you think you

shelled out a lot for that little coat of hers and the hat and skirt she got last March; but it's nothing. Some of

these girls nowadays spend more than your whole salary on their clothes. And what jewellery has she got? A

plated watch and two or three little pins and rings of the kind people's maids wouldn't wear now. Good Lord,

Virgil Adams, wake up! Don't sit there and tell me you don't know things like this mean SUFFERING for the

He had begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat

alleviated the tedium caused by her racking voice. "Oh, my, my!" he muttered. "OH, my, my!"

"Yes, I should think you WOULD say 'Oh, my, my!' " she took him up, loudly. "That doesn't help things

much! If you ever wanted to DO anything about it, the poor child might see some gleam of hope in her life.

You don't CARE for her, that's the trouble; you don't care a single thing about her."

"No; you don't. Why, even with your miserable little salary you could have given her more than you have.

You're the closest man I ever knew: it's like pulling teeth to get a dollar out of you for her, now and then, and

yet you hide some away, every month or so, in some wretched little investment or other. You"

"Look here, now," he interrupted, angrily. "You look here! If I didn't put a little by whenever I could, in a

bond or something, where would you be if anything happened to me? The insurance doctors never passed me;

"Yes, we have!" she cried. "We ought to have something to go on with right now, too, when we need it. Do

you suppose these snippets would treat Alice the way they do if she could afford to ENTERTAIN? They

leave her out of their dinners and dances simply because they know she can't give any dinners and dances to

leave them out of! They know she can't get EVEN, and that's the whole story! That's why Henrietta Lamb's

Adams had gone back to his rubbing of his knees. "Oh, my, my!" he said. "WHAT thing?"

She told him. "Your dear, grand, old Mister Lamb's Henrietta has sent out invitations for a large partya

LARGE one. Everybody that is anybody in this town is asked, you can be sure. There's a very fine young

man, a Mr. Russell, has just come to town, and he's interested in Alice, and he's asked her to go to this dance

with him. Well, Alice can't accept. She can't go with him, though she'd give anything in the world to do it. Do

you understand? The reason she can't is because Henrietta Lamb hasn't invited her. Do you want to know

why Henrietta hasn't invited her? It's because she knows Alice can't get even, and because she thinks Alice

ought to be snubbed like this on account of only being the daughter of one of her grandfather's clerks. I

"That's your sweet old employer," his wife cried, tauntingly. "That's your dear, kind, grand old Mister Lamb!

Alice has been left out of a good many smaller things, like big dinners and little dances, but this is just the

same as serving her notice that she's out of everything! And it's all done by your dear, grand old"

"Look here!" Adams exclaimed. "I don't want to hear any more of that! You can't hold him responsible for

everything his grandchildren do, I guess! He probably doesn't know a thing about it. You don't suppose he's

But she burst out at him passionately. "Suppose you trouble YOUR head about it! You'd better, Virgil

Adams! You'd better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid!

She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang

around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you

At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. "Now,

"What do _I_ care for my word?" she cried, and, sinking to the floor at his feet, rocked herself back and forth

there. "Do you suppose I'll let my 'word' keep me from struggling for a little happiness for my children? It

won't, I tell you; it won't! I'll struggle for that till I die! I will, till I die till I die!"

He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, shaking all over, he got up and began with uncertain steps

Adams again fell back upon his last solace: he walked, half staggering, up and down the room, swearing in a

His wife had repetitions of her own, and she kept at them in a voice that rose to a higher and higher pitch, like

She ended in a scream; and Alice, coming up the stairs, thanked heaven that Russell had gone. She ran to her

Adams looked at her, and gesticulated shakily at the convulsive figure on the floor. "Can you get her out of

Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet; and the stricken woman threw her arms passionately about her

Alice, moving toward the door, halted, and looked at him blankly, over her mother's shoulder. "What is it,

He stretched out his arm and pointed at her. "She saysshe says you have a mean life, Alice."

Mrs. Adams turned in her daughter's arms. "Do you hear her lie? Couldn't you be as brave as she is, Virgil?"

He came toward her. "Look at me!" he said. "Things like this dance nowis that so hard to bear?"

Alice tried to say, "No, papa," again, but she couldn't. Suddenly and in spite of herself she began to cry.

He waved at them fiercely. "Get out of here!" he said. "Both of you! Get out of here!"

As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far forward, so that his haggard face was concealed from

them. Then, as Alice closed the door, he began to rub his knees again, muttering, "Oh, my, my! OH, my,

There shone a jovial sun overhead on the appointed "day after tomorrow"; a day not cool yet of a

temperature friendly to walkers; and the air, powdered with sunshine, had so much life in it that it seemed to

sparkle. To Arthur Russell this was a day like a gay companion who pleased him well; but the gay companion

at his side pleased him even better. She looked her prettiest, chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, and

"You look so happy it's easy to see your father's taken a good turn," he told her.

"Yes; he has this afternoon, at least," she said. "I might have other reasons for looking cheerful, though."

"Exactly!" she said, giving him a sweet look just enough mocked by her laughter. "For instance!"

In this style, which uses a word for any meaning that quick look and colourful gesture care to endow it with,

she was an expert; and she carried it merrily on, leaving him at liberty (one of the great values of the style) to

choose as he would how much or how little she meant. He was content to supply mere cues, for although he

had little coquetry of his own, he had lately begun to find that the only interesting moments in his life were

those during which Alice Adams coquetted with him. Happily, these obliging moments extended themselves

to cover all the time he spent with her. However serious she might seem, whatever appeared to be her topic,

He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull evening ahead; and reverted, afterwhile, to a forbidden

She flushed a little. "Now, now!" she chided him. "We agreed not to say any more about that."

Alice shook her head. "He won't be better tomorrow. He always has a bad day after a good one especially

"But if this time it should be different," Russell persisted; "wouldn't you be willing to come if he's better by

She waved her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams

"Well, I thought I'd made it clear that it looks fairly bleak to me if you don't go."

"It's the simple truth," he insisted. "I don't care a great deal about dances these days; and if you aren't going to

"Unfortunately, I can't. I'm afraid I'm supposed to be the excuse. Miss Lamb, in her capacity as a friend of my

At that his face showed an increase of colour. "I suppose just on account of my being a cousin of Mildred's

"Of course! You'll have a beautiful time, too. Henrietta'll see that you have somebody to dance with besides

"But what I want somebody to see is that I dance with you! And perhaps your father"

"Wait!" she said, frowning as if she debated whether or not to tell him something of import; then, seeming to

decide affirmatively, she asked: "Would you really like to know the truth about it?"

"It hasn't anything to do with you at all," she said. "Of course I'd like to go with you and to dance with

youthough you don't seem to realize that you wouldn't be permitted much time with me."

"Never mind!" she laughed. "Of course you wouldn't. But even if papa should be better tomorrow, I doubt if

"Yes. The truth is, I don't get on with Henrietta Lamb. As a matter of fact, I dislike her, and of course that

means she dislikes me. I should never think of asking her to anything I gave, and I really wonder she asks me

to things SHE gives." This was a new inspiration; and Alice, beginning to see her way out of a perplexity,

wished that she had thought of it earlier: she should have told him from the first that she and Henrietta had a

feud, and consequently exchanged no invitations. Moreover, there was another thing to beset her with little

anxieties: she might better not have told him from the first, as she had indeed told him by intimation, that she

was the pampered daughter of an indulgent father, presumably able to indulge her; for now she must

elaborately keep to the part. Veracity is usually simple; and its opposite, to be successful, should be as

simple; but practitioners of the opposite are most often impulsive, like Alice; and, like her, they become

"It wouldn't be very nice for me to go to her house," Alice went on, "when I wouldn't want her in mine. I've

never admired her. I've always thought she was lacking in some things most people are supposed to be

equipped withfor instance, a certain feeling about the death of a father who was always pretty decent to his

daughter. Henrietta's father died just, eleven months and twentyseven days before your cousin's dance, but

"Blackguarding her to you when she's giving a big party for you! Just the way Henrietta would blackguard

me to youheaven knows what she WOULDN'T say if she talked about me to you! It would be fair, of

course, butwell, I'd rather she didn't!" And with that, Alice let her pretty hand, in its white glove, rest upon

his arm for a moment; and he looked down at it, not unmoved to see it there. "I want to be unfair about just

this," she said, letting a troubled laughter tremble through her appealing voice as she spoke. "I won't take

advantage of her with anybody, except just you! I'd a little rather you didn't hear anybody blackguard me,

It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint pathos altogether genuine; and Russell found himself

suddenly wanting to shout at her, "Oh, you DEAR!" Nothing else seemed adequate; but he controlled the

"No, no!" she cried, and went on, again accompanying her words with little tremulous runs of laughter. "You

don't understand this town yet. You'll be surprised when you do; we're different.

We talk about one another fearfully! Haven't I just proved it, the way I've been going for Henrietta? Of course

I didn't say anything really very terrible about her, but that's only because I don't follow that practice the way

most of the others do. They don't stop with the worst of the truth they can find: they make UP thingsyes,

"What difference would it make if they did?" he inquired, cheerfully. "I'd know they weren't true."

"Even if you did know that, they'd make a difference," she said. "Oh, yes, they would! It's too bad, but we

don't like anything quite so well that's had specks on it, even if we've wiped the specks off;it's just that

much spoiled, and some things are all spoiled the instant they're the least bit spoiled. What a man thinks

about a girl, for instance. Do you want to have what you think about me spoiled, Mr. Russell?"

"Because it never can be. Men don't change their minds about one another often: they make it quite an event

when they do, and talk about it as if something important had happened. But a girl only has to go downtown

with a shoestring unfastened, and every man who sees her will change his mind about her. Don't you know

"WellI'll be awfully worried if you give 'em a chance to tell you that I'm too lazy to tie my shoestrings!"

"Just about! Whatever they hope will get results." She shook her head wisely. "Oh, yes; we do that here!"

"But suppose," he said, looking at her whimsically; "suppose I wouldn't mind anythingso long as it's

She courtesied. "Oh, pretty enough! But a girl who's talked about has a weakness that's often a fatal one."

"Don't you see? If Henriettaor Mildredor any of 'emor some of their mothersoh, we ALL do it!

Well, if any of 'em told you I didn't tie my shoestrings, and if I were there, so that you could see me, you'd

know it wasn't true. Even if I were sitting so that you couldn't see my feet, and couldn't tell whether the

strings were tied or not just then, still you could look at me, and see that I wasn't the sort of girl to neglect my

shoestrings. But that isn't the way it happens: they'll get at you when I'm nowhere around and can't remind

"But you don't do that," he complained. "You don't remind me you don't even tell methe sort of girl you

"Let's be serious then," she said, and looked serious enough herself. "Would you honestly like to know?"

"I mean careful not to get me mixed up," she said. "Careful not to mix up the girl you might hear somebody

talking about with the me I honestly try to make you see. If you do get those two mixed upwell, the whole

"Because it's" She checked herself, having begun to speak too impulsively; and she was disturbed,

realizing in what tricky stuff she dealt. What had been on her lips to say was, "Because it's happened before!"

She changed to, "Because it's so easy to spoil anythingeasiest of all to spoil anything that's pleasant."

"No; it's so. And if you care at all aboutabout knowing a girl who'd like someone to know her"

"Well, don't you think it would be nice if you didn't give anybody the chance to talk about me the waythe

With that they laughed together, and he said, "You may be cutting me off from a great deal of information,

"Yes," Alice admitted. "Somebody might begin to praise me to you, too; so it's dangerous to ask you to

"Sometimes it is of a girl's thought; I suppose men are neater about their thoughts, and always finish 'em. It

She looked at him impulsively. "Oh, it's foolish," she said, and she laughed as laughs one who proposes

something probably impossible. "But, WOULDN'T it be pleasant if two people could ever just keep

themselves TO themselves, so far as they two were concerned? I mean, if they could just manage to be

"I suppose that might be rather difficult," he said, more amused than impressed by her idea.

"I don't know: it might be done," she returned, hopefully. "Especially in a town of this size; it's grown so it's

quite a huge place these days. People can keep themselves to themselves in a big place better, you know. For

"Not a bit of it!" she laughed. "We were the other day, when you walked home with me, but anybody could

tell that had just happened by chance, on account of your overtaking me; people can always see things like

Amused and a little bewildered, he looked up and down the street, which was one of gauntfaced

apartmenthouses, old, sooty, frame boardinghouses, small groceries and drugstores, laundries and one

"You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without your knowing it. Of course that's because you're new to

"I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care where I follow so long as I follow you."

"Very well," she said. "I'd like you to keep on following me at least long enough for me to show you that

"Might be!" she returned, gaily. "There's a pretty little park at the end, but it's very proletarian, and nobody

"What an imagination you have!" he exclaimed. "You turn our proper little walk into a Parisian adventure."

She looked at him in what seemed to be a momentary grave puzzlement. "Perhaps you feel that a Parisian

This appeared to amuse Alice, or at least to please her, for she laughed. "Then I can afford to quit thinking of

It's only that I used to be quite a friend of Mildred'sbut there! we needn't to go into that. I've never been a

friend of Henrietta Lamb's, though, and I almost wish she weren't taking such pains to be a friend of yours."

"It's on account of the two families," he was at pains to explain, a little awkwardly. "It's because I'm a relative

"Something the Adamses certainly are not," Alice said. "Not with either of 'em; particularly not with the

Lambs!" And here, scarce aware of what impelled her, she returned to her former elaborations and

colourings. "You see, the differences between Henrietta and me aren't entirely personal: I couldn't go to her

house even if I liked her. The Lambs and Adamses don't get on with each other, and we've just about come to

She nodded gratefully. "That's nice of you, Mr. Russell. It helps. The break between the Adamses and the

Lambs is a pretty bothersome thing. It's been coming on a long time." She sighed deeply, and the sigh was

half genuine; this half being for her father, but the other half probably belonged to her instinctive rendering of

"I suppose most quarrels between families are on account of business," she said. "That's why they're so

sordid. Certainly the Lambs seem a sordid lot to me, though of course I'm biased." And with that she began to

sketch a history of the commercial antagonism that had risen between the Adamses and the Lambs.

The sketching was spontaneous and dramatic. Mathematics had no part in it; nor was there accurate definition

of Mr. Adams's relation to the institution of Lamb and Company. The point was clouded, in fact; though that

might easily be set down to the general haziness of young ladies confronted with the mysteries of trade or

commerce. Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of junior member of the firm, it appeared, or else he

should have been made some such thing; at all events, he was an old mainstay of the business; and he, as

much as any Lamb, had helped to build up the prosperity of the company. But at last, tired of providing so

much intelligence and energy for which other people took profit greater than his own, he had decided to leave

the company and found a business entirely for himself. The Lambs were going to be enraged when they

Such was the impression, a little misted, wrought by Alice's quick narrative. But there was dolorous fact

His wife, grave and nervous, rather than triumphant, in success, had told their daughter that the great J. A.

"But what for, mama?" Alice asked, since this seemed a turn of affairs out of reason. "What in the world has

Mr. Lamb to do with papa's leaving the company to set up for himself? What right has he to be angry about

it? If he's such a friend as he claims to be, I should think he'd be gladthat is, if the glue factory turns out

Mrs. Adams gave Alice an uneasy glance, hesitated, and then explained that a resignation from Lamb's had

always been looked upon, especially by "that old man," as treachery. You were supposed to die in the service,

she said bitterly, and her daughter, a little mystified, accepted this explanation. Adams had not spoken to her

Alice was not serious too long, and she began to laugh as she came to the end of her decorative sketch. "After

all, the whole thing is perfectly ridiculous," she said. "In fact, it's FUNNY! That's on account of what papa's

going to throw over the Lamb business FOR! To save your life you couldn't imagine what he's going to do!"

"It takes all the romance out of ME," she laughed. "You'll never go for a Parisian walk with me again, after I

tell you what I'll be heiress to." They had come to the entrance of the little park; and, as Alice had said, it was

a pretty place, especially on a day so radiant. Trees of the oldest forest stood there, hale and serene over the

trim, bright grass; and the proletarians had not come from their factories at this hour; only a few mothers and

their babies were to be seen, here and there, in the shade. "I think I'll postpone telling you about it till we get

nearly home again," Alice said, as they began to saunter down one of the gravelled paths. "There's a bench

beside a spring farther on; we can sit there and talk about a lot of thingsthings not so sticky as my dowry's

Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as from amusement; and she remembered to tell him that the

project of a glue factory was still "an Adams secret." It would be known soon, however, she added; and the

whole Lamb connection would probably begin saying all sorts of things, heaven knew what!

Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working always gaily, or with at least the air of gaiety; and even as she

rattled on, there was somewhere in her mind a constant little wonder. Everything she said seemed to be

necessary to support something else she had said. How had it happened? She found herself telling him that

since her father had decided on making so great a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last to

persuade him to give up that "foolish little house" he had been so obstinate about; and she checked herself

abruptly on this declivity just as she was about to slide into a remark concerning her own preference for a

"country place." Discretion caught her in time; and something else, in company with discretion, caught her,

They had taken possession of the bench beside the spring, by this time; and Russell, his elbow on the back of

the bench and his chin on his hand, the better to look at her, had no guess at the cause of the blush, but was

content to find it lovely. At his first sight of Alice she had seemed pretty in the particular way of being pretty

that he happened to like best; and, with every moment he spent with her, this prettiness appeared to increase.

He felt that he could not look at her enough: his gaze followed the fluttering of the graceful hands in almost

continual gesture as she talked; then lifted happily to the vivacious face again. She charmed him.

After her abrupt pause, she sighed, then looked at him with her eyebrows lifted in a comedy appeal. "You

haven't said you wouldn't give Henrietta the chance," she said, in the softest voice that can still have a little

"YOU know! You'll let me keep on being unfair, won't you? Not give the other girls a chance to get even?"

Alice had said that no one who knew either Russell or herself would be likely to see them in the park or upon

the dingy street; but although they returned by that same ungenteel thoroughfare they were seen by a person

who knew them both. Also, with some surprise on the part of Russell, and something more poignant than

All of the dingy street was ugly, but the greater part of it appeared to be honest. The two pedestrians came

upon a block or two, however, where it offered suggestions of a less upright character, like a steady enough

workingman with a naughty book sticking out of his pocket. Three or four dim shops, a single story in height,

exhibited foul signboards, yet fair enough so far as the wording went; one proclaiming a tobacconist, one a

junkdealer, one a dispenser of "soft drinks and cigars." The most credulous would have doubted these

signboards; for the craft of the modern tradesman is exerted to lure indoors the passing glance, since if the

glance is pleased the feet may follow; but this alleged tobacconist and his neighbours had long been fond of

dust on their windows, evidently, and shades were pulled far down on the glass of their doors. Thus the

public eye, small of pupil in the light of the open street, was intentionally not invited to the dusky interiors.

Something different from mere lack of enterprise was apparent; and the signboards might have been omitted;

they were pains thrown away, since it was plain to the world that the business parts of these shops were the

brighter back rooms implied by the dark front rooms; and that the commerce there was in perilous new

Nothing could have been more innocent than the serenity with which these wicked little places revealed

themselves for what they were; and, bound by this final tie of guilelessness, they stood together in a row

which ended with a companionable barbershop, much like them. Beyond was a series of sootharried frame

twostory houses, once part of a cheerful neighbourhood when the town was middle aged and settled, and

not old and growing. These houses, all carrying the label. "Rooms," had the worried look of vacancy that

houses have when they are too full of everybody without being anybody's home; and there was, too, a

surreptitious air about them, as if, like the false little shops, they advertised something by concealing it.

One of themthe one next to the barbershop had across its front an ample, jigsawed veranda, where

aforetime, no doubt, the father of a family had fanned himself with a palmleaf fan on Sunday afternoons,

watching the surreys go by, and where his daughter listened to mandolins and badinage on starlit evenings;

but, although youth still held the veranda, both the youth and the veranda were in decay. The four or five

young men who lounged there this afternoon were of a type known to shady poolparlours. Hats found no

favour with them; all of them wore caps; and their tight clothes, apparently from a common source, showed a

vivacious fancy for oblique pockets, false belts, and Easter egg colourings. Another thing common to the

group was the expression of eye and mouth; and Alice, in the midst of her other thoughts, had a distasteful

The veranda was within a dozen feet of the sidewalk, and as she and her escort came nearer, she took note of

the young men, her face hardening a little, even before she suspected there might be a resemblance between

them and any one she knew. Then she observed that each of these loungers wore not for the occasion, but as

of habit, a look of furtively amused contempt; the mouth smiled to one side as if not to dislodge a cigarette,

while the eyes kept languidly superior. All at once Alice was reminded of Walter; and the slight frown caused

by this idea had just begun to darken her forehead when Walter himself stepped out of the open door of the

house and appeared upon the veranda. Upon his head was a new straw hat, and in his hand was a Malacca

stick with an ivory top, for Alice had finally decided against it for herself and had given it to him. His mood

was lively: he twirled the stick through his fingers like a drummajor's baton, and whistled loudly.

Moreover, he was indeed accompanied. With him was a thin girl who had made a violent black andwhite

poster of herself: black dress, black flimsy boa, black stockings, white slippers, great black hat down upon the

black eyes; and beneath the hat a curve of cheek and chin made white as whitewash, and in strong bilateral

The loungers on the veranda were familiars of the pair; hailed them with cacklings; and one began to sing, in

"Then my skirt, Sal, and me did go Right straight to the movingpitcher show. OH, you bashful vamp!"

Walter stared at his sister; then grinned faintly, and nodded at Russell as the latter lifted his hat in salutation.

Alice uttered an incoherent syllable of exclamation, and, as she began to walk faster, she bit her lip hard, not

in order to look wistful, this time, but to help her keep tears of anger from her eyes.

Russell laughed cheerfully. "Your brother certainly seems to have found the place for 'colour' today," he said.

But Alice had forgotten the colour she herself had used in accounting for Walter's peculiarities, and she did

"Don't you remember telling me about him? How he was going to write, probably, and would go anywhere to

She kept her eyes ahead, and said sharply, "I think his literary tastes scarcely cover this case!"

"Don't be too sure. He didn't look at all disconcerted. He didn't seem to mind your seeing him."

"Why, no," her friend said, genially. "It means he didn't consider that he was engaged in anything out of the

way. You can't expect to understand everything boys do at his age; they do all sorts of queer things, and

outgrow them. Your brother evidently has a taste for queer people, and very likely he's been at least half

sincere when he's made you believe he had a literary motive behind it. We all go through"

He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes; and he liked her all the better for her indignation: this was

how good sisters ought to feel, he thought, failing to understand that most of what she felt was not about

Walter. He ventured only a word more. "Try not to mind it so much; it really doesn't amount to anything."

She shook her head, and they went on in silence; she did not look at him again until they stopped before her

own house. Then she gave him only one glimpse of her eyes before she looked down. "It's spoiled, isn't it?"

He laughed at that; but without looking at him she suddenly offered him her hand, and, as he took it, he felt a

hurried, violent pressure upon his fingers, as if she meant to thank him almost passionately for being kind.

In her room, with the door locked, she did not go to her mirror, but to her bed, flinging herself face down, not

caring how far the pillows put her hat awry. Sheer grief had followed her anger; grief for the calamitous end

of her bright afternoon, grief for the "end of everything," as she thought then. Nevertheless, she gradually

grew more composed, and, when her mother tapped on the door presently, let her in. Mrs. Adams looked at

Alice told her. "You see how ithow it made me look, mama," she quavered, having concluded her

narrative. "I'd tried to cover up Walter's awfulness at the dance with that story about his being 'literary,' but

"No, no, no!" Mrs. Adams protested. "Don't you see? At the worst, all HE could think is that Walter told

stories to you about why he likes to be with such dreadful people, and you believed them. That's all HE'D

Alice's wet eyes began to show a little hopefulness. "You honestly think it might be that way, mama?"

"Why, from what you've told me he said, I KNOW it's that way. Didn't he say he wanted to come again?"

"Nno," Alice said, uncertainly. "But I think he will. At least I begin to think so now. He" She stopped.

"From all you tell me, he seems to be a very desirable young man," Mrs. Adams said, primly.

Her daughter was silent for several moments; then new tears gathered upon her downcast lashes. "He's

"No. But I know he isn't. Maybe when he first came here he was near it, but I know he's not."

"I guess Mildred Palmer would LIKE him to be, all right!" Mrs. Adams was frank enough to say, rather

"Don't you worry," her mother said, and patted her on the shoulder. "Everything will come out all right; don't

you fear, Alice. Can't you see that beside any other girl in town you're just a perfect QUEEN? Do you think

any young man that wasn't prejudiced, or something, would need more than just one look to"

I wonder he looks at me at all. And if he does again, after seeing my brother with those horrible people"

"Now, now!" Mrs. Adams interrupted, expostulating mournfully. "I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy"

"No, it's true," Mrs. Adams lamented. "I tried to bring him up to be good, God knows; and when he was little

he was the best boy I ever saw. When he came from Sundayschool he'd always run to me and we'd go over

the lesson together; and he let me come in his room at night to hear his prayers almost until he was sixteen.

Most boys won't do that with their mothersnot nearly that long. I tried so hard to bring him up rightbut

"It's because I didn't make your father thisthis new step earlier. Then Walter might have had all the

"Oh, mama, PLEASE!" Alice begged her. "Let's don't go over all that again. Isn't it more important to think

what's to be done about him? Is he going to be allowed to go on disgracing us as he does?"

Mrs. Adams sighed profoundly. "I don't know what to do," she confessed, unhappily. "Your father's so upset

"No, no!" Alice cried. "Papa mustn't be distressed with this, on top of everything else. But SOMETHING'S

At dinner, an hour later, Walter's habitually veiled glance lifted, now and then, to touch her furtively;he

was waiting, as he would have said, for her to "spring it"; and he had prepared a brief and sincere defense to

the effect that he made his own living, and would like to inquire whose business it was to offer intrusive

comment upon his private conduct. But she said nothing, while his father and mother were as silent as she.

Walter concluded that there was to be no attack, but changed his mind when his father, who ate only a little,

"Walter," he said, "when you've finished I wish you'd come up to my room. I got something I want to say to

Walter shot a hard look at his apathetic sister, then turned to his father. "Make it tomorrow," he said. "This

"All right; I've had all I want to eat," Walter returned. "I got a few minutes. Make it quick."

He followed his father upstairs, and when they were in the room together Adams shut the door, sat down, and

"Rheumatism?" the boy inquired, slyly. "That what you want to talk to me about?"

"No." But Adams did not go on; he seemed to be in difficulties for words, and Walter decided to help him.

"Hop ahead and spring it," he said. "Get it off your mind: I'll tell the world _I_ should worry! You aren't goin'

to bother ME any, so why bother yourself? Alice hopped home and told you she saw me playin' around with

Walter laughed. "Oh, it's nothin'," he said. "I was just startin' out to buy a girl friend o' mine a rhinestone

buckle I lost to her on a bet, this afternoon, and Alice came along with that big Russell fish; and I thought she

looked sore. She expects me to like the kind she likes, and I don't like 'em. I thought she'd prob'ly got you all

"No, no," his father said, peevishly. "I don't know anything about it, and I don't care to know anything about

Then, as he was again silent, Walter said, "Well, TALK about it; I'm listening."

"It's this," Adams began, heavily. "It's about me going into this glue business. Your mother's told you, hasn't

"She said you were goin' to leave the old place downtown and start a glue factory. That's all I know about it;

"Well, this is your affair," his father said, frowning. "You can't stay with Lamb and Company."

"You've got to help me," Adams explained slowly; and he frowned more deeply, as if the interview were

growing increasingly laborious for him. "It's going to be a big pull to get this business on its feet."

"Yes!" Walter exclaimed with a sharp skepticism. "I should say it was!" He stared at his father incredulously.

"Look here; aren't you just a little bit sudden, the way you're goin' about things? You've let mother shove you

a little too fast, haven't you? Do you know anything about what it means to set up a new business these

"Because I made a long study of it. I'm not afraid of going about it the wrong way; but it's a hard job and

Walter began to breathe quickly, and his lips were agitated; then he set them obstinately. "Oh; I will," he said.

"Yes, you will," Adams returned, not noticing that his son's inflection was satiric. "It's going to take every bit

of energy in your body, and all the energy I got left in mine, and every cent of the little I've saved, besides

something I'll have to raise on this house. I'm going right at it, now I've got to; and you'll have to quit Lamb's

"Oh, I will?" Walter's voice grew louder, and there was a shrillness in it. "I got to quit Lamb's the end of next

week, have I?" He stepped forward, angrily. "Listen!" he said. "I'm not walkin' out o' Lamb's, see? I'm not

Adams looked up at him, astonished. "You'll leave there next Saturday," he said. "I've got to have you."

"You don't anything o' the kind," Walter told him, sharply. "Do you expect to pay me anything?"

"Then pay somebody else; _I_ don't know anything about glue. You get somebody else."

Walter cut him off with the utmost vehemence. "Don't tell me what I got to do! I know what I got to do

At that his father broke into a sour laughter. "THEY won't let you, Walter! They won't have you down there

"Why won't they? You don't think they're goin' to be all shot to pieces over losin' YOU, do you?"

"Yes," Walter jeered; "you keep sayin' they will, but when I ask you to show me why, you keep sayin' they

Adams groaned, and, rubbing his head, began to pace the floor. Walter's refusal was something he had not

anticipated; and he felt the weakness of his own attempt to meet it: he seemed powerless to do anything but

utter angry words, which, as Walter said, made little headway. "Oh, my, my!" he muttered, "OH, my, my!"

Walter, usually sallow, had grown pale: he watched his father narrowly, and now took a sudden resolution.

"Look here," he said. "When you say Lamb's is likely to fire me because you're goin' to quit, you talk like the

people that have to be locked up. I don't know where you get such things in your head; Lamb and Company

won't know you're gone. Listen: I can stay there long as I want to. But I'll tell you what I'll do: make it worth

Adams stopped his pacing abruptly, and stared at him. "'Make it worth your while?' What you mean?"

"I got a good use for three hundred dollars right now," Walter said. "Let me have it and I'll quit Lamb's to

"Yes," Adams said. "They are if they ask ME for it, when I got to stretch every cent I can lay my hands on to

Adams burst out at him. "You little fool! If I had three hundred dollars to throw away, besides the pay I

expected to give you, haven't you got sense enough to see I could hire a man worth three hundred dollars

more to me than you'd be? It's a FINE time to ask me for three hundred dollars, isn't it! What FOR?

Rhinestone buckles to throw around on your 'girl friends?' Shame on you! Ask me to BRIBE you to help

"I'll give you a last chance," Walter said. "Either you do what I want, or I won't do what you want. Don't ask

Adams interrupted him fiercely. "'Ask you again!' Don't worry about that, my boy! All I ask you is to get out

"Look here," Walter said, quietly; and his lopsided smile distorted his livid cheek. "Look here: I expect YOU

Walter went out, whistling; and Adams drooped into his old chair again as the door closed. "OH, my, my!" he

He meant his own transgression and his own way; for Walter's stubborn refusal appeared to Adams just then

as one of the inexplicable but righteous besettings he must encounter in following that way. "Oh, Lordy,

Lord!" he groaned, and then, as resentment moved him"That dang boy! Dang idiot" Yet he knew himself

for a greater idiot because he had not been able to tell Walter the truth. He could not bring himself to do it,

nor even to state his case in its best terms; and that was because he felt that even in its best terms the case was

Of all his regrets the greatest was that in a moment of vanity and tenderness, twentyfive years ago, he had

told his young wife a business secret. He had wanted to show how important her husband was becoming, and

how much the head of the universe, J. A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and ability. The great man had an

idea: he thought of "branching out a little," he told Adams confidentially, and there were possibilities of profit

What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles and sold cheaply. "The kind of thing that sells

itself," he said; "the kind of thing that pays its own small way as it goes along, until it has profits enough to

Everybody has to use glue, and if I make mine convenient and cheap, everybody'll buy mine. But it's got to

be glue that'll STICK; it's got to be the best; and if we find how to make it we've got, to keep it a big secret,

of course, or anybody can steal it from us. There was a man here last month; he knew a formula he wanted to

sell me, 'sight unseen'; but he was in such a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he'd managed to steal it,

working for the big packers in their glueworks. We've got to find a better glue than that, anyhow. I'm going

to set you and Campbell at it. You're a practical, wideawake young feller, and Campbell's a mighty good

His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed a little way outside the town, where their cheery employer

visited them sometimes to study their malodorous stews, the two young men found what Lamb had set them

to find. But Campbell was thoughtful over the discovery. "Look here," he said. "Why ain't this just about

yours and mine? After all, it may be Lamb's money that's paid for the stuff we've used, but it hasn't cost

"But he pays US," Adams remonstrated, horrified by his companion's idea. "He paid us to do it. It belongs

"Oh, I know he THINKS it does," Campbell admitted, plaintively. "I suppose we've got to let him take it. It's

not patentable, and he'll have to do pretty well by us when he starts his factory, because he's got to depend on

us to run the making of the stuff so that the workmen can't get onto the process. You better ask him the same

But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was never paid. Campbell died of typhoid fever, that summer,

leaving Adams and his employer the only possessors of the formula, an unwritten one; and Adams, pleased to

think himself more important to the great man than ever, told his wife that there could be little doubt of his

being put in sole charge of the prospective glueworks. Unfortunately, the enterprise remained prospective.

Its projector had already become "inveigled into another sideline," as he told Adams. One of his sons had

persuaded him to take up a "coughlozenge," to be called the "Jalamb Balm Trochee"; and the lozenge did

well enough to amuse Mr. Lamb and occupy his spare time, which was really about all he had asked of the

glue project. He had "all the MONEY anybody ought to want," he said, when Adams urged him; and he

could "start up this little glue sideline" at any time; the formula was safe in their two heads.

At intervals Adams would seek opportunity to speak of "the little glue sideline" to his patron, and to suggest

that the years were passing; but Lamb, petting other hobbies, had lost interest. "Oh, I'll start it up some day,

maybe. If I don't, I may turn it over to my heirs: it's always an asset, worth something or other, of course.

The sun persistently declined to rise on that day, and, as time went on, Adams saw that his rather timid

urgings bored his employer, and he ceased to bring up the subject. Lamb apparently forgot all about glue, but

"It's really YOURS," she argued, that painful day when for the first time she suggested his using his

knowledge for the benefit of himself and his family. "Mr. Campbell might have had a right to part of it, but

"Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some wood," Adams said. "Would the sticks belong to me?"

"He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it," she protested. "What good is it doing him if he

doesn't DO anything with it? What good is it doing ANYBODY? None in the world! And what harm would it

do him if you went ahead and did this for yourself and for your children? None in the world! And what could

he do to you if he WAS old pig enough to get angry with you for doing it? He couldn't do a single thing, and

you've admitted he couldn't, yourself. So what's your reason for depriving your children and your wife of the

"Nothing but decency," he answered; and she had her reply ready for that. It seemed to him that, strive as he

would, he could not reach her mind with even the plainest language; while everything that she said to him,

with such vehemence, sounded like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he pressed her with the same

"Look here: suppose you give a cook a soupbone and some vegetables, and pay her to make you a soup: has

"I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own invention from you he's no better than a robber!"

They never found any point of contact in all their passionate discussions of this ethical question; and the

question was no more settled between them, now that Adams had succumbed, than it had ever been. But at

least the wrangling about it was over: they were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness prevailed

He had already been out of the house, to walk about the small green yard; and on Monday afternoon he sent

for a taxicab and went downtown, but kept a long way from the "wholesale section," where stood the

formidable old oblong pile of Lamb and Company. He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away,

and for placing a mortgage upon his house; and on his way home, after five o'clock, he went to see an old

friend, a man whose term of service with Lamb and Company was even a little longer than his own.

This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front of the apartment house where he lived, but

when the cab stopped at the curb he rose and came forward, offering a jocular greeting. "Well, well, Virgil

Adams! I always thought you had a sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired private automobile

nowadays, do you? Pamperin' yourself because you're still layin' off sick, I expect."

"Oh, I'm well enough again, Charley Lohr," Adams said, as he got out and shook hands. Then, telling the

driver to wait, he took his friend's arm, walked to the bench with him, and sat down. "I been practically well

"Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you," his friend laughed. "You're the last man I ever

expected to see blowin' yourselfor anybody else to a taxicab! For that matter, I never heard of you bein' in

ANY kind of a cab, 'less'n it might be when you been pallbearer for somebody. What's come over you?"

"Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact," Adams said. "I got a lot to do, and the only way to

accomplish it, it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on while I'm doing it."

"What you talkin' about? What you got to do except to get strong enough to come back to the old place?"

"Well" Adams paused, then coughed, and said slowly, "Fact is, Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely I

"No," said Adams. "I been thinking I might likely kind of branch out on my own account."

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Old Charley Lohr was amazed; he ruffled up his gray moustache with thumb and

forefinger, leaving his mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled wintry thicket. "Why, that's the

doggonedest thing I ever heard!" he said. "I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but if you go, there

won't be anybody else of the old generation at all. What on earth you thinkin' of goin' into?"

"Well," said Adams, "I rather you didn't mention it till I get started of course anybody'll know what it is by

His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, stared at him in frowning perplexity. "Glue?" he said.

Lohr continued to frown. "Let me think," he said. "Didn't the ole man have some such idea once, himself?"

Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he coughed again before he spoke. "Well, yes. Fact is, he did.

"I remember," said Lohr. "He never said anything about it that I know of; but seems to me I recollect we had

sort of a rumour around the place how you and that manle's see, wasn't his name Campbell, that died of

typhoid fever? Yes, that was it, Campbell. Didn't the ole man have you and Campbell workin' sort of private

Lohr looked serious. "Well, but see here," he said. "I hope it ain't anything the ole man'll think might infringe

on whatever he had you doin' for HIM. You know how he is: broadminded, liberal, freehanded man as

walks this earth, and if he thought he owed you a cent he'd sell his right hand for a porkchop to pay it, if that

was the only way; but if he got the idea anybody was tryin' to get the better of him, he'd sell BOTH his hands,

if he had to, to keep 'em from doin' it. Yes, at eighty, he would! Not that I mean I think you might be tryin' to

get the better of him, Virg. You're a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing ain't in you. What I mean: I

"Oh, no," Adams interrupted. "As a matter of fact, I don't believe he'll ever think about it at all, and if he did

he wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me: the process I'm going to use is one I expect to change

"Well, that's good," said Lohr. "Of course you know what you're up to: you're old enough, God knows!" He

laughed ruefully. "My, but it will seem funny to medown there with you gone! I expect you and I both

been gettin' to be pretty much deadwood in the place, the way the young fellows look at it, and the only one

that'd miss either of us would be the other one! Have you told the ole man yet?"

"Well" Adams spoke laboriously. "No. No, I haven't. I thoughtwell, that's what I wanted to see you

"My soul!" his friend exclaimed. "Why on earth don't you just go down there and tell him?"

Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stammered, coughed, stammered again, wrinkling his face so deeply

he seemed about to weep; but finally he contrived to utter an apologetic laugh. "I ought to do that, of course;

"I could hardly tell you'less'n it is to say that when you been with one boss all your life it's so so kind of

embarrassingto quit him, I just can't make up my mind to go and speak to him about it. No; I got it in my

head a letter's the only satisfactory way to do it, and I thought I'd ask you to hand it to him,"

"Well, of course I don't mind doin' that for you," Lohr said, mildly. "But why in the world don't you just mail

"Well, I'll tell you," Adams returned. "You know, like that, it'd have to go through a clerk and that secretary

of his, and I don't know who all. There's a couple of kind of delicate points I want to put in it: for instance, I

want to explain to him how much improvement and so on I'm going to introduce on the old process I helped

to work out with Campbell when we were working for him, so't he'll understand it's a different article and no

infringement at all. Then there's another thing: you see all during while I was sick he had my salary paid to

me it amounts to considerable, I was on my back so long. Under the circumstances, because I'm quitting, I

don't feel as if I ought to accept it, and so I'll have a check for him in the letter to cover it, and I want to be

sure he knows it, and gets it personally. If it had to go through a lot of other people, the way it would if I put

it in the mail, why, you can't tell. So what I thought: if you'd hand it to him for me, and maybe if he happened

to read it right then, or anything, it might be you'd notice whatever he'd happen to say about itand you

"All right," Lohr said. "Certainly if you'd rather do it that way, I'll hand it to him and tell you what he says;

"No; I'll send it around to you last of the week." Adams moved toward his taxicab. "Don't say anything to

"And, Charley, I'll be mighty obliged to you," Adams said, and came back to shake hands in farewell.

"There's one thing more you might doif you'd ever happen to feel like it." He kept his eyes rather vaguely

fixed on a point above his friend's head as he spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. "I beenI been

down there a good many years and I may not 'a' been so much use lately as I was at first, but I always tried to

do my best for the old firm. If anything turned out so's they DID kind of take offense with me, down there,

Old Charley Lohr assured him that he would speak a good word if opportunity became available; then, after

the cab had driven away, he went up to his small apartment on the third floor and muttered ruminatively until

"Ole Virg Adams," he told her. "He's out again after his long spell of sickness, and the way it looks to me

Her husband explained with a little heat: "People can have a sickness that AFFECTS their mind, can't they?

"Why, no; I'd scarcely go as far as that," Lohr said, inconsistently, and declined to be more definite.

Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the composition of his lettera disquieting task not

completed when, at eleven o'clock, he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was singing to herself in a

low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his mouth open, as if he

heard the strangest sound in the world. Then he set down the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened

"Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good," he said. "What you been doing?"

"Oh, he did?" Adams pretended to be surprised. "What all could you and he find to talk about till this hour o'

Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. "Not what you think!" she laughed; then slapped his cheek

with saucy affection, pirouetted across the narrow hall and into her own room, and curtsied to him as she

Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart; for since Alice was born she had been to him the apple

of his eye, his own phrase in thinking of her; and what he was doing now was for her.

He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled.

After all, she could be happy just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he taken what his wife called "this

He could only sigh and wonder. "Life works out pretty peculiarly," he thought; for he couldn't go back now,

He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he had secured what he wanted.

It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly. All the years during which his wife had pressed him

toward his present shift he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield; and yet when he

did yield he had no plans to make, because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail in his

mind; as if he had long contemplated the "step" he believed himself incapable of taking.

Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging his little collection of bonds for a "small

rental property," if he could find "a good buy"; and he had spent many of his spare hours rambling over the

enormously spreading city and its purlieus, looking for the ideal "buy." It remained unattainable, so far as he

Not twice a crow's mile from his own house there was a dismal and slummish quarter, a decayed "industrial

district" of earlier days. Most of the industries were small; some of them died, perishing of bankruptcy or fire;

and a few had moved, leaving their shells. Of the relics, the best was a brick building which had been the

largest and most important factory in the quarter: it had been injured by a long vacancy almost as serious as a

fire, in effect, and Adams had often guessed at the sum needed to put it in repair.

When he passed it, he would look at it with an interest which he supposed detached and idly speculative.

"That'd be just the thing," he thought. "If a fellow had money enough, and took a notion to set up some new

business on a big scale, this would be a pretty good placeto make glue, for instance, if that wasn't out of

the question, of course. It would take a lot of money, though; a great deal too much for me to expect to

Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, open lot of two acres or so, and near the middle of the lot, a

long brick shed stood in a desolate abandonment, not happily decorated by old coatings of theatrical and

medicinal advertisements. But the brick shed had two wooden ells, and, though both shed and ells were of a

single story, here was empty space enough for a modest enterprise"space enough for almost anything, to

start with," Adams thought, as he walked through the low buildings, one day, when he was prospecting in that

section. "Yes, I suppose I COULD swing this," he thought. "If the process belonged to me, say, instead of

being out of the question because it isn't my propertyor if I was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow,

here would be something I could probably get hold of pretty cheap. They'd want a lot of money for a lease on

that big building over the waybut this, why, I should think it'd be practically nothing at all."

Then, by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he made inquiriesmerely to satisfy a casual curiosity, he

thoughtand he found matters much as he had supposed, except that the owners of the big building did not

wish to let, but to sell it, and this at a price so exorbitant that Adams laughed. But the long brick shed in the

great muddy lot was for sale or to let, or "pretty near to be given away," he learned, if anybody would take it.

Adams took it now, though without seeing that he had been destined to take it, and that some dreary wizard in

the back of his head had foreseen all along that he would take it, and planned to be ready. He drove in his

taxicab to look the place over again, then downtown to arrange for a lease; and came home to lunch with his

He boasted a little of having acted so decisively, and said that since the dang thing had to be done, it was

"going to be done RIGHT!" He was almost cheerful, in a feverish way, and when the cab came for him again,

soon after lunch, he explained that he intended not only to get things done right, but also to "get 'em done

quick!" Alice, following him to the front door, looked at him anxiously and asked if she couldn't help. He

"Then let me go along with you in the cab," she begged. "You don't look able to start in so hard, papa, just

when you're barely beginning to get your strength back. Do let me go with you and see if I can't helpor at

He declined, but upon pressure let her put a tiny bottle of spirits of ammonia in his pocket, and promised to

make use of it if he "felt faint or any thing." Then he was off again; and the next morning had men at work

He directed the workmen in every detail, hurrying them by example and exhortations, and receiving, in

consequence, several declarations of independence, as well as one resignation, which took effect

immediately. "Yous capitalusts seem to think a man's got nothin' to do but break his back p'doosin' wealth fer

yous to squander," the resigning person loudly complained. "You look out: the toiler's day is acomin', and it

ain't so fur off, neither!" But the capitalist was already out of hearing, gone to find a man to take this orator's

By the end of the week, Adams felt that he had moved satisfactorily forward in his preparations for the

simple equipment he needed; but he hated the pause of Sunday. He didn't WANT any rest, he told Alice

Late that afternoon he walked over to the apartment house where old Charley Lohr lived, and gave his friend

the letter he wanted the head of Lamb and Company to receive "personally." "I'll take it as a mighty great

favour in you to hand it to him personally, Charley," he said, in parting. "And you won't forget, in case he

says anything about itand remember if you ever do get a chance to put in a good word for me later, you

Old Charley promised to remember, and, when Mrs. Lohr came out of the "kitchenette," after the door closed,

"Who'd you think I meant?" he returned. "One o' these partridges in the wallpaper?"

"Looked kind of distracted to me," her husband replied. "These little thin fellers can stand a heap sometimes,

"No," said Lohr. "But he will. You'll see. He'll be over to find out what the big boss says when I give him this

Lohr's expression became one of reserve, the look of a man who has found that when he speaks his inner

thoughts his wife jumps too far to conclusions. "Oh, nothing," he said. "Of course any man starting up a new

business is bound to be pretty nervous a while. He'll be over here tomorrow evening, all right; you'll see."

The prediction was fulfilled: Adams arrived just after Mrs. Lohr had removed the dinner dishes to her

"He didn't say a word, Virgil; nary a word. I took it into his office and handed it to him, and he just sat and

read it; that's all. I kind of stood around as long as I could, but he was sittin' at his desk with his side to me,

and he never turned around full toward me, as it were, so I couldn't hardly even tell anything. All I know: he

"He didn't speak. Not so long I was in there, anyhow. He just sat there and read it. Read kind of slow. Then,

when he came to the end, he turned back and started to read it all over again. By that time there was three or

four other men standin' around in the office waitin' to speak to him, and I had to go."

Adams sighed, and stared at the floor, irresolute. "Well, I'll be getting along back home then, I guess,

Charley. So you're sure you couldn't tell anything what he might have thought about it, then?"

"I guess so, I guess so," Adams said, mournfully. "I feel mighty obliged to you, Charley Lohr; mighty

On his way home, preoccupied with many thoughts, he walked so slowly that once or twice he stopped and

stood motionless for a few moments, without being aware of it; and when he reached the juncture of the

sidewalk with the short brick path that led to his own front door, he stopped again, and stood for more than a

minute. "Ah, I wish I knew," he whispered, plaintively. "I do wish I knew what he thought about it."

He was roused by a laugh that came lightly from the little veranda near by. "Papa!" Alice called gaily. "What

"Oh, are you there, dearie?" he said, and came up the path. A tall figure rose from a chair on the veranda.

The two men shook hands, Adams saying, "Pleased to make your acquaintance," as they looked at each other

in the faint light diffused through the opaque glass in the upper part of the door. Adams's impression was of a

strong and tall young man, fashionable but gentle; and Russell's was of a dried, little old business man with a

grizzled moustache, worried bright eyes, shapeless dark clothes, and a homely manner.

"Nice evening," Adams said further, as their hands parted. "Nice time o' year it is, but we don't always have

as good weather as this; that's the trouble of it. Well" He went to the door. "WellI bid you good

Alice laughed. "He's the oldfashionedest man in town, I suppose and frightfully impressed with you, I could

"Why not? Because you're quiet? Good gracious! Don't you know that you're the most impressive sort? We

"I wish you couldn't," said Russell. "That would be a new experience for both of us, wouldn't it?"

"It might be a rather bleak one for me," she answered, lightly. "I'm afraid I'll miss these summer evenings

Russell laughed at her. "Don't let's look so far ahead as that," he said. "We don't need to be already thinking

"I didn't," she said, shaking her head. "Our summer evenings will be over before then, Mr. Russell."

"Good heavens!" she said. "THERE'S laconic eloquence: almost a proposal in a single word! Never mind, I

shan't hold you to it. But to answer you: well, I'm always looking ahead, and somehow I usually see about

"Yes," he said. "I suppose most of us do; at least it seems as if we did, because we so seldom feel surprised

by the way they do come out. But maybe that's only because life isn't like a play in a theatre, and most things

"No, I'm sure I can see quite a long way ahead," she insisted, gravely. "And it doesn't seem to me as if our

summer evenings could last very long. Something'll interferesomebody will, I meanthey'll SAY

She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive shiver. "It'll change you," she said. "I'm just sure something

"Because it implies that I'm made of such soft material the slightest breeze will mess me all up. I'm not so

like that as I evidently appear; and if it's true that we're afraid other people will do the things we'd be most

likely to do ourselves, it seems to me that I ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be afraid that

somebody may say something about me to you that will make you believe I'm a professional forger."

"No. We both know they won't," she said. "We both know you're the sort of person everybody in the world

says nice things about." She lifted her hand to silence him as he laughed at this. "Oh, of course you are! I

think perhaps you're a little flirtatiousmost quiet men have that one sly way with 'emoh, yes, they do!

But you happen to be the kind of man everybody loves to praise. And if you weren't, _I_ shouldn't hear

anything terrible about you. I told you I was unpopular: I don't see anybody at all any more. The only man

except you who's been to see me in a month is that fearful little fat Frank Dowling, and I sent word to HIM I

"Then let me break some news to you," Russell said. "Nobody would tell me of yours, either. Nobody's even

She burlesqued a cry of anguish. "That IS obscurity! I suppose I'm too apt to forget that they say the

population's about half a million nowadays. There ARE other people to talk about, you feel, then?"

"None that I want to," he said. "But I should think the size of the place might relieve your mind of what

seems to insist on burdening it. Besides, I'd rather you thought me a better man than you do."

"The kind affected by what's said about people instead of by what they do themselves."

"No, I'm not," he said. "If you want our summer evenings to be over you'll have to drive me away yourself."

She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on her knees and her clasped hands against her lips. Then,

She was silent again, and he said nothing, but looked at her, seeming to be content with looking. Her attitude

was one only a graceful person should assume, but she was graceful; and, in the wan light, which made a

prettily shaped mist of her, she had beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of the hour, and of the love scene almost

made into form by what they had both just said, but she had it; and though beauty of the hour passes, he who

"I don't know; I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems to me I wasn't. I think I was just being sort of

"Don't you know?" she said. "It seems to me that only little children can be just happily happy. I think when

we get older our happiest moments are like the one I had just then: it's as if we heard strains of minor music

"I don't know," she said, in a lighter tone. "Perhaps it's a kind of useless foreboding I seem to have pretty

"You ARE a funny, delightful girl, though!" Russell laughed. "When your father's so well again that he goes

"He does too much walking," Alice said. "Too much altogether, over at his new plant. But there isn't any

stopping him." She laughed and shook her head. "When a man gets an ambition to be a multi millionaire his

family don't appear to have much weight with him. He'll walk all he wants to, in spite of them."

"I suppose so," Russell said, absently; then he leaned forward. "I wish I could understand better why you

Meanwhile, as Alice shed what further light she could on this point, the man ambitious to be a "multi

millionaire" was indeed walking too much for his own good. He had gone to bed, hoping to sleep well and

rise early for a long day's work, but he could not rest, and now, in his nightgown and slippers, he was pacing

"I wish I DID know," he thought, over and over. "I DO wish I knew how he feels about it."

That was a thought almost continuously in his mind, even when he was hardest at work; and, as the days went

on and he could not free himself, he became querulous about it. "I guess I'm the biggest dang fool alive," he

told his wife as they sat together one evening. "I got plenty else to bother me, without worrying my head off

about what HE thinks. I can't help what he thinks; it's too late for that. So why should I keep pestering myself

"It'll wear off, Virgil," Mrs. Adams said, reassuringly. She was gentle and sympathetic with him, and for the

first time in many years he would come to sit with her and talk, when he had finished his day's work. He had

told her, evading her eye, "Oh, I don't blame you. You didn't get after me to do this on your own account; you

"Yes; but it don't wear off," he complained. "This afternoon I was showing the men how I wanted my vats to

go, and I caught my fool self standing there saying to my fool self, 'It's funny I don't hear how he feels about

it from SOMEbody.' I was saying it aloud, almostand it IS funny I don't hear anything!"

"Well, you see what it means, don't you, Virgil? It only means he hasn't said anything to anybody about it.

"Why, yes," she said, briskly. "You don't realize what a little bit of a thing all this is to him. It's been a long,

long while since the last time you even mentioned glue to him, and he's probably forgotten everything about

"You're off your base; it isn't like him to forget things," Adams returned, peevishly. "He may seem to forget

Her husband shook his head. "Ah, that's just it!" he said. "Why HAVEN'T I heard from him?"

"It's all your morbidness, Virgil. Look at Walter: if Mr. Lamb held this up against you, would he still let

Walter stay there? Wouldn't he have discharged Walter if he felt angry with you?"

"That dang boy!" Adams said. "If he WANTED to come with me now, I wouldn't hardly let him, What do

"But hasn't he a right to choose for himself?" she asked. "I suppose he feels he ought to stick to what he

As soon as he sees that you're going to succeed with the glueworks he'll want to be with you quick enough."

"Well, he better get a little sense in his head," Adams returned, crossly. "He wanted me to pay him a

threehundreddollar bonus in advance, when anybody with a grain of common sense knows I need every

"Oh, Walter will come out all right; you needn't worry. And don't you see that Mr. Lamb's not discharging

"I can't make it out at all," he said, frowning. "The only thing I can THINK it means is that J. A. Lamb is so

fairmindedand of course he IS one of the fairmindedest men alive I suppose that's the reason he hasn't

fired Walter. He may know," Adams concluded, morosely"he may know that's just another thing to make

me feel all the meaner: keeping my boy there on a salary after I've done him an injury."

"Now, now!" she said, trying to comfort him. "You couldn't do anybody an injury to save your life, and

"Well, anybody ought to know I wouldn't WANT to do an injury, but this world isn't built so't we can do just

what we want." He paused, reflecting. "Of course there may be one explanation of why Walter's still there: J.

A. maybe hasn't noticed that he IS there. There's so many I expect he hardly knows him by sight."

"Well, just do quit thinking about it," she urged him. "It only bothers you without doing any good. Don't you

"Don't I, though!" he laughed, feebly. "I know it better'n anybody! How funny that is: when you know

thinking about a thing only pesters you without helping anything at all, and yet you keep right on pestering

"But WHY?" she said. "What's the use when you know you haven't done anything wrong, Virgil? You said

yourself you were going to improve the process so much it would be different from the old one, and you'd

Adams had persuaded himself of this when he yielded; he had found it necessary to persuade himself of

itthough there was a part of him, of course, that remained unpersuaded; and this discomfiting part of him

was what made his present trouble. "Yes, I know," he said. "That's true, but I can't quite seem to get away

from the fact that the principle of the process is a good deal the samewell, it's more'n that; it's just about

the same as the one he hired Campbell and me to work out for him. Truth is, nobody could tell the difference,

and I don't know as there IS any difference except in these improvements I'm making. Of course, the

improvements do give me pretty near a perfect right to it, as a person might say; and that's one of the things I

thought of putting in my letter to him; but I was afraid he'd just think I was trying to make up excuses, so I

left it out. I kind of worried all the time I was writing that letter, because if he thought I WAS just making up

Ever since Mrs. Adams had found that she was to have her way, the depths of her eyes had been troubled by a

continuous uneasiness; and, although she knew it was there, and sometimes veiled it by keeping the revealing

eyes averted from her husband and children, she could not always cover it under that assumption of

absentmindedness. The uneasy look became vivid, and her voice was slightly tremulous now, as she said,

"But what if he SHOULD be against youalthough I don't believe he is, of courseyou told me he couldn't

"No," he said, slowly. "I can't see how he could do anything. It was just a secret, not a patent; the thing ain't

patentable. I've tried to think what he could dosupposing he was to want tobut I can't figure out

anything at all that would be any harm to me. There isn't any way in the world it could be made a question of

law. Only thing he could do'd be to TELL people his side of it, and set 'em against me. I been kind of waiting

She looked somewhat relieved. "So did I expect it," she said. "I was dreading it most on Alice's account: it

might havewell, young men are so easily influenced and all. But so far as the business is concerned, what

if Mr. Lamb did talk? That wouldn't amount to much. It wouldn't affect the business; not to hurt. And,

"No; anyhow not yet, it seems." And Adams sighed again, wistfully. "But I WOULD give a good deal to

Before his surrender he had always supposed that if he did such an unthinkable thing as to seize upon the glue

process for himself, what he would feel must be an overpowering shame. But shame is the rarest thing in the

world: what he felt was this unremittent curiosity about his old employer's thoughts. It was an obsession, yet

he did not want to hear what Lamb "thought" from Lamb himself, for Adams had a second obsession, and

this was his dread of meeting the old man face to face. Such an encounter could happen only by chance and

unexpectedly; since Adams would have avoided any deliberate meeting, so long as his legs had strength to

But people do meet unexpectedly; and when Adams had to be downtown he kept away from the "wholesale

district." One day he did see Lamb, as the latter went by in his car, impassive, going home to lunch; and

Adams, in the crowd at a corner, knew that the old man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street car, on the

way back to his sheds, an hour later, he was still subject to little shivering seizures of horror.

He worked unceasingly, seeming to keep at it even in his sleep, for he always woke in the midst of a planning

and estimating that must have been going on in his mind before consciousness of himself returned. Moreover,

the work, thus urged, went rapidly, in spite of the high wages he had to pay his labourers for their short hours.

"It eats money," he complained, and, in fact, by the time his vats and boilers were in place it had eaten almost

all he could supply; but in addition to his equipment he now owned a stock of "raw material," raw indeed;

and when operations should be a little further along he was confident his banker would be willing to "carry"

Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his gluemaking. The terrible smells came out of

the sheds and went writhing like snakes all through that quarter of the town. A smiling man, strolling and

breathing the air with satisfaction, would turn a corner and smile no more, but hurry. However, coloured

people had almost all the dwellings of this old section to themselves; and although even they were troubled,

there was recompense for them. Being philosophic about what appeared to them as in the order of nature,

they sought neither escape nor redress, and soon learned to bear what the wind brought them. They even

made use of it to enrich those figures of speech with which the native impulses of coloured people decorate

their communications: they flavoured metaphor, simile, and invective with it; and thus may be said to have

enjoyed it. But the man who produced it took a hot bath as soon as he reached his home the evening of that

first day when his manufacturing began. Then he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he seemed to be

"Seems to me as if that glueworks smell hadn't quit hanging to me," he explained. "Don't you notice it?"

He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was sure "the dang glue smell" was somehow sticking to him.

Later, he went outdoors and walked up and down the small yard in the dusk; but now and then he stood still,

with his head lifted, and sniffed the air suspiciously. "Can YOU smell it?" he called to Alice, who sat upon

She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said, "No! How foolish! Why, papa, it's over two

The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was positive that he detected the taint. He wondered how far it

carried, and if J. A. Lamb would smell it, too, out on his own lawn a mile to the north; and if he did, would he

guess what it was? Then Adams laughed at himself for such nonsense; but could not rid his nostrils of their

Nevertheless, the glue was making, and his sheds were busy. "Guess we're stirrin' up this ole neighbourhood

"That great big, enormous ole dead butterine factory across the street from our lot," the man said. "Nothin'

like settin' an example to bring real estate to life. That place is full o' carpenters startin' in to make a regular

buildin' of it again. Guess you ought to have the credit of it, because you was the first man in ten years to see

Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for himself, heard a great hammering and sawing from within the

building; while carpenters were just emerging gingerly upon the dangerous roof. He walked out over the

dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the street, and spoke genially to a workman who was removing the broken

"Yes, sir; a pretty big joba pretty big job. Got men at it on all four floors and on the roof. They're doin' it

"They tell ME," the workman answered"they tell ME she's goin' to be a butterine factory again. Anyways,

I hope she won't be anything to smell like that glueworks you got over there not while I'm workin' around

"You do?" The man appeared incredulous. "Listen! I was over in France: it's a good thing them Dutchmen

Adams laughed, and went back to his sheds. "I guess my foreman was right," he told his wife, that evening,

with a little satisfaction. "As soon as one man shows enterprise enough to found an industry in a

brokendown neighbourhood, somebody else is sure to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help make our

place seem sort of more busy and prosperous when it comes to getting a loan from the bankand I got to get

one mighty soon, too. I did think some that if things go as well as there's every reason to think they OUGHT

to, I might want to spread out and maybe get hold of that old factory myself; but I hardly expected to be able

to handle a proposition of that size before two or three years from now, and anyhow there's room enough on

the lot I got, if we need more buildings some day. Things are going about as fine as I could ask: I hired some

girls today to do the bottlingcoloured girls along about sixteen to twenty years old. Afterwhile, I expect

to get a machine to put the stuff in the little bottles, when we begin to get good returns; but half a dozen of

these coloured girls can do it all right now, by hand. We're getting to have really quite a little plant over there:

He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound, of a kind his wife had almost forgotten he was capable of producing,

she ventured to put her hand upon his arm. They had gone outdoors, after dinner, taking two chairs with

them, and were sitting through the late twilight together, keeping well away from the "front porch," which

"Well, honey," Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence not only to put her hand upon his arm, but to revive this

disused endearment;"it's grand to have you so optimistic. Maybe some time you'll admit I was right, after

all. Everything's going so well, it seems a pity you didn't take thisthis steplong ago. Don't you think

"Wellif I was ever going to, I don't know but I might as well of. I got to admit the proposition begins to

look pretty good: I know the stuff'll sell, and I can't see a thing in the world to stop it. It does look good, and

He laughed plaintively, as if confessing a superstition. "It's funnywell, it's mighty funny about that smell.

I've got so used to it at the plant I never seem to notice it at all over there. It's only when I get away. Honestly,

"Virgil!" She lifted her hand to strike his arm chidingly. "Do quit harping on that nonsense!"

"Oh, of course it don't amount to anything," he said. "A person can stand a good deal of just smell. It don't

"Well," he said, "I feel pretty fair over the whole thinga lot better'n I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't

She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice had tenderness in it as she responded:

Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it. "Well," he said, slowly, "it's a puzzle. Yes, sir,

As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their heads. Then the window darkened

abruptly, but the song continued as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little veranda. "Mi

chiamo Mimi," she sang, and in her voice throbbed something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father

and mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped with the click of the wire screen at the front door as

"My!" said her father. "How sweet she does sing! I don't know as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it

"I expect that's the way it ought to be," he said, then drew upon his pipe for reflection, and became

murmurous with the symptoms of melancholy laughter. "It don't make things less of a puzzle, though, does

"Why, here," he said"here we go through all this muck and moil to help fix things nicer for her at home,

and what's it all amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd 'a' gone anyhow; and now, I

suppose, getting ready to up and leave us! Ain't that a puzzle to you? It is to me."

She gave a little cry of protest. "Oh, they aren't ENGAGED yet. Of course they WILL be; he's just as much

"You ARE a simple old fellow!" his wife exclaimed, and then rose from her chair. "That reminds me," she

"Nothing!" she laughed. "It wasn't you that reminded me. It was just something that's been on my mind. I

"I actually don't believe he ever has," she said. "Of course we must" She paused, debating.

"I guess I better talk to Alice about it right now," she said. "He don't usually come for about half an hour yet;

I guess I've got time." And with that she walked away, leaving him to his puzzles.

Alice was softly crooning to herself as her mother turned the corner of the house and approached through the

"Isn't it the most BEAUTIFUL evening!" the daughter said. "WHY can't summer last all year? Did you ever

"You may have a different kind from mine," the mother said, a little sadly. "I think you will, Alice. You

"No, I don't. I don't deserve anything, and I know it. But I'm getting a great deal these days more than I

"Oh, I don't mean" She laughed nervously. "I wasn't meaning to tell you I'm ENGAGED, mama. We're

not. I meanoh! things seem pretty beautiful in spite of all I've done to spoil 'em."

"Little things," Alice said. "A thousand little sillyoh, what's the use? He's so honestly what he is just

simple and good and intelligentI feel a tricky mess beside him! I don't see why he likes me; and sometimes

"He'd just worship you," said the fond mother. "And the more he knew you, the more he'd worship you."

Alice shook her head. "He's not the worshiping kind. Not like that at all. He's more"

But Mrs. Adams was not interested in this analysis, and she interrupted briskly, "Of course it's time your

father and I showed some interest in him. I was just saying I actually don't believe he's ever been inside the

Except when we've walked in the evening we've always sat out here, even those two times when it was

"I was thinking" Mrs. Adams paused. "Well, of course we could hardly put off asking him to dinner, or

Alice was not enthusiastic; so far from it, indeed, that there was a melancholy alarm in her voice. "Oh, mama,

"It looks queer," Mrs. Adams said. "It isn't the thing at all for a young man to come as much as he does, and

never more than just barely meet your father and mother. No. We ought to do something."

"But a dinner!" Alice objected. "In the first place, there isn't anybody I want to ask. There isn't anybody I

"I didn't mean trying to give a big dinner," her mother explained. "I just mean having him to dinner. That

mulatto woman, Malena Burns, goes out by the day, and she could bring a waitress. We can get some flowers

for the table and some to put in the livingroom. We might just as well go ahead and do it tomorrow as any

other time; because your father's in a fine mood, and I saw Malena this afternoon and told her I might want

her soon. She said she didn't have any engagements this week, and I can let her know tonight. Suppose

when he comes you ask him for tomorrow, Alice. Everything'll be very nice, I'm sure. Don't worry about it."

"But don't you see, it looks so queer, not to do SOMETHING?" her mother urged. "It looks so kind of

Alice assented, though not with a good heart. "Very well, I'll ask him, if you think we've got to."

"That matter's settled then," Mrs. Adams said. "I'll go telephone Malena, and then I'll tell your father about

But when she went back to her husband, she found him in an excited state of mind, and Walter standing

before him in the darkness. Adams was almost shouting, so great was his vehemence.

"Hush, hush!" his wife implored, as she came near them. "They'll hear you out on the front porch!"

"I don't care who hears me," Adams said, harshly, though he tempered his loudness. "Do you want to know

what this boy's asking me for? I thought he'd maybe come to tell me he'd got a little sense in his head at last,

and a little decency about what's due his family! I thought he was going to ask me to take him into my plant.

"No, it isn't," Walter said. In the darkness his face could not be seen; he stood motionless, in what seemed an

apathetic attitude; and he spoke quietly, "No," he repeated. "That isn't what I want."

"You stay down at that place," Adams went on, hotly, "instead of trying to be a little use to your family; and

the only reason you're ALLOWED to stay there is because Mr. Lamb's never happened to notice you ARE

"You're off," Walter said, in the same quiet way. "He knows I'm there. He spoke to me yesterday: he asked

"Well, are you going to do anything about me? About what I told you I got to have?"

Walter cleared his throat, and replied in a tone as quiet as that he had used before, though with a slight

huskiness, "I got to have three hundred and fifty dollars. You better get him to give it to me if you can."

Adams found his voice. "Yes," he said, bitterly. "That's all he asks! He won't do anything I ask HIM to, and

"That's all you can get out of him," Adams said. "He seems to think it'll bring him in three hundred and fifty

"NO, I haven't got it!" his father answered. "And I've got to go to a bank for more than my payroll next

"I don't understand what you mean, Walter," Mrs. Adams interposed, perplexed and distressed. "If your father

had the money, of course he'd need every cent of it, especially just now, and, anyhow, you could scarcely

expect him to give it to you, unless you told us what you want with it. But he hasn't got it."

"All right," Walter said; and after standing a moment more, in silence, he added, impersonally, "I don't see as

Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon them, walked away quickly, and was at once

"There's a fine boy to've had the trouble of raising!" Adams grumbled. "Just crazy, that's all."

"What in the world do you suppose he wants all that money for?" his wife said, wonderingly. "I can't imagine

"God knows!" said Adams. "_I_ don't! It just looks to me like he had something in him I don't understand.

You can't keep your eye on a boy all the time in a city this size, not a boy Walter's age. You got a girl pretty

much in the house, but a boy'll follow his nature. _I_ don't know what to do with him!"

Mrs. Adams brightened a little. "He'll come out all right," she said. "I'm sure he will. I'm sure he'd never be

anything really bad: and he'll come around all right about the glueworks, too; you'll see. Of course every

young man wants moneyit doesn't prove he's doing anything wrong just because he asks you for it."

"No. All it proves to me is that he hasn't got good sense asking me for three hundred and fifty dollars, when

he knows as well as you do the position I'm in! If I wanted to, I couldn't hardly let him have three hundred

"I'm afraid you'll have to let ME have that much and maybe a little more," she ventured, timidly; and she

"Oh, but Alice has probably asked him by this time," Mrs. Adams said. "It really must be done, Virgil: you

"Well, go ahead, but just let me stay away," he begged. "Of course I expect to undergo a kind of talk with

him, when he gets ready to say something to us about Alice, but I do hate to have to sit through a fashionable

"Yes, I know; but you want to have all this fancy cookin'; and I see well enough you're going to get that old

dress suit out of the cedar chest in the attic, and try to make me put it on me."

"I hope the moths have got in it," he said. "Last time I wore it was to the banquet, and it was pretty old then.

Of course I didn't mind wearing it to the banquet so much, because that was what you might call quite an

occasion." He spoke with some reminiscent complacency; "the banquet," an affair now five years past,

having provided the one time in his life when he had been so distinguished among his fellowcitizens as to

receive an invitation to be present, with some seven hundred others, at the annual eating and speechmaking

of the city's Chamber of Commerce. "Anyhow, as you say, I think it would look foolish of me to wear a dress

suit for just one young man," he went on protesting, feebly. "What's the use of all so much howdydo,

anyway? You don't expect him to believe we put on all that style every night, do you? Is that what you're

"So that's it!" he said, querulously. "You want him to think that's our regular gait, do you? Well, he'll know

better about me, no matter how you fix me up, because he saw me in my regular suit the evening she

introduced me to him, and he could tell anyway I'm not one of these movingpicture sportingmen that's

always got a dress suit on. Besides, you and Alice certainly have some idea he'll come AGAIN, haven't you?

If they get things settled between 'em he'll be around the house and to meals most any time, won't he? You

don't hardly expect to put on style all the time, I guess. Well, he'll see then that this kind of thing was all

"Oh, well, by THAT time" She left the sentence unfinished, as if absently. "You could let us have a

"Oh, I reckon, I reckon," he mumbled. "A girl like Alice is some comfort: she don't come around acting as if

she'd commit suicide if she didn't get three hundred and fifty dollars in the next five minutes. I expect I can

However, she finally obtained fifteen before his bedtime; and the next morning "went to market" after

breakfast, leaving Alice to make the beds. Walter had not yet come downstairs. "You had better call him,"

Mrs. Adams said, as she departed with a big basket on her arm. "I expect he's pretty sleepy; he was out so late

last night I didn't hear him come in, though I kept awake till after midnight, listening for him. Tell him he'll

be late to work if he doesn't hurry; and see that he drinks his coffee, even if he hasn't time for anything else.

And when Malena comes, get her started in the kitchen: show her where everything is." She waved her hand,

as she set out for a corner where the cars stopped. "Everything'll be lovely. Don't forget about Walter."

Nevertheless, Alice forgot about Walter for a few minutes. She closed the door, went into the "living room"

absently, and stared vaguely at one of the old brownplush rockingchairs there. Upon her forehead were the

little shadows of an apprehensive reverie, and her thoughts overlapped one another in a fretful jumble. "What

will he think? These old chairsthey're hideous. I'll scrub those soot streaks on the columns: it won't do

any good, though. That long crack in the columnnothing can help it. What will he think of papa? I hope

mama won't talk too much. When he thinks of Mildred's house, or of Henrietta's, or any of 'em, beside

this She said she'd buy plenty of roses; that ought to help some. Nothing could be done about these

horrible chairs: can't take 'em up in the attica room's got to have chairs! Might have rented some. No; if he

ever comes again he'd see they weren't here. 'If he ever comes again'oh, it won't be THAT bad! But it

won't be what he expects. I'm responsible for what he expects: he expects just what the airs I've put on have

made him expect. What did I want to pose so to him foras if papa were a wealthy man and all that? What

WILL he think? The photograph of the Colosseum's a rather good thing, though. It helps some as if we'd

bought it in Rome perhaps. I hope he'll think so; he believes I've been abroad, of course. The other night he

said, 'You remember the feeling you get in the SainteChapelle'.There's another lie of mine, not saying I

didn't remember because I'd never been there. What makes me do it? Papa MUST wear his evening clothes.

With that she recalled her mother's admonition, and went upstairs to Walter's door. She tapped upon it with

"Time to get up, Walter. The rest of us had breakfast over half an hour ago, and it's nearly eight o'clock.

You'll be late. Hurry down and I'll have some coffee and toast ready for you." There came no sound from

She called and rapped again, without getting any response, and then, finding that the door yielded to her,

He had been there, however; had slept upon the bed, though not inside the covers; and Alice supposed he

must have come home so late that he had been too sleepy to take off his clothes. Near the foot of the bed was

a shallow closet where he kept his "other suit" and his evening clothes; and the door stood open, showing a

bare wall. Nothing whatever was in the closet, and Alice was rather surprised at this for a moment. "That's

queer," she murmured; and then she decided that when he woke he found the clothes he had slept in "so

mussy" he had put on his "other suit," and had gone out before breakfast with the mussed clothes to have

them pressed, taking his evening things with them. Satisfied with this explanation, and failing to observe that

it did not account for the absence of shoes from the closet floor, she nodded absently, "Yes, that must be it";

and, when her mother returned, told her that Walter had probably breakfasted downtown. They did not

delay over this; the coloured woman had arrived, and the basket's disclosures were important.

"I stopped at Worlig's on the way back," said Mrs. Adams, flushed with hurry and excitement. "I bought a

can of caviar there. I thought we'd have little sandwiches brought into the 'livingroom' before dinner, the

"No," Mrs. Adams said. "Still, I think it would be nice. We can make them look very dainty, on a tray, and

the waitress can bring them in. I thought we'd have the soup already on the table; and we can walk right out

as soon as we have the sandwiches, so it won't get cold. Then, after the soup, Malena says she can make

sweetbread pates with mushrooms: and for the meat course we'll have larded fillet. Malena's really a fancy

cook, you know, and she says she can do anything like that to perfection. We'll have peas with the fillet, and

potato balls and Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts are fashionable now, they told me at market. Then will

come the chicken salad, and after that the icecreamshe's going to make an angelfood cake to go with

itand then coffee and crackers and a new kind of cheese I got at Worlig's, he says is very fine."

"It's better to have too much than too little," her mother said, cheerfully. "We don't want him to think we're

the kind that skimp. Lord knows we have to enough, though, most of the time! Get the flowers in water,

child. I bought 'em at market because they're so much cheaper there, but they'll keep fresh and nice. You fix

She had bought three dozen little roses. Alice took them and began to arrange them in vases, keeping the

stems separated as far as possible so that the clumps would look larger. She put half a dozen in each of three

vases in the "livingroom," placing one vase on the table in the center of the room, and one at each end of the

mantelpiece. Then she took the rest of the roses to the diningroom; but she postponed the arrangement of

them until the table should be set, just before dinner. She was thoughtful; planning to dry the stems and lay

them on the tablecloth like a vine of roses running in a delicate design, if she found that the dozen and a half

she had left were enough for that. If they weren't she would arrange them in a vase.

She looked a long time at the little roses in the basin of water, where she had put them; then she sighed, and

went away to heavier tasks, while her mother worked in the kitchen with Malena. Alice dusted the

"livingroom" and the diningroom vigorously, though all the time with a look that grew more and more

pensive; and having dusted everything, she wiped the furniture; rubbed it hard. After that, she washed the

Emerging from the kitchen at noon, Mrs. Adams found her daughter on hands and knees, scrubbing the bases

"Now, dearie," she said, "you mustn't tire yourself out, and you'd better come and eat something. Your father

said he'd get a bite downtown today he was going down to the bankand Walter eats downtown all

the time lately, so I thought we wouldn't bother to set the table for lunch. Come on and we'll have something

Her mother came closer to her. "Why, what's the matter?" she asked, briskly. "You seem kind of pale, to me;

"See here!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "This is all just for you! You ought to be ENJOYING it. Why, it's the

first time we'vewe've entertained in I don't know how long! I guess it's almost since we had that little party

The girl looked up, showing a pallid and solemn face. "Oh, yes, of course," she said, and tried to smile. "Of

course we had to do itI do think it'll be nice. Of course I'm looking forward to it."

She was indeed "looking forward" to that evening, but in a cloud of apprehension; and, although she could

never have guessed it, this was the simultaneous condition of another personnone other than the guest for

whose pleasure so much cooking and scrubbing seemed to be necessary. Moreover, Mr. Arthur Russell's

premonitions were no product of mere coincidence; neither had any magical sympathy produced them. His

state of mind was rather the result of rougher undercurrents which had all the time been running beneath the

Never shrewder than when she analyzed the gentlemen, Alice did not libel him when she said he was one of

those quiet men who are a bit flirtatious, by which she meant that he was a bit "susceptible," the same

thingand he had proved himself susceptible to Alice upon his first sight of her. "There!" he said to himself.

"Who's that?" And in the crowd of girls at his cousin's dance, all strangers to him, she was the one he wanted

Since then, his summer evenings with her had been as secluded as if, for three hours after the falling of dusk,

they two had drawn apart from the world to some dear bower of their own. The little veranda was that

glamorous nook, with a faint golden light falling through the glass of the closed door upon Alice, and

darkness elsewhere, except for the one round globe of the street lamp at the corner. The people who passed

along the sidewalk, now and then, were only shadows with voices, moving vaguely under the maple trees that

loomed in obscure contours against the stars. So, as the two sat together, the back of the world was the wall

and closed door behind them; and Russell, when he was away from Alice, always thought of her as sitting

there before the closed door. A glamour was about her thus, and a spell upon him; but he had a formless

anxiety never put into words: all the pictures of her in his mind stopped at the closed door.

He had another anxiety; and, for the greater part, this was of her own creating. She had too often asked him

(no matter how gaily) what he heard about her, too often begged him not to hear anything. Then, hoping to

forestall whatever he might hear, she had been at too great pains to account for it, to discredit and mock it;

and, though he laughed at her for this, telling her truthfully he did not even hear her mentioned, the

Lately, he had half confessed to her what a nervousness she had produced. "You make me dread the day

when I'll hear somebody speaking of you. You're getting me so upset about it that if I ever hear anybody so

much as say the name 'Alice Adams,' I'll run!" The confession was but half of one because he laughed; and

After any stroke of events, whether a happy one or a catastrophe, we see that the materials for it were a long

time gathering, and the only marvel is that the stroke was not prophesied. What bore the air of fatal

coincidence may remain fatal indeed, to this later view; but, with the haphazard aspect dispelled, there is left

for scrutiny the same ancient hint from the Infinite to the effect that since events have never yet failed to be

lawabiding, perhaps it were well for us to deduce that they will continue to be so until further notice.

. . . On the day that was to open the closed door in the background of his pictures of Alice, Russell lunched

with his relatives. There were but the four people, Russell and Mildred and her mother and father, in the

great, cool diningroom. Arched French windows, shaded by awnings, admitted a mellow light and looked

out upon a green lawn ending in a long conservatory, which revealed through its glass panes a carnival of

plants in luxuriant blossom. From his seat at the table, Russell glanced out at this pretty display, and informed

his cousins that he was surprised. "You have such a glorious spread of flowers all over the house," he said, "I

didn't suppose you'd have any left out yonder. In fact, I didn't know there were so many splendid flowers in

Mrs. Palmer, large, calm, fair, like her daughter, responded with a mild reproach: "That's because you haven't

been cousinly enough to get used to them, Arthur. You've almost taught us to forget what you look like."

In defense Russell waved a hand toward her husband. "You see, he's begun to keep me so hard at work"

But Mr. Palmer declined the responsibility. "Up to four or five in the afternoon, perhaps," he said. "After that,

the young gentleman is as much a stranger to me as he is to my family. I've been wondering who she could

"That seems to be the view of your sex," Mrs; Palmer suggested. "It was my husband who said it, not Mildred

Mildred smiled faintly. "Papa may be singular in his ideas; they may come entirely from his own experience,

"Thank you, Mildred," her cousin said, bowing to her gratefully. "You seem to understand my

However, Mildred remained grave in the face of this customary pleasantry, not because the old jest, worn

round, like what preceded it, rolled in an old groove, but because of some preoccupation of her own. Her faint

smile had disappeared, and, as her cousin's glance met hers, she looked down; yet not before he had seen in

her eyes the flicker of something like a questiona question both poignant and dismayed. He may have

understood it; for his own smile vanished at once in favour of a reciprocal solemnity.

"You see, Arthur," Mrs. Palmer said, "Mildred is always a good cousin. She and I stand by you, even if you

do stay away from us for weeks and weeks." Then, observing that he appeared to be so occupied with a bunch

of iced grapes upon his plate that he had not heard her, she began to talk to her husband, asking him what was

Arthur continued to eat his grapes, but he ventured to look again at Mildred after a few moments. She, also,

appeared to be occupied with a bunch of grapes though she ate none, and only pulled them from their stems.

She sat straight, her features as composed and pure as those of a new marble saint in a cathedral niche; yet

her downcast eyes seemed to conceal many thoughts; and her cousin, against his will, was more aware of

what these thoughts might be than of the leisurely conversation between her father and mother. All at once,

however, he heard something that startled him, and he listenedand here was the effect of all Alice's

Mr. Palmer, mildly amused by what he was telling his wife, had just spoken the words, "this Virgil Adams."

"Alfred Lamb," her husband answered. "He was laughing about his father, at the club. You see the old

gentleman takes a great pride in his judgment of men, and always boasted to his sons that he'd never in his

life made a mistake in trusting the wrong man. Now Alfred and James Albert, Junior, think they have a great

joke on him; and they've twitted him so much about it he'll scarcely speak to them. From the first, Alfred

says, the old chap's only repartee was, 'You wait and you'll see!' And they've asked him so often to show

"He's a funny old fellow," Mrs. Palmer observed. "But he's so shrewd I can't imagine his being deceived for

"Yes, longer than that, I understand. It appears when this manthis Adamswas a young clerk, the old

gentleman trusted him with one of his business secrets, a glue process that Mr. Lamb had spent some money

to get hold of. The old chap thought this Adams was going to have quite a future with the Lamb concern, and

of course never dreamed he was dishonest. Alfred says this Adams hasn't been of any real use for years, and

they should have let him go as dead wood, but the old gentleman wouldn't hear of it, and insisted on his being

kept on the payroll; so they just decided to look on it as a sort of pension. Well, one morning last March the

Lamb got his own car out and went home with him, himself, and worried about him and went to see him no

"He would," Mrs. Palmer said, approvingly. "He's a kindhearted creature, that old man."

Her husband laughed. "Alfred says he thinks his kindheartedness is about cured! It seems that as soon as the

man got well again he deliberately walked off with the old gentleman's glue secret. Just calmly stole it!

Alfred says he believes that if he had a stroke in the office now, himself, his father wouldn't lift a finger to

Mrs. Palmer repeated the name to herself thoughtfully. "'Adams''Virgil Adams.' You said his name was

She looked at her daughter. "Why, you know who that is, Mildred," she said, casually. "It's that Alice

Mrs. Palmer turned toward her husband. "You've seen this Alice Adams here. Mr. Lamb's pet swindler must

Mr. Palmer passed a smooth hand over his neat gray hair, which was not disturbed by this effort to stimulate

recollection. "Oh, yes," he said. "Of coursecertainly. Quite a goodlooking girlone of Mildred's friends.

Mildred looked up, as if in a little alarm, but did not speak. Her mother set matters straight. "Fathers ARE

amusing," she said smilingly to Russell, who was looking at her, though how fixedly she did not notice; for

she turned from him at once to enlighten her husband. "Every girl who meets Mildred, and tries to push the

acquaintance by coming here until the poor child has to hide, isn't a FRIEND of hers, my dear!"

Mildred's eyes were downcast again, and a faint colour rose in her cheeks. "Oh, I shouldn't put it quite that

way about Alice Adams," she said, in a low voice. "I saw something of her for a time. She's not unattractive

Mrs. Palmer settled the whole case of Alice carelessly. "A pushing sort of girl," she said. "A very pushing

"Fortunate you've done so," her father remarked, cheerfully. "Especially since various members of the Lamb

connection are here frequently. They mightn't think you'd show great tact in having her about the place." He

laughed, and turned to his cousin. "All this isn't very interesting to poor Arthur. How terrible people are with

"But we don't know anything about these queer people, ourselves," said Mrs. Palmer. "We know something

about the girl, of courseshe used to be a bit too conspicuous, in fact! However, as you say, we might find a

She smiled whimsically upon the young man. "Tell the truth," she said. "Don't you fairly detest going into

"You were right," Mrs. Palmer said to her husband. "You've bored him so, talking about thievish clerks, he

But Russell was beginning to recover his outward composure. "Try me again," he said. "I'm afraid I was

This was the best he found to say. There was a part of him that wanted to protest and deny, but he had not

heat enough, in the chill that had come upon him. Here was the first "mention" of Alice, and with it the

reason why it was the first: Mr. Palmer had difficulty in recalling her, and she happened to be spoken of, only

because her father's betrayal of a benefactor's trust had been so peculiarly atrocious that, in the view of the

benefactor's family, it contained enough of the element of humour to warrant a mild laugh at a club. There

was the deadliness of the story: its lack of malice, even of resentment. Deadlier still were Mrs. Palmer's

phrases: "a pushing sort of girl," "a very pushing little person," and "used to be a bit TOO conspicuous, in

fact." But she spoke placidly and by chance; being as obviously without unkindly motive as Mr. Palmer was

when he related the cause of Alfred Lamb's amusement. Her opinion of the obscure young lady momentarily

her topic had been expressed, moreover, to her husband, and at her own table. She sat there, large, kind,

serenea protest might astonish but could not change her; and Russell, crumpling in his strained fingers the

laceedged little web of a napkin on his knee, found heart enough to grow red, but not enough to challenge

She noticed his colour, and attributed it to the embarrassment of a scrupulously gallant gentleman caught in a

lapse of attention to a lady. "Don't be disturbed," she said, benevolently. "People aren't expected to listen all

the time to their relatives. A high colour's very becoming to you, Arthur; but it really isn't necessary between

cousins. You can always be informal enough with us to listen only when you care to."

His complexion continued to be ruddier than usual, however, throughout the meal, and was still somewhat

tinted when Mrs. Palmer rose. "The man's bringing you cigarettes here," she said, nodding to the two

gentlemen. "We'll give you a chance to do the sordid kind of talking we know you really like. Afterwhile,

Mildred followed her, and, when they were alone in another of the spacious rooms, went to a window and

looked out, while her mother seated herself near the center of the room in a gilt armchair, mellowed with old

Aubusson tapestry. Mrs. Palmer looked thoughtfully at her daughter's back, but did not speak to her until

"No?" Mrs. Palmer said, gently. "I'm afraid our goodlooking cousin won't think you're very talkative,

Mildred. You spoke only about twice at lunch. I shouldn't care for him to get the idea you're piqued because

"No, I shouldn't," Mildred answered in a low voice, and with that she turned quickly, and came to sit near her

"Mama, I don't think that was the reason. I don't think it was because he wasn't listening, I mean."

"I think his colour and his not listening came from the same reason," Mildred said, and although she had

come to sit near her mother, she did not look at her. "I think it happened because you and papa" She

"Yes?" Mrs. Palmer said, goodnaturedly, to prompt her. "Your father and I did something embarrassing?"

"Don't you remember?" the daughter asked. "The day after my dance I mentioned how odd I thought it was in

himI was a little disappointed in him. I'd been seeing that he met everybody, of course, but she was the

only girl HE asked to meet; and he did it as soon as he noticed her. I hadn't meant to have him meet herin

fact, I was rather sorry I'd felt I had to ask her, because she oh, well, she's the sort that 'tries for the new man,'

if she has half a chance; and sometimes they seem quite fascinated for a time, that is. I thought Arthur was

above all that; or at the very least I gave him credit for being too sophisticated."

"I see," Mrs. Palmer said, thoughtfully. "I remember now that you spoke of it. You said it seemed a little

peculiar, but of course it really wasn't: a 'new man' has nothing to go by, except his own first impressions.

You can't blame poor Arthurshe's quite a piquant looking little person. You think he's seen something of

Mildred nodded slowly. "I never dreamed such a thing till yesterday, and even then I rather doubted ittill

he got so red, just now! I was surprised when he asked to meet her, but he just danced with her once and

didn't mention her afterward; I forgot all about itin fact, I virtually forgot all about HER. I'd seen quite a

"But I'd just about decided that it really wouldn't do," Mildred went on. "She isn'twell, I didn't admire her."

"No," her mother assented, and evidently followed a direct connection of thought in a speech apparently

irrelevant. "I understand the young Malone wants to marry Henrietta. I hope she won't; he seems rather a

"Oh, he's just one," Mildred said. "I don't know that he and Alice Adams were ever engagedshe never told

me so. She may not have been engaged to any of them; she was just enough among the other girls to get

talked aboutand one of the reasons I felt a little inclined to be nice to her was that they seemed to be rather

edging her out of the circle. It wasn't long before I saw they were right, though. I happened to mention I was

going to give a dance and she pretended to take it as a matter of course that I meant to invite her brotherat

least, I thought she pretended; she may have really believed it. At any rate, I had to send him a card; but I

didn't intend to be let in for that sort of thing again, of course. She's what you said, 'pushing'; though I'm

"Of course I didn't say 'shouldn't.' " Mildred explained, gravely. "I meant only that I'm sorry it happened."

"Mama"Mildred turned to her, leaning forward and speaking in a lowered voice"Mama, at first the

change was so little it seemed as if Arthur hardly knew it himself. He'd been lovely to me always, and he was

still lovely to me butoh, well, you've understoodafter my dance it was more as if it was just his nature

and his training to be lovely to me, as he would be to everyone a kind of politeness. He'd never said he

CARED for me, but after that I could see he didn't. It was clearafter that. I didn't know what had happened;

Mrs. Palmer set her little coffeecup upon the table beside her, calmly following her own motion with her

eyes, and not seeming to realize with what serious entreaty her daughter's gaze was fixed upon her. Mildred

repeated the last sentence of her revelation, and introduced a stress of insistence.

But Mrs. Palmer declined to be greatly impressed, so far as her appearance went, at least; and to emphasize

At this Mrs. Palmer permitted herself to laugh softly aloud. "Good heavens! Is Henrietta a soothsayer? Or is

Mrs. Palmer's laughter continued. "Now we have it!" she exclaimed. "It's a game of gossip: Arthur tells Ella,

"Don't laugh, please, mama," Mildred begged. "Of course Arthur didn't tell anybody. It's roundabout enough,

but it's true. I know it! I hadn't quite believed it, but I knew it was true when he got so red. He lookedoh,

for a second or so he looked stricken! He thought I didn't notice it. Mama, he's been to see her almost

every evening lately. They take long walks together. That's why he hasn't been here."

Of Mrs. Palmer's laughter there was left only her indulgent smile, which she had not allowed to vanish.

"But don't you see?" Mildred's welltutored voice, though modulated and repressed even in her present

emotion, nevertheless had a tendency to quaver. "It's true. Frank Dowling was going to see her one evening

and he saw Arthur sitting on the stoop with her, and didn't go in. And Ella used to go to school with a girl

"Oh, I understand," Mrs. Palmer interrupted. "Suppose he does go there. My dear, I said, 'What of it?'"

"I don't see what you mean, mama. I'm so afraid he might think we knew about it, and that you and papa said

those things about her and her father on that accountas if we abused them because he goes there instead of

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Palmer rose, went to a window, and, turning there, stood with her back to it, facing her

daughter and looking at her cheerfully. "Nonsense, my dear! It was perfectly clear that she was mentioned by

accident, and so was her father. What an extraordinary man! If Arthur makes friends with people like that, he

certainly knows better than to expect to hear favourable opinions of them. Besides, it's only a little passing

"Yes," Mrs. Palmer said, dryly. "It seems to me I've heard somewhere that other young men have gone there

'almost every!' She doesn't last, apparently. Arthur's gallant, and he's impressionable but he's fastidious,

and fastidiousness is always the check on impressionableness. A girl belongs to her family, tooand this one

does especially, it strikes me! Arthur's very sensible; he sees more than you'd think."

Mildred looked at her hopefully. "Then you don't believe he's likely to imagine we said those things of her in

At this, Mrs. Palmer laughed again. "There's one thing you seem not to have noticed, Mildred."

"No, it mightn't," her mother replied, comprehending easily. "On the contrary, it might mean that instead of

Mildred rose and came to her. "WHY do you suppose he never told us he went there? Do you think he'sdo

you think he's pleased with her, and yet ashamed of it? WHY do you suppose he's never spoken of it?"

"Ah, that," Mrs. Palmer said,"that might possibly be her own doing. If it is, she's well paid by what your

father and I said, because we wouldn't have said it if we'd known that Arthur" She checked herself

quickly. Looking over her daughter's shoulder, she saw the two gentlemen coming from the corridor toward

the wide doorway of the room; and she greeted them cheerfully. "If you've finished with each other for a

while," she added, "Arthur may find it a relief to put his thoughts on something prettier than a trust

"I didn't say 'perhaps,' Arthur," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, to correct him. "I said she would. If you care to see

and smell those lovely things out yonder, she'll show them to you. Run along, children!"

Half an hour later, glancing from a window, she saw them come from the hothouses and slowly cross the

lawn. Arthur had a fine rose in his buttonhole and looked profoundly thoughtful.

That morning and noon had been warm, though the stirrings of a feeble breeze made weather not flagrantly

intemperate; but at about three o'clock in the afternoon there came out of the southwest a heat like an

affliction sent upon an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it. Dripping negro ditchdiggers

whooped with satires praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels flickered up to the street level,

where sluggish male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned themselves with straw hats, or,

remaining covered, wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent, big

department stores, stenographers in offices kept as close to electric fans as the intervening bulk of their

employers would let them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie unclad upon their beds; while in

hospitals the patients murmured querulously against the heat, and perhaps against some noisy motorist who

strove to feel the air by splitting it, not troubled by any fore boding that he, too, that hour next week, might

need quiet near a hospital. The "hot spell" was a true spell, one upon men's spirits; for it was so hot that, in

suburban outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over the low undulations of their club lands, abandoning their

Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, as in winter. There were glowing furnaces to be stoked,

liquid metals to be poured; but such tasks found seasoned men standing to them; and in all the city probably

no brave soul challenged the heat more gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when, in a corner of her small and fiery

kitchen, where all day long her hired African immune cooked fiercely, she pressed her husband's evening

clothes with a hot iron. No doubt she risked her life, but she risked it cheerfully in so good and necessary a

service for him. She would have given her life for him at any time, and both his and her own for her children.

Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised to find herself rather faint when she finished her ironing.

However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and

she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the

nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again;

but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved

successfully to the door of her own room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, had she not been

stimulated by the thought of how much depended upon her;she made a final great effort, and floundered

across the room to her bureau, where she kept some simple restoratives. They served her need, or her faith in

She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous hand upon the rail; but she smiled brightly when Alice

looked up from below, where the woodwork was again being tormented with superfluous attentions.

"Alice, DON'T!" her mother said, commiseratingly. "You did all that this morning and it looks lovely. What's

the use of wearing yourself out on it? You ought to be lying down, so's to look fresh for tonight."

"Hadn't you better lie down yourself?" the daughter returned. "Are you ill, mama?"

"You look pretty pale," Alice said, and sighed heavily. "It makes me ashamed, having you work so hardfor

"How foolish! I think it's fun, getting ready to entertain a little again, like this. I only wish it hadn't turned so

hot: I'm afraid your poor father'll sufferhis things are pretty heavy, I noticed. Well, it'll do him good to bear

something for style's sake this once, anyhow!" She laughed, and coming to Alice, bent down and kissed her.

"Dearie," she said, tenderly, "wouldn't you please slip upstairs now and take just a little teeny nap to please

"I'll LOOK all right," Alice said, huskily. "Do you like the way I've arranged the furniture now? I've tried all

"It's lovely," her mother said, admiringly. "I thought the last way you had it was pretty, too. But you know

best; I never knew anybody with so much taste. If you'd only just quit now, and take a little rest"

"There'd hardly be time, even if I wanted to; it's after five but I couldn't; really, I couldn't. How do you think

Mrs. Adams pondered. "I'm afraid he'll make a lot of objections, on account of the weather and everything. I

wish we'd had a chance to tell him last night or this morning. I'd have telephoned to him this afternoon

"If Walter gets home late," Mrs. Adams went on, "I'll just slip out and speak to him, in case Mr. Russell's

here before he comes. I'll just tell him he's got to hurry and get his things on."

"Maybe he won't come home to dinner," Alice suggested, rather hopefully. "Sometimes he doesn't."

"No; I think he'll be here. When he doesn't come he usually telephones by this time to say not to wait for him;

he's very thoughtful about that. Well, it really is getting late: I must go and tell her she ought to be preparing

"You'd much better do that yourself," Alice called after her, but Mrs. Adams shook her head cheerily, not

Alice continued her useless labours for a time; then carried her bucket to the head of the cellar stairway,

where she left it upon the top step; and, closing the door, returned to the "livingroom;" Again she changed

the positions of the old plush rockingchairs, moving them into the corners where she thought they might be

least noticeable; and while thus engaged she was startled by a loud ringing of the doorbell. For a moment

her face was panicstricken, and she stood staring, then she realized that Russell would not arrive for another

Waiting there, in a languid attitude, was a young coloured woman, with a small bundle under her arm and

something malleable in her mouth. "Listen," she said. "You folks expectin' a coloured lady?"

"Listen," the coloured woman said again. "Listen. Say, listen. Ain't they another coloured lady awready here

by the day? Listen. Ain't Miz Malena Burns here by the day this evenin'? Say, listen. This the number house

"Malena is here," Alice said, and hesitated; but she decided not to send the waitress to the back door; it might

She led the way to the diningroom, and, after offering some instruction there, received by Gertrude with

languor and a slowly moving jaw, she took her into the kitchen, where the cap and apron were put on. The

effect was not fortunate; Gertrude's eyes were noticeably bloodshot, an affliction made more apparent by the

"I'm afraid it is," Mrs. Adams said. "Malena says it was hard enough to get HER! You have to pay them so

"Mama, could you ask her to wear her cap straighter? Every time she moves her head she gets it on one side,

and her skirt's too long behind and too short in frontand oh, I've NEVER seen such FEET!" Alice laughed

"Never mind; I'll get to work with her. I'll straighten her out all I can, dearie; don't worry." Mrs. Adams patted

her daughter's shoulder encouragingly. "Now YOU can't do another thing, and if you don't run and begin

dressing you won't be ready. It'll only take me a minute to dress, myself, and I'll be down long before you

Alice nodded vaguely, went up to her room, and, after only a moment with her mirror, brought from her

closet the dress of white organdie she had worn the night when she met Russell for the first time. She laid it

carefully upon her bed, and began to make ready to put it on. Her mother came in, half an hour later, to

"I'M all dressed," Mrs. Adams said, briskly. "Of course it doesn't matter. He won't know what the rest of us

even look like: How could he? I know I'm an old SIGHT, but all I want is to look respectable. Do I?"

"You look like the best woman in the world; that's all!" Alice said, with a little gulp.

Her mother laughed and gave her a final scrutiny. "You might use just a tiny bit more colour, dearie I'm

afraid the excitement's made you a little pale. And you MUST brighten up! There's sort of a look in your eyes

as if you'd got in a trance and couldn't get out. You've had it all day. I must run: your father wants me to help

him with his studs. Walter hasn't come yet, but I'll look after him; don't worry, And you better HURRY,

She departed, while Alice sat at the mirror again, to follow her advice concerning a "tiny bit more colour."

Before she had finished, her father knocked at the door, and, when she responded, came in. He was dressed in

the clothes his wife had pressed; but he had lost substantially in weight since they were made for him; no one

would have thought that they had been pressed. They hung from him voluminously, seeming to be the clothes

"One of the buttonholes in my shirt is too large and I can't keep the dang thing fastened. _I_ don't know what

to do about it! I only got one other white shirt, and it's kind of ruined: I tried it before I did this one. Do you

"My collar's got a frayed edge," he complained, as she examined his troublesome shirt. "It's a good deal like

wearing a saw; but I expect it'll wilt down flat pretty soon, and not bother me long. I'm liable to wilt down

flat, myself, I expect; I don't know as I remember any such hot night in the last ten or twelve years." He lifted

his head and sniffed the flaccid air, which was laden with a heavy odour. "My, but that smell is pretty

"Stand still, please, papa," Alice begged him. "I can't see what's the matter if you move around. How absurd

you are about your old glue smell, papa! There isn't a vestige of it, of course."

"I didn't mean glue," he informed her. "I mean cabbage. Is that fashionable now, to have cabbage when

"Oh, is it? I don't mind it much, because it keeps that glue smell off me, but it's fairly strong. I expect you

don't notice it so much because you been in the house with it all along, and got used to it while it was

"I'm afraid I can't," she said. "Not unless you take your shirt off and bring it to me. I'll have to sew the hole

"No," said Alice. "She's got everything on her hands. Run and take it off. Hurry, papa; I've got to arrange the

He went away, and came back presently, half undressed, bringing the shirt. "There's ONE comfort," he

remarked, pensively, as she worked. "I've got that collar offfor a while, anyway. I wish I could go to table

like this; I could stand it a good deal better. Do you seem to be making any headway with the dang thing?"

She was not mistaken, for, upon the little veranda, Russell stood facing the closed door at last. However, it

remained closed for a considerable time after he rang. Inside the house the warning summons of the bell was

immediately followed by another sound, audible to Alice and her father as a crash preceding a series of

Alice went to the top of the front stairs, and her mother appeared in the hall below.

Mrs. Adams looked up. "It's all right," she said, in a loud whisper. "Gertrude fell down the cellar stairs.

Somebody left a bucket there, and" She was interrupted by a gasp from Alice, and hastened to reassure

"Hush!" his wife whispered. "No. She seems upset and angry about it, more than anything else; but she's

rubbing herself, and she'll be all right in time to bring in the little sandwiches. Alice! Those flowers!"

She turned to the door, smiling cordially, even before she opened it. "Do come right in, Mr. Russell," she

said, loudly, lifting her voice for additional warning to those above. "I'm SO glad to receive you informally,

this way, in our own little home. There's a hatrack here under the stairway," she continued, as Russell,

murmuring some response, came into the hall. "I'm afraid you'll think it's almost TOO informal, my coming

to the door, but unfortunately our housemaid's just had a little accidentoh, nothing to mention! I just

thought we better not keep you waiting any longer. Will you step into our livingroom, please?"

She led the way between the two small columns, and seated herself in one of the plush rockingchairs,

selecting it because Alice had once pointed out that the chairs, themselves, were less noticeable when they

had people sitting in them. "Do sit down, Mr. Russell; it's so very warm it's really quite a trial just to stand

"Thank you," he said, as he took a seat. "Yes. It is quite warm." And this seemed to be the extent of his

responsiveness for the moment. He was grave, rather pale; and Mrs. Adams's impression of him, as she

formed it then, was of "a distinguishedlooking young man, really elegant in the best sense of the word, but

timid and formal when he first meets you." She beamed upon him, and used with everything she said a

continuous accompaniment of laughter, meaningless except that it was meant to convey cordiality. "Of course

we DO have a great deal of warm weather," she informed him. "I'm glad it's so much cooler in the house than

"Yes," he said. "It is pleasanter indoors." And, stopping with this single untruth, he permitted himself the

"Most people make a great fuss about hot weather," she said. "The only person I know who doesn't mind the

heat the way other people do is Alice. She always seems as cool as if we had a breeze blowing, no matter

how hot it is. But then she's so amiable she never minds anything. It's just her character. She's always been

that way since she was a little child; always the same to everybody, high and low. I think character's the most

"Yes," he said, solemnly; and touched his bedewed white forehead with a handkerchief.

"Indeed it is," she agreed with herself, never failing to continue her murmur of laughter. "That's what I've

always told Alice; but she never sees anything good in herself, and she just laughs at me when I praise her.

She sees good in everybody ELSE in the world, no matter how unworthy they are, or how they behave

toward HER; but she always underestimates herself. From the time she was a little child she was always that

way. When some other little girl would behave selfishly or meanly toward her, do you think she'd come and

tell me? Never a word to anybody! The little thing was too proud! She was the same way about school. The

teachers had to tell me when she took a prize; she'd bring it home and keep it in her room without a word

about it to her father and mother. Now, Walter was just the other way. Walter would" But here Mrs.

Adams checked herself, though she increased the volume of her laughter. "How silly of me!" she exclaimed.

"I expect you know how mothers ARE, though, Mr. Russell. Give us a chance and we'll talk about our

children forever! Alice would feel terribly if she knew how I've been going on about her to you."

In this Mrs. Adams was right, though she did not herself suspect it, and upon an almost inaudible word or two

from him she went on with her topic. "Of course my excuse is that few mothers have a daughter like Alice. I

suppose we all think the same way about our children, but SOME of us must be right when we feel we've got

"I'm sure _I_ am!" she laughed. "I'll let the others speak for themselves." She paused reflectively. "No; I think

a mother knows when she's got a treasure in her family. If she HASN'T got one, she'll pretend she has,

I certainly know _I_ have. She's always been what people call 'the joy of the household' always cheerful,

no matter what went wrong, and always ready to smooth things over with some bright, witty saying. You

must be sure not to TELL we've had this little chat about hershe'd just be furious with mebut she IS

"No," he said, and again applied the handkerchief to his forehead for an instant. "No, I'll" He paused,

Thus reassured, Mrs. Adams set before him some details of her daughter's popularity at sixteen, dwelling

upon Alice's impartiality among her young suitors: "She never could BEAR to hurt their feelings, and always

treated all of them just alike. About half a dozen of them were just BOUND to marry her! Naturally, her

father and I considered any such idea ridiculous; she was too young, of course."

Thus the mother went on with her biographical sketches, while the pale young man sat facing her under the

hard overhead light of a white globe, set to the ceiling; and listened without interrupting. She was glad to

have the chance to tell him a few things about Alice he might not have guessed for himself, and, indeed, she

had planned to find such an opportunity, if she could; but this was getting to be altogether too much of one,

she felt. As time passed, she was like an actor who must improvise to keep the audience from perceiving that

his fellowplayers have missed their cues; but her anxiety was not betrayed to the still listener; she had a

Alice, meanwhile, had arranged her little roses on the table in as many ways, probably, as there were

blossoms; and she was still at it when her father arrived in the diningroom by way of the back stairs and the

"It's pulled out again," he said. "But I guess there's no help for it now; it's too late, and anyway it lets some air

into me when it bulges. I can sit so's it won't be noticed much, I expect. Isn't it time you quit bothering about

the looks of the table? Your mother's been talking to him about half an hour now, and I had the idea he came

"Just a minute," she begged again. "Just ONE minute, papa!" And she exchanged a rose in front of Russell's

"Just ONE more second, papa." She shook her head, lamenting. "Oh, I wish we'd rented some silver!"

"Because so much of the plating has rubbed off a lot of it. JUST a second, papa." And as she spoke she

hastily went round the table, gathering the knives and forks and spoons that she thought had their plating best

preserved, and exchanging them for more damaged pieces at Russell's place. "There!" she sighed, finally.

"Now I'll come." But at the door she paused to look back dubiously, over her shoulder.

"The roses. I believe after all I shouldn't have tried that vine effect; I ought to have kept them in water, in the

vase. It's so hot, they already begin to look a little wilted, out on the dry tablecloth like that. I believe

"Why, look here, Alice!" he remonstrated, as she seemed disposed to turn back. "Everything'll burn up on the

"Oh, well," she said, "the vase was terribly ugly; I can't do any better. We'll go in." But with her hand on the

doorknob she paused. "No, papa. We mustn't go in by this door. It might look as if"

"I don't see what difference it makes," he grumbled, but nevertheless followed her through the kitchen, and

up the back stairs then through the upper hallway. At the top of the front stairs she paused for a moment,

drawing a deep breath; and then, before her father's puzzled eyes, a transformation came upon her.

Her shoulders, like her eyelids, had been drooping, but now she threw her head back: the shoulders

straightened, and the lashes lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole body in a flash; and she

tripped down the steps, with her pretty hands rising in time to the lilting little tune she had begun to hum.

At the foot of the stairs, one of those pretty hands extended itself at full arm's length toward Russell, and

continued to be extended until it reached his own hand as he came to meet her. "How terrible of me!" she

Her father was advancing toward the young man, expecting to shake hands with him, but Alice stood between

them, and Russell, a little flushed, bowed to him gravely over her shoulder, without looking at him;

whereupon Adams, slightly disconcerted, put his hands in his pockets and turned to his wife.

"No; he can't be coming," she returned, hurriedly, and again warned him by a shake of her head. "Be quiet!"

He was thoroughly mystified, but obeyed her gesture and went to the rockingchair in the opposite corner,

Meanwhile, Alice prattled on: "It's really not a fault of mine, being tardy. The shameful truth is I was trying

to hurry papa. He's incorrigible: he stays so late at his terrible old factoryterrible new factory, I should say.

I hope you don't HATE us for making you dine with us in such fearful weather! I'm nearly dying of the heat,

myself, so you have a fellowsufferer, if that pleases you. Why is it we always bear things better if we think

other people have to stand them, too?" And she added, with an excited laugh: "SILLY of us, don't you think?"

Gertrude had just made her entrance from the diningroom, bearing a tray. She came slowly, with an air of

resentment; and her skirt still needed adjusting, while her lower jaw moved at intervals, though not now upon

any substance, but reminiscently, of habit. She halted before Adams, facing him.

For response, she extended the tray toward him with a gesture of indifference; but he still appeared to be

puzzled. "What in the world?" he began, then caught his wife's eye, and had presence of mind enough to

take a damp and plastic sandwich from the tray. "Well, I'll TRY one," he said, but a moment later, as he

fulfilled this promise, an expression of intense dislike came upon his features, and he would have returned the

sandwich to Gertrude. However, as she had crossed the room to Mrs. Adams he checked the gesture, and sat

helplessly, with the sandwich in his hand. He made another effort to get rid of it as the waitress passed him,

on her way back to the diningroom, but she appeared not to observe him, and he continued to be troubled by

Alice was a loyal daughter. "These are delicious, mama," she said; and turning to Russell, "You missed it;

you should have taken one. Too bad we couldn't have offered you what ought to go with it, of course,

She was interrupted by the second entrance of Gertrude, who announced, "Dinner serve'," and retired from

"Well, well!" Adams said, rising from his chair, with relief. "That's good! Let's go see if we can eat it." And

as the little group moved toward the open door of the diningroom he disposed of his sandwich by dropping

Alice, glancing back over her shoulder, was the only one who saw him, and she shuddered in spite of herself.

Then, seeing that he looked at her entreatingly, as if he wanted to explain that he was doing the best he could,

Alice kept her sprightly chatter going when they sat down, though the temperature of the room and the sight

of hot soup might have discouraged a less determined gayety. Moreover, there were details as unpropitious as

the heat: the expiring roses expressed not beauty but pathos, and what faint odour they exhaled was no rival

to the lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the head of the table, Adams, sitting low in his chair,

appeared to be unable to flatten the uprising wave of his starched bosom; and Gertrude's manner and

expression were of a recognizable hostility during the long period of vain waiting for the cups of soup to be

emptied. Only Mrs. Adams made any progress in this direction; the others merely feinting, now and then

Alice's talk was little more than cheerful sound, but, to fill a desolate interval, served its purpose; and her

mother supported her with everfaithful cooings of applausive laughter. "What a funny thing weather is!" the

girl ran on. "Yesterday it was coolangels had charge of itand today they had an engagement

somewhere else, so the devil saw his chance and started to move the equator to the North Pole; but by the

time he got halfway, he thought of something else he wanted to do, and went off; and left the equator here,

"Why, Alice dear!" her mother cried, fondly. "What an imagination! Not a very pious one, I'm afraid Mr.

Russell might think, though!" Here she gave Gertrude a hidden signal to remove the soup; but, as there was

no response, she had to make the signal more conspicuous. Gertrude was leaning against the wall, her chin

moving like a slow pendulum, her streaked eyes fixed mutinously upon Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several

times, increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked briskly; but the brooding waitress continued

to brood. A faint snap of the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert hissing whisper of avail, and Mrs.

"Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as soup on a night like this!" Alice laughed. "What COULD have

been in the cook's mind not to give us something iced and jellied instead? Of course it's because she's

equatorial, herself, originally, and only feels at home when Mr. Satan moves it north." She looked round at

Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her attention, though unwillingly, and as if she decided only by a

hair's weight not to revolt, instead. However, she finally set herself in slow motion; but overlooked the

supposed head of the table, seeming to be unaware of the sweltering little man who sat there. As she

disappeared toward the kitchen with but three of the cups upon her tray he turned to look plaintively after her,

Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, and, seeing that the guest of the evening was not looking at

her, but down at the white cloth before him, she frowned hard, and shook her head.

Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, and asked, innocently: "What's whose name, papa?"

"Never mind," Alice laughed. "There's hope for you, papa. She hasn't gone forever!"

"I don't know about that," he said, not content with this impulsive assurance. "She LOOKED like she is."

And his remark, considered as a prediction, had begun to seem warranted before Gertrude's return with china

Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and rattled on through it with a spirit richly justifying her mother's

praise of her as "always ready to smooth things over"; for here was more than long delay to be smoothed

over. She smoothed over her father and mother for Russell; and she smoothed over him for them, though he

did not know it, and remained unaware of what he owed her. With all this, throughout her prattlings, the girl's

bright eyes kept seeking his with an eager gayety, which but little veiled both interrogation and entreatyas

if she asked: "Is it too much for you? Can't you bear it? Won't you PLEASE bear it? I would for you. Won't

He looked at her but fleetingly, and seemed to suffer from the heat, in spite of every manly effort not to wipe

his brow too often. His colour, after rising when he greeted Alice and her father, had departed, leaving him

again moistly pallid; a condition arising from discomfort, no doubt, but, considered as a decoration, almost

poetically becoming to him. Not less becoming was the faint, kindly smile, which showed his wish to express

amusement and approval; and yet it was a smile rather strained and plaintive, as if he, like Adams, could only

He pleased Adams, who thought him a fine young man, and decidedly the quietest that Alice had ever shown

to her family. In her father's opinion this was no small merit; and it was to Russell's credit, too, that he

showed embarrassment upon this first intimate presentation; here was an applicant with both reserve and

modesty. "So far, he seems to be first rate a mighty fine young man," Adams thought; and, prompted by no

wish to part from Alice but by reminiscences of apparent candidates less pleasing, he added, "At last!"

Alice's liveliness never flagged. Her smoothing over of things was an almost continuous performance, and

had to be. Yet, while she chattered through the hot and heavy courses, the questions she asked herself were as

continuous as the performance, and as poignant as what her eyes seemed to be asking Russell. Why had she

not prevailed over her mother's fear of being "skimpy?" Had she been, indeed, as her mother said she looked,

"in a trance?" But above all: What was the matter with HIM? What had happened? For she told herself with

painful humour that something even worse than this dinner must be "the matter with him."

The small room, suffocated with the odour of boiled sprouts, grew hotter and hotter as more and more food

appeared, slowly borne in, between deathly long waits, by the resentful, loudbreathing Gertrude. And while

Alice still sought Russell's glance, and read the look upon his face a dozen different ways, fearing all of them;

and while the straggling little flowers died upon the stained cloth, she felt her heart grow as heavy as the

With the arrival of coffee, the host bestirred himself to make known a hospitable regret, "By George!" he

said. "I meant to buy some cigars." He addressed himself apologetically to the guest. "I don't know what I

was thinking about, to forget to bring some home with me. I don't use 'em myselfunless somebody hands

me one, you might say. I've always been a pipesmoker, pure and simple, but I ought to remembered for kind

"Not at all," Russell said. "I'm not smoking at all lately; but when I do, I'm like you, and smoke a pipe."

Alice started, remembering what she had told him when he overtook her on her way from the tobacconist's;

but, after a moment, looking at him, she decided that he must have forgotten it. If he had remembered, she

thought, he could not have helped glancing at her. On the contrary, he seemed more at ease, just then, than he

had since they sat down, for he was favouring her father with a thoughtful attention as Adams responded to

the introduction of a man's topic into the conversation at last. "Well, Mr. Russell, I guess you're right, at that.

I don't say but what cigars may be all right for a man that can afford 'em, if he likes 'em better than a pipe, but

He continued, and was getting well into the eulogium customarily provoked by this theme, when there came

an interruption: the doorbell rang, and he paused inquiringly, rather surprised.

Gertrude spoke out freely: "You mean you astin' me to 'tend you' front do' fer you?"

She seemed both incredulous and affronted, but Mrs. Adams persisted, though somewhat apprehensively.

Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between compliance and revolt, and again the meeker course fortunately

prevailed with her. She gave Mrs. Adams a stare, grimly derisive, then departed. When she came back she

"But I told you to tell anybody we were not at home," Mrs Adams returned. "Who is it?"

"Hold on a minute," Adams intervened. "Law? No. I don't know any Mr. Law. You sure you got the name

"Say he name Law," Gertrude replied, looking at the ceiling to express her fatigue. "Law. 'S all he tell me; 's

"He ain't much," she said. "'Bout you' age; got brustly white moustache, nice eyeglasses."

"But, Virgil," his wife remonstrated, "do finish your coffee; he might stay all evening. Maybe he's come to

Adams laughed. "He isn't much of a caller, I expect. Don't worry: I'll take him up to my room." And turning

toward Russell, "Ahif you'll just excuse me," he said; and went out to his visitor.

When he had gone, Mrs. Adams finished her coffee, and, having glanced intelligently from her guest to her

daughter, she rose. "I think perhaps I ought to go and shake hands with Mr. Lohr, myself," she said, adding in

explanation to Russell, as she reached the door, "He's an old friend of my husband's and it's a very long time

Alice nodded and smiled to her brightly, but upon the closing of the door, the smile vanished; all her

liveliness disappeared; and with this change of expression her complexion itself appeared to change, so that

her rouge became obvious, for she was pale beneath it. However, Russell did not see the alteration, for he did

not look at her; and it was but a momentary lapse the vacation of a tired girl, who for ten seconds lets herself

look as she feels. Then she shot her vivacity back into place as by some powerful spring.

"Penny for your thoughts!" she cried, and tossed one of the wilted roses at him, across the table. "I'll bid more

than a penny; I'll bid tuppenceno, a poor little dead rose a rose for your thoughts, Mr. Arthur Russell!

"No, of course not," she said. "Who could have thoughts in weather like this? Will you EVER forgive us?"

"Making you eat such a heavy dinnerI mean LOOK at such a heavy dinner, because you certainly didn't do

more than look at iton such a night! But the crime draws to a close, and you can begin to cheer up!" She

laughed gaily, and, rising, moved to the door. "Let's go in the other room; your fearful duty is almost done,

For this, though he contrived to laugh, he seemed to have no verbal retort whatever; but followed her into the

"Do you know," she said, "you've never once looked at me for more than a second at a time the whole

"I don't see how you know," she returned; and then stepping closer to him, spoke with gentle solicitude: "Tell

me: you're really feeling wretchedly, aren't you? I know you've got a fearful headache, or something. Tell

"But if you are" she began; and then, looking at him with a desperate sweetness, as if this were her last

resource to rouse him, "What's the matter, little boy?" she said with lisping tenderness. "Tell auntie!"

It was a mistake, for he seemed to flinch, and to lean backward, however, slightly. She turned away instantly,

with a flippant lift and drop of both hands. "Oh, my dear!" she laughed. "I won't eat you!"

And as the discomfited young man watched her, seeming able to lift his eyes, now that her back was turned,

she went to the front door and pushed open the screen. "Let's go out on the porch," she said. "Where we

Then, when he had followed her out, and they were seated, "Isn't this better?" she asked. "Don't you feel more

"You do seem sorry about something," she said. "What is it? Isn't it time you were telling me what's the

"Nothing. Indeed nothing's the matter. Of course one IS rather affected by such weather as this. It may make

She sighed, and let the tired muscles of her face rest. Under the hard lights, indoors, they had served her until

they ached, and it was a luxury to feel that in the darkness no grimacings need call upon them.

"I know what an ugly little house it is," she said. "Maybe it was the furnitureor mama's vases that upset

At that she uttered a monosyllable of doubting laughter. "I wonder why you say that."

"No. It's because you're too kind, or too conscientious, or too embarrassedanyhow too something to tell

me." She leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin in hands, in the reflective attitude she knew how to make

graceful. "I have a feeling that you're not going to tell me," she said, slowly. "Yeseven that you're never

"I wonder," she went on, still slowly, and in a voice of reflection, "I wonder who HAS been talking about me

"Not at" he began, but checked himself and substituted another form of denial. "Nothing is 'it.'"

"Yesin the dark!" she said. "Nothe weather might make you even quieter than usual, but it wouldn't

strike you so nearly dumb. Noand it wouldn't make you seem to be under such a strain as if you thought

"You shouldn't," she interrupted, gently. "There's nothing you have to escape from, you know. You aren't

She took it up. "You're sorry I think you're so different, you mean to say, don't you? Never mind: that's what

you did mean to say, but you couldn't finish it because you're not good at deceiving."

"Never mind," she said again. "You're sorry I think you're so differentand all in one daysince last night.

Yes, your voice SOUNDS sorry, too. It sounds sorrier than it would just because of my thinking something

you could change my mind about in a minute so it means you're sorry you ARE different."

But disregarding the faint denial, "Never mind," she said. "Do you remember one night when you told me

that nothing anybody else could do would ever keep you from coming here? That if youif you left me it

"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and her hands, inactive for once, lay motionless

"I wonder" she said once more, but she stopped. In her mind she was going back over their time

together since the first meetingfragments of talk, moments of silence, little things of no importance, little

things that might be important; moonshine, sunshine, starlight; and her thoughts zigzagged among the

jumbling memories; but, as if she made for herself a picture of all these fragments, throwing them upon the

canvas haphazard, she saw them all just touched with the one tainting quality that gave them coherence, the

faint, false haze she had put over this friendship by her own pretendings. And, if this terrible dinner, or

anything, or everything, had shown that saffron tint in its true colour to the man at her side, last night almost

a lover, then she had indeed of herself driven him away, and might well feel that she was lost.

"Do you know?" she said, suddenly, in a clear, loud voice. "I have the strangest feeling. I feel as if I were

"No," she interrupted. "I've never had a feeling like this before. It'sit's just SO; that's all! You're

GOINGwhy, you're never coming here again!" She stood up, abruptly, beginning to tremble all over.

"Why, it's FINISHED, isn't it?" she said, and her trembling was manifest now in her voice. "Why, it's all

He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and nervous," he said. "I really ought to be going."

"Yes, of COURSE you ought," she cried, despairingly. "There's nothing else for you to do. When anything's

Then, as moving to go, he stumbled upon the veranda steps, "Your HAT!" she cried. "I'd like to keep it for a

She ran into the hall and brought his straw hat from the chair where he had left it. "You poor thing!" she said,

Then, as they faced each other for the short moment which both of them knew would be the last of all their

veranda moments, Alice's broken laughter grew louder. "What a thing to say!" she cried. "What a romantic

Her laughter continued as he turned away, but other sounds came from within the house, clearly audible with

the opening of a door upstairsa long and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of Mrs. Adams. Russell

"Oh, don't bother," she said. "We have lots of that in this funny little old house! Goodbye!"

And as he went down the steps, she ran back into the house and closed the door heavily behind her.

Her mother's wailing could still be heard from overhead, though more faintly; and old Charley Lohr was

He looked at Alice compassionately. "I was just comin' to suggest maybe you'd excuse yourself from your

company," he said. "Your mother was bound not to disturb you, and tried her best to keep you from hearin'

"Well," he said, "_I_ only stepped over to offer my sympathy and services, as it were. _I_ thought of course

you folks knew all about it. Fact is, it was in the evening paperjust a little bit of an item on the back page,

He coughed. "Well, it ain't anything so terrible," he said. "Fact is, your brother Walter's got in a little

troublewell, I suppose you might call it quite a good deal of trouble. Fact is, he's quite considerable short

Alice ran up the stairs and into her father's room, where Mrs. Adams threw herself into her daughter's arms.

Alice patted the heaving shoulders her arms enclosed. "No, no," she said. "He didn't hear you it wouldn't

"Oh, POOR Walter!" The mother cried. "Oh, the POOR boy! Poor, poor Walter! Poor, poor, poor,

"Hush, dear, hush!" Alice tried to soothe her, but the lament could not be abated, and from the other side of

the room a repetition in a different spirit was as continuous. Adams paced furiously there, pounding his fist

into his left palm as he strode. "The dang boy!" he said. "Dang little fool! Dang idiot! Dang fool! Whyn't he

"He DID!" Mrs. Adams sobbed. "He DID tell you, and you wouldn't GIVE it to him."

"He DID, did he?" Adams shouted at her. "What he begged me for was money to run away with! He never

dreamed of putting back what he took. What the dangnation you talking aboutaccusing me!"

"He NEEDED it," she said. "He needed it to run away with! How could he expect to LIVE, after he got away,

if he didn't have a little money? Oh, poor, poor, POOR Walter! Poor, poor, poor"

She went back to this repetition; and Adams went back to his own, then paused, seeing his old friend standing

"AhI'll just be goin', I guess, Virgil," Lohr said. "I don't see as there's any use my tryin' to say any more. I'll

"Wait a minute," Adams said, and, groaning, came and went down the stairs with him. "You say you didn't

"No, I don't know a thing about what he's going to do," Lohr said, as they reached the lower floor. "Not a

thing. But look here, Virgil, I don't see as this calls for you and your wife to take on so hard aboutanyhow

"No," Adams gulped. "It always seems that way to the other party that's only looking on!"

"Oh, well, I know that, of course," old Charley returned, soothingly. "But look here, Virgil: they may not

catch the boy; they didn't even seem to be sure what train he made, and if they do get him, why, the ole man

"HIM?" Adams cried, interrupting. "Him not prosecute? Why, that's what he's been waiting for, all along! He

thinks my boy and me both cheated him! Why, he was just letting Walter walk into a trap! Didn't you say

they'd been suspecting him for some time back? Didn't you say they'd been watching him and were just about

"Yes, I know," said Lohr; "but you can't tell, especially if you raise the money and pay it back."

"Every cent!" Adams vociferated. "Every last penny! I can raise itI GOT to raise it! I'm going to put a loan

on my factory tomorrow. Oh, I'll get it for him, you tell him! Every last penny!"

"Well, ole feller, you just try and get quieted down some now." Charley held out his hand in parting. "You

and your wife just quiet down some. You AIN'T the healthiest man in the world, you know, and you already

been under quite some strain before this happened. You want to take care of yourself for the sake of your

wife and that sweet little girl upstairs, you know. Now, goodnight," he finished, stepping out upon the

"Do?" Adams echoed. "There ain't anything ANYBODY can do!" And then, as his old friend went down the

path to the sidewalk, he called after him, "You tell him I'll pay him every last cent! Every last, dang, dirty

He slammed the door and went rapidly up the stairs, talking loudly to himself. "Every dang, last, dirty penny!

Thinks EVERYBODY in this family wants to steal from him, does he? Thinks we're ALL yellow, does he?

I'll show him!" And he came into his own room vociferating, "Every last, dang, dirty penny!"

Mrs. Adams had collapsed, and Alice had put her upon his bed, where she lay tossing convulsively and

sobbing, "Oh, POOR Walter!" over and over, but after a time she varied the sorry tune. "Oh, poor Alice!" she

moaned, clinging to her daughter's hand. "Oh, poor, POOR Alice to have THIS come on the night of your

dinnerjust when everything seemed to be going so wellat lastoh, poor, poor, POOR"

"You MUST be!" her mother cried, clutching her. "You've just GOT to be! ONE of us has got to be all

rightsurely God wouldn't mind just ONE of us being all rightthat wouldn't hurt Him"

But Mrs. Adams only clutched her the more tightly. "He seemed SUCH a nice young man, dearie! He may

not see this in the paperMr. Lohr said it was just a little bit of an itemhe MAY not see it, dearie"

Then her anguish went back to Walter again; and to his needs as a fugitiveshe had meant to repair his

underwear, but had postponed doing so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lamentable as the

calamity itself. She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self reproach, though

she finally took up another theme temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's, in

denunciation of the runaway, she cried out faintly that he was cruel; and further wearied her broken voice

with details of Walter's beauty as a baby, and of his bedtime pieties throughout his infancy.

So the hot night wore on. Three had struck before Mrs. Adams was got to bed; and Alice, returning to her

own room, could hear her father's bare feet thudding back and forth after that. "Poor papa!" she whispered in

helpless imitation of her mother. "Poor papa! Poor mama! Poor Walter! Poor all of us!"

She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the hall the bare feet still thudded over their changeless route;

and she woke at seven, hearing Adams pass her door, shod. In her wrapper she ran out into the hallway and

"Hush," he said, and looked up at her with reddened eyes. "Don't wake your mother."

I got to throw some figures together to show the bank. Don't worry: I'll get things fixed up. You go back to

"You wait!" she said, imperiously, and disappeared to return almost at once. "I can cook in my bedroom

Descending softly, she made him wait in the diningroom until she brought him toast and eggs and coffee.

"Eat!" she said. "And I'm going to telephone for a taxicab to take you, if you think you've really got to go."

"No, I didn't," he returned. "I tell you I got some sleep. I got all I wanted anyhow."

"Here!" he interrupted, looking up at her suddenly and setting down his cup of coffee. "Look here! What

Her lip trembled a little, but she controlled it before she spoke. "Well, what about him, papa?" she asked,

"Well, we could hardly" Adams paused, frowning heavily. "We could hardly expect he wouldn't hear

"You don't think he'd be thethe cheap kind it'd make a difference with, of course."

"The difference," she explained"the difference was made without his hearing anything about Walter. He

"Never mind," she said. "It's nothing beside the real trouble we're inI'll tell you some time. You eat your

"No," he said, irritably. "I won't do it! I don't want any dang food! And look here"he spoke sharply to stop

her, as she went toward the telephone "I don't want any dang taxi, either! You look after your mother when

And though she followed him to the front door, entreating, he could not be stayed or hindered. He went

through the quiet morning streets at a rickety, rapid gait, swinging his old straw hat in his hands, and

whispering angrily to himself as he went. His grizzled hair, not trimmed for a month, blew back from his

damp forehead in the warm breeze; his reddened eyes stared hard at nothing from under blinking lids; and

one side of his face twitched startlingly from time to time;children might have run from him, or mocked

When he had come into that fallen quarter his industry had partly revived and wholly made odorous, a negro

woman, leaning upon her whitewashed gate, gazed after him and chuckled for the benefit of a gossiping

friend in the next tiny yard. "Oh, good Satan! Wha'ssa matter that ole glue man?"

"Talkin' to his ole se'f!" the first explained, joyously. "Look like gone distractedole glue man!"

Adams's legs had grown more uncertain with his hard walk, and he stumbled heavily as he crossed the baked

mud of his broad lot, but cared little for that, was almost unaware of it, in fact. Thus his eyes saw as little as

his body felt, and so he failed to observe something that would have given him additional light upon an old

There are in the wide world people who have never learned its meaning; but most are either young or

beautifully unobservant who remain wholly unaware of the inner poignancies the words convey: "a rain of

misfortunes." It is a boiling rain, seemingly whimsical in its choice of spots whereon to fall; and, so far as

mortal eye can tell, neither the just nor the unjust may hope to avoid it, or need worry themselves by

The glueworks foreman, standing in the doorway of the brick shed, observed his employer's eccentric

"Well, they ain't no putticular use gettin' so upset over it," he said, as Adams came up. "When a thing

happens, why, it happens, and that's all there is to it. When a thing's so, why, it's so. All you can do about it is

think if there's anything you CAN do; and that's what you better be doin' with this case."

Adams halted, and seemed to gape at him. "What case?" he said, with difficulty. "Was it in the morning

"No, it ain't in no morning papers. My land! It don't need to be in no papers; look at the SIZE of it!"

Adams stared vaguely at the man's outstretched hand and pointing forefinger, then turned and saw a great

sign upon the facade of the big factory building across the street. The letters were large enough to be read two

A gray touringcar had just come to rest before the principal entrance of the building, and J. A. Lamb himself

descended from it. He glanced over toward the humble rival of his projected great industry, saw his old clerk,

Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that held his hat as if to make a protective gesture,

but failed to carry it out; and his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman, however, seemed to feel that

"Our glueworks, hell!" he remarked. "I guess we won't HAVE no glueworks over here not very long, if we

Lamb chuckled. "I kind of had some such notion," he said. "You see, Virgil, I couldn't exactly let you walk

off with it like swallering a pat o' butter, now, could I? It didn't look exactly reasonable to expect me to let go

Adams found a halfchoked voice somewhere in his throat. "Do youwould you step into my office a

"Why, certainly I'm willing to have a little talk with you," the old gentleman said, as he followed his former

employee indoors, and he added, "I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got THAT up, over yonder,

Adams threw open the door of the rough room he called his office, having as justification for this title little

more than the fact that he had a telephone there and a deal table that served as a desk. "Just step into the

Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair before it, at the telephone, and at the partition walls built of old

boards, some covered with ancient paint and some merely weatherbeaten, the salvage of a housewrecker;

and he smiled broadly. "So these are your offices, are they?" he asked. "You expect to do quite a business

Adams turned upon him a stricken and tortured face. "Have you seen Charley Lohr since last night, Mr.

"No," Adams said, swallowing. "I mean what my boy owes you. That's what I told Charley to tell you. I told

"Well, well!" the old gentleman interrupted, testily. "I don't know anything about that."

"I'm expecting to pay you," Adams went on, swallowing again, painfully. "I was expecting to do it out of a

The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. "Oh, out o' the GLUEworks? You expected to raise money

At that, Adams's agitation increased prodigiously. "How'd you THINK I expected to pay you?" he said. "Did

you think I expected to get money on my own old bones?" He slapped himself harshly upon the chest and

legs. "Do you think a bank'll lend money on a man's ribs and his brokendown old kneebones? They won't

You got to have some BUSINESS prospects to show 'em, if you haven't got any property nor securities; and

Why, you don't need to make an OUNCE o' glue; your sign's fixed ME without your doing another lick!

"Just let me tell you something, Virgil Adams," the old man interrupted, harshly. "I got just one right

important thing to tell you before we talk any further business; and that's this: there's some few men in this

town made their money in offcolour ways, but there aren't many; and those there are have had to be a darn

sight slicker than you know how to be, or ever WILL know how to be! Yes, sir, and they none of them had

the little gumption to try to make it out of a man that had the spirit not to let 'em, and the STRENGTH not to

let 'em! I know what you thought. 'Here,' you said to yourself, 'here's this ole fool J. A. Lamb; he's kind of

worn out and in his second childhood like; I can put it over on him, without his ever'"

"I did not!" Adams shouted. "A great deal YOU know about my feelings and all what I said to myself!

There's one thing I want to tell YOU, and that's what I'm saying to myself NOW, and what my feelings are

He struck the table a great blow with his thin fist, and shook the damaged knuckles m the air. "I just want to

tell you, whatever I did feel, I don't feel MEAN any more; not today, I don't. There's a meaner man in this

"You bet I do! You worked till you got me where you want me; and I wouldn't do that to another man, no

"Ain't it plain enough?" Adams cried. "You even got me where I can't raise the money to pay back what my

boy owes you! Do you suppose anybody's fool enough to let me have a cent on this business after one look at

"No, you don't," Adams echoed, hoarsely. "What's more, you knew my house was mortgaged, and my"

"What's the use your talking like that?" Adams cried. "You got me where I can't even raise the money to pay

what my boy owes the company, so't I can't show any reason to stop the prosecution and keep him out the

"'Accuse you?' What am I telling you? Do you think I got no EYES?" And Adams hammered the table again.

"Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at my leaving the way I did. You kept him there after you

suspected him; and you had him watched; you let him go on; just waited to catch him and ruin him!"

"You're crazy!" the old man bellowed. "I didn't know there was anything against the boy till last night. You're

Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over his haggard forehead and bloodshot eyes; with his bruised

hands pounding the table and flying in a hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his feet shuffled constantly

to preserve his balance upon staggering legs, he was the picture of a man with a mind gone to rags.

"Maybe I AM crazy!" he cried, his voice breaking and quavering. "Maybe I am, but I wouldn't stand there

and taunt a man with it if I'd done to him what you've done to me! Just look at me: I worked all my life for

you, and what I did when I quit never harmed youit didn't make two cents' worth o' difference in your life

and it looked like it'd mean all the difference in the world to my familyand now look what you've DONE

to me for it! I tell you, Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to another man the way I looked up to

you the whole o' my life, but I don't look up to you any more! You think you got a fine day of it now, riding

up in your automobile to look at that signand then over here at my poor little works that you've ruined. But

listen to me just this one last time!" The cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the gesticulating hands

fluttered uncontrollably. "Just you listen!" he panted. "You think I did you a bad turn, and now you got me

ruined for it, and you got my works ruined, and my family ruined; and if anybody'd 'a' told me this time last

year I'd ever say such a thing to you I'd called him a dang liar, but I DO say it: I say you've acted toward me

His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able to do him this final service; then he sank, crumpled, into the

"I tell you, you're crazy!" Lamb said again. "I never in the world" But he checked himself, staring in

sudden perplexity at his accuser. "Look here!" he said. "What's the matter of you? Have you got another of

those?" He put his hand upon Adams's shoulder, which jerked feebly under the touch.

"Here!" he said. "Run and tell my chauffeur to bring my car over here. Tell him to drive right up over the

So, it happened, the great J. A. Lamb a second time brought his former clerk home, stricken and almost

About five o'clock that afternoon, the old gentleman came back to Adams's house; and when Alice opened

the door, he nodded, walked into the "livingroom" without speaking; then stood frowning as if he hesitated

"The doctor was here again a little while ago; he thinks papa's coming through it. He's pretty sure he will."

"Not a bit of sense to it!" Lamb said, gruffly. "When he was getting well the other time the doctor told me it

wasn't a regular stroke, so to speak this 'cerebral effusion' thing. Said there wasn't any particular reason for

your father to expect he'd ever have another attack, if he'd take a little care of himself. Said he could consider

Lamb nodded, sighed aloud, and crossed the room to a chair. "I guess not," he said, as he sat down. "Bustin'

"I guess so; I guess so." Then he looked up at her with a glimmer of anxiety in his eyes. "Has he came to

"Yes. He's talked a little. His mind's clear; he spoke to mama and me and to Miss Perry." Alice laughed sadly.

"We were lucky enough to get her back, but papa didn't seem to think it was lucky. When he recognized her

"Well, that's a good sign, if he's getting a little cross. Did hedid he happen to say anything for instance,

This question, awkwardly delivered, had the effect of removing the girl's pallor; rosy tints came quickly upon

her cheeks. "Heyes, he did," she said. "Naturally, he's troubled aboutabout" She stopped.

"Here, now," Lamb said, uncomfortably, as she stopped again. "Listen, young lady; let's don't talk about that

just yet. I want to ask you: you understand all about this glue business, I expect, don't you?"

"Let me tell you," he interrupted, impatiently. "I'll tell you all about it in two words. The process belonged to

me, and your father up and walked off with it; there's no getting around THAT much, anyhow."

"Isn't there?" Alice stared at him. "I think you're mistaken, Mr. Lamb. Didn't papa improve it so that it

There was a spark in the old blue eyes at this. "What?" he cried. "Is that the way he got around it? Why, in all

my life I never heard of such a" But he left the sentence unfinished; the testiness went out of his husky

voice and the anger out of his eyes. "Well, I expect maybe that was the way of it," he said. "Anyhow, it's right

"I expect so," the old man returned, pacifically. "I expect so, probably. Anyhow, it's a question that's neither

here nor there, right now. What I was thinking of sayingwell, did your father happen to let out that he and I

"Well, we did." He sighed and shook his head. "Your fatherwell, he used some pretty hard expressions

toward me, young lady. They weren't SO, I'm glad to say, but he used 'em to me, and the worst of it was he

believed 'em. Well, I been thinking it over, and I thought I'd just have a kind of little talk with you to set

"For instance," he said, "it's like this. Now, I hope you won't think I mean any indelicacy, but you take your

brother's case, since we got to mention it, why, your father had the whole thing worked out in his mind about

as wrong as anybody ever got anything. If I'd acted the way your father thought I did about that, why,

somebody just ought to take me out and shoot me! Do YOU know what that man thought?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't believe I think anything at all about anything today."

"Well, well," he returned; "I expect not; I expect not. You kind of look to me as if you ought to be in bed

"I guess you mean 'Oh, yes'; and I won't keep you long, but there's something we got to get fixed up, and I'd

rather talk to you than I would to your mother, because you're a smart girl and always friendly; and I want to

"I never even hardly noticed your brother was still working for me," he explained, earnestly. "I never thought

anything about it. My sons sort of tried to tease me about the way your fatherabout his taking up this glue

business, so to speakand one day Albert, Junior, asked me if I felt all right about your brother's staying

there after that, and I told himwell, I just asked him to shut up. If the boy wanted to stay there, I didn't

consider it my business to send him away on account of any feeling I had toward his father; not as long as he

did his work rightand the report showed he did. Well, as it happens, it looks now as if he stayed because he

HAD to; he couldn't quit because he'd 'a' been found out if he did. Well, he'd been covering up his shortage

for a considerable timeand do you know what your father practically charged me with about that?"

In his resentment, the old gentleman's ruddy face became ruddier and his husky voice huskier. "Thinks I kept

the boy there because I suspected him! Thinks I did it to get even with HIM! Do I look to YOU like a man

"No!" he exclaimed. "Nor HE wouldn't think so if he was himself; he's known me too long. But he must been

sort of brooding over this whole business I mean before Walter's trouble he must been taking it to heart

pretty hard for some time back. He thought I didn't think much of him any moreand I expect he maybe

wondered some what I was going to DOand there's nothing worse'n that state of mind to make a man

suspicious of all kinds of meanness. Well, he practically stood up there and accused me to my face of fixing

things so't he couldn't ever raise the money to settle for Walter and ask us not to prosecute. That's the state of

mind your father's brooding got him into, young ladycharging me with a trick like that!"

The old man slapped his sturdy knee, angrily. "Why, that dang fool of a Virgil Adams!" he exclaimed. "He

wouldn't even give me a chance to talk; and he got me so mad I couldn't hardly talk, anyway! He might 'a'

known from the first I wasn't going to let him walk in and beat me out of my ownthat is, he might 'a'

known I wouldn't let him get ahead of me in a business matternot with my boys twitting me about it every

few minutes! But to talk to me the way he did this morningwell, he was out of his head; that's all! Now,

wait just a minute," he interposed, as she seemed about to speak. "In the first place, we aren't going to push

this case against your brother. I believe in the law, all right, and business men got to protect themselves; but

in a case like this, where restitution's made by the family, why, I expect it's just as well sometimes to use a

little influence and let matters drop. Of course your brother'll have to keep out o' this state; that's all."

"You said, 'where restitution's made by the family.' That's what seemed to trouble papa so terribly,

"I'm going to TELL you, ain't I?" he said, gruffly. "Just hold your horses a minute, please." He coughed, rose

from his chair, walked up and down the room, then halted before her. "It's like this," he said. "After I brought

your father home, this morning, there was one of the things he told me, when he was going for me, over

yonderit kind of stuck in my craw. It was something about all this glue controversy not meaning anything

to me in particular, and meaning a whole heap to him and his family. Well, he was wrong about that two

ways. The first one was, it did mean a good deal to me to have him go back on me after so many years. I don't

need to say any more about it, except just to tell you it meant quite a little more to me than you'd think,

maybe. The other way he was wrong is, that how much a thing means to one man and how little it means to

"No," he said. "It isn't. It's not the right way to look at anything. Yes, and your father knows it as well as I do,

when he's in his right mind; and I expect that's one of the reasons he got so mad at mebut anyhow, I

couldn't help thinking about how much all this thing HAD maybe meant to him;as I say, it kind of stuck in

my craw. I want you to tell him something from me, and I want you to go and tell him right off, if he's able

and willing to listen. You tell him I got kind of a notion he was pushed into this thing by circumstances, and

tell him I've lived long enough to know that circumstances can beat the best of usyou tell him I said 'the

BEST of us.' Tell him I haven't got a bit of feeling against himnot any moreand tell him I came here to

"Tell him I said" The old man paused abruptly and Alice was surprised, in a dull and tired way, when

she saw that his lips had begun to twitch and his eyelids to blink; but he recovered himself almost at once,

and continued: "I want him to remember, 'Forgive us our transgressions, as we forgive those that transgress

against us'; and if he and I been transgressing against each other, why, tell him I think it's time we QUIT such

He coughed again, smiled heartily upon her, and walked toward the door; then turned back to her with an

"Why, I forgot what we were just talking about! Your father wants to settle for Walter's deficit. Tell him we'll

be glad to accept it; but of course we don't expect him to clean the matter up until he's able to talk business

Alice stared at him blankly enough for him to perceive that further explanations were necessary. "It's like

this," he said. "You see, if your father decided to keep his works going over yonder, I don't say but he might

give us some little competition for a time, 'specially as he's got the start on us and about ready for the market.

Then I was figuring we could use his plantit's small, but it'd be to our benefit to have the use of itand

he's got a lease on that big lot; it may come in handy for us if we want to expand some. Well, I'd prefer to

make a deal with him as quietly as possibleno good in every Tom, Dick and Harry hearing about things

like thisbut I figured he could sell out to me for a little something more'n enough to cover the mortgage he

put on this house, and Walter's deficit, tooTHAT don't amount to much in dollars and cents. The way I

figure it, I could offer him about ninetythree hundred dollars as a totalor say ninetythree hundred and

fifty and if he feels like accepting, why, I'll send a confidential man up here with the papers soon's your

father's able to look 'em over. You tell him, will you, and ask him if he sees his way to accepting that figure?"

"Yes," Alice said; and now her own lips twitched, while her eyes filled so that she saw but a blurred image of

He shook her hand hastily. "Well, let's just keep it kind of quiet," he said, at the door. "No good in every

Tom, Dick and Harry knowing all what goes on in town! You telephone me when your papa's ready to go

over the papersand call me up at my house tonight, will you? Let me hear how he's feeling?"

"I will," she said, and through her grateful tears gave him a smile almost radiant. "He'll be better, Mr. Lamb.

One morning, that autumn, Mrs. Adams came into Alice's room, and found her completing a sober toilet for

the street; moreover, the expression revealed in her mirror was harmonious with the businesslike severity of

her attire. "What makes you look so cross, dearie?" the mother asked. "Couldn't you find anything nicer to

"I don't believe I'm cross," the girl said, absently. "I believe I'm just thinking. Isn't it about time?"

Disregarding this, Mrs. Adams looked her over thoughtfully. "I can't see why you don't wear more colour,"

she said. "At your age it's becoming and proper, too. Anyhow, when you're going on the street, I think you

ought to look just as gay and lively as you can manage. You want to show 'em you've got some spunk!"

"I mean about Walter's running away and the mess your father made of his business. It would help to show

"Not I!" Alice laughed shortly, shaking her head. "I've quit dressing at them, and if they saw me they

wouldn't think what you want 'em to. It's funny; but we don't often make people think what we want 'em to,

mama. You do thus and so; and you tell yourself, 'Now, seeing me do thus and so, people will naturally think

this and that'; but they don't. They think something elseusually just what you DON'T want 'em to. I

suppose about the only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody."

"Well, but it wouldn't be pretending. You ought to let people see you're still holding your head up because

you ARE. You wouldn't want that Mildred Palmer to think you're cast down aboutwell, you know you

"She wouldn't know whether I am or not, mama." Alice bit her lip, then smiled faintly as she said:

Mrs. Adams dropped the subject casually. "Are you going downtown?" she inquired.

"Just something I want to see about. I'll tell you when I come back. Anything you want me to do?"

"No; I guess not today. I thought you might look for a rug, but I'd rather go with you to select it. We'll have

"I'm glad you think so, mama. I don't suppose he's ever even noticed it, but that old rug of his well, really!"

"I didn't mean for him," her mother explained, thoughtfully. "No; he don't mind it, and he'd likely make a fuss

if we changed it on his account. No; what I meantwe'll have to put your father in Walter's room. He won't

"No, I suppose not," Alice agreed, rather sadly. "I heard the bell awhile ago. Was it somebody about that?"

"Yes; just before I came upstairs. Mrs. Lohr gave him a note to me, and he was really a very

pleasantlooking young man. A VERY pleasantlooking young man," Mrs. Adams repeated with increased

animation and a thoughtful glance at her daughter. "He's a Mr. Will Dickson; he has a firstrate position with

the gas works, Mrs. Lohr says, and he's fully able to afford a nice room. So if you and I double up in here,

then with that young married couple in my room, and this Mr. Dickson in your father's, we'll just about have

things settled. I thought maybe I could make one more place at table, too, so that with the other people from

outside we'd be serving eleven altogether. You see if I have to pay this cook twelve dollars a weekit can't

be helped, I guesswell, one more would certainly help toward a profit. Of course it's a terribly worrying

thing to see how we WILL come out. Don't you suppose we could squeeze in one more?"

Mrs. Adams brightened. "I'm sure it'll be pleasant having that young married couple in the house and

especially this Mr. Will Dickson. He seemed very much of a gentleman, and anxious to get settled in good

surroundings. I was very favourably impressed with him in every way; and he explained to me about his

name; it seems it isn't William, it's just 'Will'; his parents had him christened that way. It's curious." She

paused, and then, with an effort to seem casual, which veiled nothing from her daughter: "It's QUITE

curious," she said again. "But it's rather attractive and different, don't you think?"

"He is, though," Mrs. Adams maintained. "He's very much of a gentleman, unless I'm no judge of

"No doubt," Alice said, as she opened her door to depart. "I don't suppose we'll mind having any of 'em as

But her mother detained her, catching her by the arm. "Alice, you do hate it, don't you!"

Mrs. Adams became emotional at once: her face cried tragedy, and her voice misfortune. "There MIGHT

have been something else to do! Oh, Alice, you gave your father bad advice when you upheld him in taking a

miserable little ninetythree hundred and fifty from that old wretch! If your father'd just had the gumption to

hold out, they'd have had to pay him anything he asked. If he'd just had the gumption and a little manly

"Hush!" Alice whispered, for her mother's voice grew louder. "Hush! He'll hear you, mama."

"Could he hear me too often?" the embittered lady asked. "If he'd listened to me at the right time, would we

have to be taking in boarders and sinking DOWN in the scale at the end of our lives, instead of going UP?

You were both wrong; we didn't need to be so panickythat was just what that old man wanted: to scare us

and buy us out for nothing! If your father'd just listened to me then, or if for once in his life he'd just been half

But from the other side of Adams's closed door his voice came querulously. "Oh, I HEAR her, all right!"

"You see, mama?" Alice said, and, as Mrs. Adams turned away, weeping, the daughter sighed; then went in

He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow behind his head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. Adams's

wrapper swathed him no more; he wore a dressinggown his wife had bought for him, and was smoking his

pipe. "The old story, is it?" he said, as Alice came in. "The same, same old story! Well, well! Has she gone?"

"Yes, there is." He smiled at her. "I wish you'd sit down a while and talk to me unless your errand"

"No," she said, taking a chair near him. "I was just going down to see about some arrangements I was making

"All right," he said, indulgently. "Keep your secrets; keep your secrets." He paused, drew musingly upon his

pipe, and shook his head. "Funny the way your mother looks at things! For the matter o' that, everything's

pretty funny, I expect, if you stop to think about it. For instance, let her say all she likes, but we were pushed

right spang to the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn't taken it into his head to make that offer for the works; and there's

one of the things I been thinking about lately, Alice: thinking about how funny they work out."

"Well, I've seen it happen in other people's lives, time and time again; and now it's happened in ours. You

think you're going to be pushed right up against the wall; you can't see any way out, or any hope at all; you

think you're GONEand then something you never counted on turns up; and, while maybe you never do get

back to where you used to be, yet somehow you kind of squirm out of being right SPANG against the wall.

You keep on goingmaybe you can't go much, but you do go a little. See what I mean?"

"Yes, I'm afraid you do," he said. "Too bad! You oughtn't to understand it at your age. It seems to me a good

deal as if the Lord really meant for the young people to have the good times, and for the old to have the

troubles; and when anybody as young as you has trouble there's a big mistake somewhere."

But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine error: "Yes, it does look a good deal that way. But of

course we can't tell; we're never certain about anythingnot about anything at all. Sometimes I look at it

another way, though. Sometimes it looks to me as if a body's troubles came on him mainly because he hadn't

had sense enough to know how not to have anyas if his troubles were kind of like a boy's getting kept in

after school by the teacher, to give him discipline, or something or other. But, my, my! We don't learn easy!"

He chuckled mournfully. "Not to learn how to live till we're about ready to die, it certainly seems to me dang

"'Brood?' No!" he returned. "I just kind o' mull it over." He chuckled again, sighed, and then, not looking at

her, he said, "That Mr. Russell your mother tells me he hasn't been here again not since"

"No," she said. "There isn't any 'maybe.' I told him goodbye that night, papa. It was before he knew about

"Well, well," Adams said. "Young people are entitled to their own privacy; I don't want to pry." He emptied

his pipe into a chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and reverted to a former topic.

"Yes, about not knowing how to live till you're through livingand THEN maybe not!" he said, chuckling at

his own determined pessimism. "I see I'm pretty old because I talk this wayI remember my grandmother

saying things a good deal like all what I'm saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young

fellowshe was a right gloomy old lady, I remember. Well, anyhow, it reminds me: I want to get on my feet

"Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at me!" Adams interrupted, peevishly. "He said I'd be good for

SOME kind of light jobif I could find just the right thing. 'Where there wouldn't be either any physical or

mental strain,' he said. Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I'll feel better if I can just get out

Alice patted his hand. "You must just be contented, papa. Everything's going to be all right, and you mustn't

get to worrying about doing anything. We own this house it's all clearand you've taken care of mama and

"No, sir!" he said, querulously. "I don't like the idea of being the landlady's husband around a boarding

house; it goes against my gizzard. _I_ know: makes out the bills for his wife Sunday mornings works with

a screwdriver on somebody's bureau drawer sometimes'tends the furnace maybeone the boarders gives

him a cigar now and then. That's a FINE life to look forward to! No, sir; I don't want to finish as a landlady's

Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too accurately prophetic in every probability. "But,

papa," she said, to console him, "don't you think maybe there isn't such a thing as a 'finish,' after all! You say

perhaps we don't learn to live till we die but maybe that's how it is AFTER we die, toojust learning some

"Well, then," she said, "what's the use of talking about a 'finish?' We do keep looking ahead to things as if

they'd finish something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything. They're just part of going on.

I'll tell youI looked ahead all summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to myself, 'Well, if that

happens, I'm finished!' But it wasn't so, papa. It did happen, and nothing's finished; I'm going on, just the

"Well" She blushed more deeply, then jumped up, and, standing before him, caught both his hands in

hers. "Well, don't you think, since we do have to go on, we ought at least to have learned some sense about

"What _I_ think," he said, and his voice trembled; "I think you're the smartest girl in the world! I wouldn't

But as this folly of his threatened to make her tearful, she kissed him hastily, and went forth upon her errand.

Since the night of the tragiccomic dinner she had not seen Russell, nor caught even the remotest chance

glimpse of him; and it was curious that she should encounter him as she went upon such an errand as now

engaged her. At a corner, not far from that tobacconist's shop she had just left when he overtook her and

walked with her for the first time, she met him today. He turned the corner, coming toward her, and they

were face to face; whereupon that engaging face of Russell's was instantly reddened, but Alice's remained

She stopped short, though; and so did he; then she smiled brightly as she put out her hand.

"I'm soI'm so glad to have thisthis chance," he stammered. "I've wanted to tell youit's just that going

into a new undertakingthis business life one doesn't get to do a great many things he'd like to. I hope

She breathed more rapidly, but knew that he could not have detected it, and she took some pride in herself for

the way she had met this little crisis. But to have met it with such easy courage meant to her something more

reassuring than a momentary pride in the serenity she had shown. For she found that what she had resolved in

She walked on, but more slowly, for the tobacconist's shop was not far from her nowand, beyond it, that

portal of doom, Frincke's Business College. Already Alice could read the begrimed gilt letters of the sign;

and although they had spelled destiny never with a more painful imminence than just then, an old habit of

There came into her mind a whimsical comparison of her fate with that of the heroine in a French romance

she had read long ago and remembered well, for she had cried over it. The story ended with the heroine's

taking the veil after a death blow to love; and the final scene again became vivid to Alice, for a moment.

Again, as when she had read and wept, she seemed herself to stand among the great shadows in the cathedral

nave; smelled the smoky incense on the enclosed air, and heard the solemn pulses of the organ. She

remembered how the novice's father knelt, trembling, beside a pillar of gray stone; how the faithless lover

watched and shivered behind the statue of a saint; how stifled sobs and outcries were heard when the novice

came to the altar; and how a shaft of light struck through the rosewindow, enveloping her in an amber glow.

It was the vision of a moment only, and for no longer than a moment did Alice tell herself that the romance

provided a prettier way of taking the veil than she had chosen, and that a faithless lover, shaking with remorse

behind a saint's statue, was a greater solace than one left on a street corner protesting that he'd like to call

some timeif he could! Her pity for herself vanished more reluctantly; but she shook it off and tried to smile

at it, and at her romantic recollectionsat all of them. She had something important to think of.

She passed the tobacconist's, and before her was that dark entrance to the wooden stairway leading up to

Frincke's Business Collegethe very doorway she had always looked upon as the end of youth and the end

How often she had gone by here, hating the dreary obscurity of that stairway; how often she had thought of

this obscurity as something lying in wait to obliterate the footsteps of any girl who should ascend into the

smoky darkness above! Never had she passed without those ominous imaginings of hers: pretty girls turning

into old maids "taking dictation" old maids of a dozen different types, yet all looking a little like herself.

Well, she was here at last! She looked up and down the street quickly, and then, with a little heave of the

shoulders, she went bravely in, under the sign, and began to climb the wooden steps. Halfway up the

shadows were heaviest, but after that the place began to seem brighter. There was an open window overhead