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_ Adams had a restless morning, and toward noon he asked Miss Perry
to call his daughter; he wished to say something to her.
"I thought I heard her leaving the house a couple of hours
ago--maybe 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 to-night."
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
rocking-chair 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 an absorbing part of her life.
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 to-day, 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 upper hallway, not far from Adams's door.
"What did she SAY?"
"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 flounces."
"Didn't you say she wore that at the Pattersons'?" Mrs. Adams
inquired, as Alice arrived at the top of the stairs. "And didn't
you tell me she wore it again at the----"
"Certainly not," Alice interrupted, rather petulantly. "She's
never worn it but once, and of course she wouldn't want to wear
anything to-night that people have seen her in a lot."
Miss Perry opened the door of Adams's room and stepped out.
"Your father wants to know if you'll come and see him a minute,,
Miss Adams."
"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 what I say you
mustn't. You stop thinking this very minute!"
He smiled ruefully, closing his eyes; was silent for a moment,
then asked her to sit beside the bed. "I been thinking of
something I wanted to say," he added.
"What like, papa?"
"Well, it's nothing--much," 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 about--well, about the way things ARE, down at
Lamb and Company's, for instance."
"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 down there."
"Why don't they show it, then?" she asked, quickly. "That's just
what mama and I have been feeling so much; they don't appreciate
you."
"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 member of the firm itself."
"Well, why don't they make you a member of the firm? That's what
they ought to've done! Yes, and long ago!"
Adams laughed, but sighed with more heartiness than he had
laughed. "They call me their 'oldest stand-by' 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 stand-by'; 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 the
firm to get him to do my work, dearie."
"But you said they depended on you, papa."
"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 it--I mean how to put what I started out to say. I
kind of wanted to tell you--well, 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 Alleghanies--I don't say bigger, I
say better established--and 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 think
it's mostly just--mostly just a failure, so to speak."
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 murmured. "Poor papa!"
"No, no," he said. "I didn't mean anything to trouble you. I
just thought----" He hesitated. "I just wondered--I 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?"
"Yes, papa," she said, not moving.
"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.
He protested feebly. "Now, I didn't mean that-- I didn't want to
trouble you----"
She looked at him through winking eyelashes. "I'm sorry I called
it a 'hole,' papa."
"No, no," he protested, gently. "It was your mother said that."
"No. I did, too."
"Well, if you did, it was only because you'd heard her."
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 a little talk
with you. I didn't mean to start any--your mother won't----"
"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, waiting for her
in the opposite room, spoke sympathetically.
"What's the matter, Alice? What did he say that's upset you?"
"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 getting well. What's he
been talking about?"
"Mama--well, I think I'm pretty selfish. Oh, I do!"
"Did he say you were?"
"Papa? No, indeed! What I mean is, maybe we're both a little
selfish to try to make him go out and hunt around for something
new."
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. "Oh, that's what he was up to!"
"Mama, I think we ought to give it up. I didn't dream it had
really hurt him."
"Well, doesn't he hurt us?"
"Never that I know of, mama."
"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
need--if I weren't so extravagant. Oh, _I_ know I am!"
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 place. It provides bare food
and shelter for us, but what's that?"
"I don't think we ought to try any more to change him."
"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-- enough!"
"But Walter----" Alice faltered. "Walter doesn't cost him
anything at all any more." And she concluded, in a stricken
voice, "It's all--me!"
"Why shouldn't it be?" her mother cried. "You're young--you're
just at the time when your life should be fullest of good things
and happiness. Yet what do you get?"
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 things other girls have----"
"You have?" Mrs. Adams was piteously satirical. "I suppose
you've got a limousine to go to that dance to-night? I suppose
you've only got to call a florist and tell him to send you some
orchids? I suppose you've----"
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.
"Do you think you could get it done, mama?"
"I don't see why not," Mrs. Adams answered, passing a thoughtful
hand over the fabric. "It oughtn't to take more than four or
five hours."
"It's a shame to have you sit at the machine that long," Alice
said, absently, adding, "And I'm sure we ought to let papa alone.
Let's just give it up, mama."
Mrs. Adams continued her thoughtful examination of the dress.
"Did you buy the chiffon and ribbon, Alice?"
"Yes. I'm sure we oughtn't to talk to him about it any more,
mama."
"Well, we'll see."
"Let's both agree that we'll NEVER say another single word to him
about it," said Alice. "It'll be a great deal better if we just
let him make up his mind for himself." _
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