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_ Alice was softly crooning to herself as her mother turned the
corner of the house and approached through the dusk.
"Isn't it the most BEAUTIFUL evening!" the daughter said. "WHY
can't summer last all year? Did you ever know a lovelier
twilight than this, mama?"
Mrs. Adams laughed, and answered, "Not since I was your age, I
expect."
Alice was wistful at once. "Don't they stay beautiful after my
age?"
"Well, it's not the same thing."
"Isn't it? Not ever?"
"You may have a different kind from mine," the mother said, a
little sadly. "I think you will, Alice. You deserve----"
"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 ever dreamed COULD
come to me. I'm-- I'm pretty happy, mama!"
"Dearie!" Her mother would have kissed her, but Alice drew away.
"Oh, I don't mean----" She laughed nervously. "I wasn't meaning
to tell you I'm ENGAGED, mama. We're not. I mean--oh! things
seem pretty beautiful in spite of all I've done to spoil 'em."
"You?" Mrs. Adams cried, incredulously. "What have you done to
spoil anything?"
"Little things," Alice said. "A thousand little silly--oh,
what's the use? He's so honestly what he is --just simple and
good and intelligent--I feel a tricky mess beside him! I don't
see why he likes me; and sometimes I'm afraid he wouldn't if he
knew me."
"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 house."
"No," Alice said, musingly; "that's true: I don't believe he has.
Except when we've walked in the evening we've always sat out
here, even those two times when it was drizzly. It's so much
nicer."
"We'll have to do SOMETHING or other, of course," her mother
said.
"What like?"
"I was thinking----" Mrs. Adams paused. "Well, of course we
could hardly put off asking him to dinner, or something, much
longer."
Alice was not enthusiastic; so far from it, indeed, that there
was a melancholy alarm in her voice. "Oh, mama, must we? Do you
think so?"
"Yes, I do. I really do."
"Couldn't we--well, couldn't we wait?"
"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 WOULD ask."
"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 living-room. We might just as well go ahead and do it
to-morrow 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 to-night. Suppose when he comes you ask
him for to-morrow, Alice. Everything'll be very nice, I'm sure.
Don't worry about it."
"Well--but----" Alice was uncertain.
"But don't you see, it looks so queer, not to do SOMETHING?" her
mother urged. "It looks so kind of poverty-stricken. We really
oughtn't to wait any longer."
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 it."
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, ma'am; THAT'S not what he wants!"
"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 still there! You just wait----"
"You're off," Walter said, in the same quiet way. "He knows I'm
there. He spoke to me yesterday: he asked me how I was getting
along with my work."
"He did?" Adams said, seeming not to believe him.
"Yes. He did."
"What else did he say, Walter?" Mrs. Adams asked quickly.
"Nothin'. Just walked on."
"I don't believe he knew who you were," Adams declared.
"Think not? He called me 'Walter Adams.'"
At this Adams was silent; and Walter, after waiting a moment,
said:
"Well, are you going to do anything about me? About what I told
you I got to have?"
"What is it, Walter?" his mother asked, since Adams did not
speak.
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 in return he asks
me for three hundred and fifty dollars! That's all!"
"What in the world!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "What FOR, Walter?"
"I got to have it," Walter said.
"But what FOR?"
His quiet huskiness did not alter. "I got to have it."
"But can't you tell us----"
"I got to have it."
"That's all you can get out of him," Adams said. "He seems to
think it'll bring him in three hundred and fifty dollars!"
A faint tremulousness became evident in the husky voice.
"Haven't you got it?"
"NO, I haven't got it!" his father answered. "And I've got to go
to a bank for more than my pay-roll next week. Do you think I'm
a mint?"
"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 you ever did
anything much for me, anyhow either of you."
Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon
them, walked away quickly, and was at once lost to their sight in
the darkness.
"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 what he could DO
with it. I wonder ----" She paused. "I wonder if he----"
"If he what?" Adams prompted her irritably.
"If he COULD have bad--associates."
"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 glue-works, too;
you'll see. Of course every young man wants money--it 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 and fifty cents, let alone dollars!"
"I'm afraid you'll have to let ME have that much-- and maybe a
little more," she ventured, timidly; and she told him of her
plans for the morrow. He objected vehemently.
"Oh, but Alice has probably asked him by this time," Mrs. Adams
said. "It really must be done, Virgil: you don't want him to
think she's ashamed of us, do 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 dinner."
"Why, it isn't going to bother you," she said; "just one young
man as a guest."
"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 do think you better, Virgil."
"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 fellow-citizens as to receive an
invitation to be present, with some seven hundred others, at the
annual eating and speech-making 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 howdy-do,
anyway? You don't expect him to believe we put on all that style
every night, do you? Is that what you're after?"
"Well, we want him to think we live nicely," she admitted.
"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 moving-picture sporting-men 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 show-off, and bluff, won't he? What about it?"
"Oh, well, by THAT time----" She left the sentence unfinished, as
if absently. "You could let us have a little money for
to-morrow, couldn't you, honey?"
"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 spare five or six dollars for your
show-off if I got to."
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 brown-plush rocking-chairs
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
chairs--they're hideous. I'll scrub those soot- streaks on the
columns: it won't do any good, though. That long crack in the
column--nothing 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 attic--a
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 for--as 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 Sainte-Chapelle'.--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. But
Walter----"
With that she recalled her mother's admonition, and went upstairs
to Walter's door. She tapped upon it with her fingers.
"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 within the room, so she rapped louder.
"Wake up, Walter!"
She called and rapped again, without getting any response, and
then, finding that the door yielded to her, opened it and went
in. Walter was not there.
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
down-town. 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
'living-room' before dinner, the way you said they did when you
went to that dinner at the----"
"But I think that was to go with cocktails, mama, and of course
we haven't----"
"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 ice-cream--she's going to make an angel-food cake to go
with it--and then coffee and crackers and a new kind of cheese I
got at Worlig's, he says is very fine."
Alice was alarmed. "Don't you think perhaps it's too much,
mama?"
"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 'em any way you want. Hurry! It's got to be a busy
day."
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 "living-room," 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 dining-room; 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 "living-room" and the dining-room 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 floors and the woodwork.
Emerging from the kitchen at noon, Mrs. Adams found her daughter
on hands and knees, scrubbing the bases of the columns between
the hall and the "living-room."
"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 down-town to-day-- he was going down to the bank--and Walter
eats down-town all the time lately, so I thought we wouldn't
bother to set the table for lunch. Come on and we'll have
something in the kitchen."
"No," Alice said, dully, as she went on with he work. "I don't
want anything."
Her mother came closer to her. "Why, what's the matter?" she
asked, briskly. "You seem kind of pale, to me; and you don't
look--you don't look HAPPY."
"Well----" Alice began, uncertainly, but said no more.
"See here!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "This is all just for you!
You ought to be ENJOYING it. Why, it's the first time
we've--we've entertained in I don't know how long! I guess it's
almost since we had that little party when you were eighteen.
What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing. I don't know."
"But, dearie, aren't you looking FORWARD to this evening?"
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 it--I do think it'll be nice. Of course I'm looking forward
to it." _
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