第28章

They get a little mixed up--old times with times still ahead, like planning what to do, you know. That's as near a nap as Iget-- when the pictures mix up some. I suppose it's sort of drowsing."She took one of his hands and stroked it. "What do you mean when you say you have pictures like 'planning what to do'?" she asked.

"I mean planning what to do when I get out and able to go to work again.""But that doesn't need any planning," Alice said, quickly.

"You're going back to your old place at Lamb's, of course."Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but made no other response.

"Why, of COURSE you are!" she cried. "What are you talking about?"His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the eyes, open in a haggard stare. "I heard you the other night when you came from the party," he said. "I know what was the matter.""Indeed, you don't," she assured him. "You don't know anything about it, because there wasn't anything the matter at all.""Don't you suppose I heard you crying? What'd you cry for if there wasn't anything the matter?""Just nerves, papa. It wasn't anything else in the world.""Never mind," he said. "Your mother told me.""She promised me not to!"

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; Itell you I know what was the matter."

"The only matter was I had a silly fit," Alice protested. "It did me good, too.""How's that?"

"Because I've decided to do something about it, papa.""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 know--I 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 is--how to get it for you.""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 Walter--Walter WASpretty 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 him locked up in the house. Just got to hope he'll learn better, I suppose.""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 this--that this Mr. Russell should----" In spite of her, the recollection choked her.

"Yes, it was awful," Adams agreed. "Just awful. Oh, me, my!"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 time.""Well--sometimes it don't."

"What I've been thinking, papa: it seems to me I ought to DOsomething."

"What like?"

She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as she told him:

"Well, I mean I ought to be something besides just a kind of nobody. I ought to----" She paused.

"What, dearie?"

"Well--there's one thing I'd like to do. I'm sure I COULD do it, too.""What?"

"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 it--and, well, they got into kind of a spat about which one'd make the best actress. I had to go out in the hall to laugh!""Maybe you were wrong," Alice said, gravely. "If they both felt it, why wouldn't that look as if there was talent in the family?

I've ALWAYS thought----"