to me for a little something more’n enough to
cover the mortgage he put on this house, and Walter’s
deficit, too—that don’t amount
to much in dollars and cents. The way I figure
it, I could offer him about ninety-three hundred dollars
as a total—or say ninety-three 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 the old man, who held out his hand
in parting. “I’ll tell him.
Thank you.”
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 papers—and
call me up at my house to-night, 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. We all will.”
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 business-like severity
of her attire. “What makes you look so
cross, dearie?” the mother asked. “Couldn’t
you find anything nicer to wear than that plain old
dark dress?”
“I don’t believe I’m cross,”
the girl said, absently. “I believe I’m
just thinking. Isn’t it about time?”
“Time for what?”
“Time for thinking—for me, I mean?”
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!”
“How do you mean, mama?”
“I mean about Walter’s running away and
the mess your father made of his business. It
would help to show ’em you’re holding up
your head just the same.”
“Show whom!”
“All these other girls that——”
“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 else—usually
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.”
