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, for she stopped short in her talk and blushed.
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 laugh running
in it.
He was puzzled. “Give Henrietta the chance?”
“You know! You’ll let me keep
on being unfair, won’t you? Not give the
other girls a chance to get even?”
He promised, heartily.
CHAPTER XV
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 surprise for Alice, they saw this person.
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 junk-dealer, 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
