Alice Adams Booth Tarkington (ebook reader txt) 📖

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 tonight, 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.”

XXV

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 businesslike 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.”

“Well, but it wouldn’t be pretending. You ought to let people see you’re still holding your head up because you are. You wouldn’t want that Mildred Palmer to think you’re cast down about⁠—well, you know you wouldn’t want her not to think you’re holding your head up, would you?”

“She wouldn’t know whether I am or not, mama.” Alice bit her lip, then smiled faintly as she said:

“Anyhow, I’m not thinking about my head in that way⁠—not this morning, I’m not.”

Mrs. Adams dropped the subject casually. “Are you going downtown?” she inquired.

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Just something I want to see about. I’ll tell you when I come back. Anything you want me to do?”

“No; I guess not today. I thought you might look for a rug, but I’d rather go with you to select it. We’ll have to get a new rug for your father’s room, I expect.”

“I’m glad you think so, mama. I don’t suppose he’s ever even noticed it, but that old rug of his⁠—well, really!”

“I didn’t mean for him,” her mother explained, thoughtfully. “No; he don’t mind it, and he’d likely make a fuss if we changed it on his account. No; what I meant⁠—we’ll have to put your father in Walter’s room. He won’t mind, I don’t expect⁠—not much.”

“No, I suppose not,” Alice agreed, rather sadly. “I heard the bell awhile ago. Was it somebody about that?”

“Yes; just before I came upstairs. Mrs. Lohr gave him a note to me, and he was really a very pleasant-looking young man. A very pleasant-looking young man,” Mrs. Adams repeated with increased animation and a thoughtful glance at her daughter. “He’s a Mr. Will Dickson; he has a first-rate position with the gas works, Mrs. Lohr says, and he’s fully able to afford a nice room. So if you and I double up in here, then with that young married couple in my room, and this Mr. Dickson in your father’s, we’ll just about have things settled. I thought maybe I could make one more place at table, too, so that with the other people from outside we’d be serving eleven altogether. You see if I have to pay this cook twelve dollars a week⁠—it can’t be helped, I guess⁠—well, one more would certainly help toward a profit. Of course it’s a terribly worrying thing to see how we will come out. Don’t you suppose we could squeeze in one more?”

“I suppose it could be managed; yes.”

Mrs. Adams brightened. “I’m sure it’ll be pleasant having that young married couple in the house and especially this Mr. Will Dickson. He seemed very much of a gentleman, and anxious to get settled in good surroundings. I was very favourably impressed with him in every way; and he explained to me about his name; it seems it isn’t William, it’s just ‘Will’; his parents had him christened that way. It’s curious.” She paused, and then, with an effort to seem casual, which veiled nothing from her daughter: “It’s quite curious,” she said again. “But it’s rather attractive and different, don’t you think?”

“Poor mama!” Alice laughed compassionately. “Poor mama!”

“He is, though,” Mrs. Adams maintained. “He’s very much of a gentleman, unless I’m no judge of appearances; and it’ll really be nice to have him in the house.”

“No doubt,” Alice said, as she opened her door to depart. “I don’t suppose we’ll mind having any of ’em as much as we thought we would. Goodbye.”

But her mother detained her, catching her by the arm. “Alice, you do hate it, don’t you!”

“No,” the girl said, quickly. “There wasn’t anything else to do.”

Mrs. Adams became emotional at once: her face cried tragedy, and her voice misfortune. “There might have been something else to do! Oh, Alice, you gave your father bad advice when you upheld him in taking a miserable little ninety-three hundred and fifty from that old wretch! If your father’d just had the gumption to hold out, they’d have had to