Alice Adams | Page 6

was well enough. She was often called "a right pretty
girl"--temperate praise meaning a girl rather pretty than otherwise, and
this she deserved, to say the least. Even in repose she deserved it,
though repose was anything but her habit, being seldom seen upon her
except at home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said
to make her lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually
accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders ever giving them
their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon, at the same
time, for eloquence.
So much liveliness took proper place as only accessory to that of the
face, where her vivacity reached its climax; and it was unfortunate that
an ungifted young man, new in the town, should have attempted to
define the effect upon him of all this generosity of emphasis. He said
that "the way she used her cute hazel eyes and the wonderful glow of
her facial expression gave her a mighty spiritual quality." His actual
rendition of the word was "spirichul"; but it was not his pronunciation
that embalmed this outburst in the perennial laughter of Alice's girl
friends; they made the misfortune far less his than hers.
Her mother comforted her too heartily, insisting that Alice had "plenty
enough spiritual qualities," certainly more than possessed by the other
girls who flung the phrase at her, wooden things, jealous of everything
they were incapable of themselves; and then Alice, getting more
championship than she sought, grew uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should

repeat such defenses "outside the family"; and Mrs. Adams ended by
weeping because the daughter so distrusted her intelligence. Alice
frequently thought it necessary to instruct her mother.
Her morning greeting was an instruction to-day; or, rather, it was an
admonition in the style of an entreaty, the more petulant as Alice
thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the posturings to
the mirror. This was a needless worry; the mother had caught a
thousand such glimpses, with Alice unaware, and she thought nothing
of the one just flitted.
"For heaven's sake, mama, come clear inside the room and shut the
door! PLEASE don't leave it open for everybody to look at me!"
"There isn't anybody to see you," Mrs. Adams explained, obeying.
"Miss Perry's gone downstairs, and----"
"Mama, I heard you in papa's room," Alice said, not dropping the note
of complaint. "I could hear both of you, and I don't think you ought to
get poor old papa so upset--not in his present condition, anyhow."
Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. "He's better all the
time," she said, not disturbed. "He's almost well. The doctor says so
and Miss Perry says so; and if we don't get him into the right frame of
mind now we never will. The first day he's outdoors he'll go back to
that old hole--you'll see! And if he once does that, he'll settle down
there and it'll be too late and we'll never get him out."
"Well, anyhow, I think you could use a little more tact with him."
"I do try to," the mother sighed. "It never was much use with him. I
don't think you understand him as well as I do, Alice."
"There's one thing I don't understand about either of you," Alice
returned, crisply. "Before people get married they can do anything they
want to with each other. Why can't they do the same thing after they're
married? When you and papa were young people and engaged, he'd
have done anything you wanted him to. That must have been because

you knew how to manage him then. Why can't you go at him the same
way now?"
Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, making no other
response; but Alice persisted. "Well, WHY can't you? Why can't you
ask him to do things the way you used to ask him when you were just
in love with each other? Why don't you anyhow try it, mama, instead of
ding-donging at him?"
"'Ding-donging at him,' Alice?" Mrs. Adams said, with a pathos
somewhat emphasized. "Is that how my trying to do what I can for you
strikes you?"
"Never mind that; it's nothing to hurt your feelings." Alice disposed of
the pathos briskly. "Why don't you answer my question? What's the
matter with using a little more tact on papa? Why can't you treat him
the way you probably did when you were young people, before you
were married? I never have understood why people can't do that."
"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently.
"Maybe you will when you've been married twenty-five years."
"You keep evading. Why don't you answer my question right straight
out?"
"There are questions you can't