Alice Adams | Page 7

answer to young people, Alice."
"You mean because we're too young to understand the answer? I don't
see that at all. At twenty-two a girl's supposed to have some
intelligence, isn't she? And intelligence is the ability to understand, isn't
it? Why do I have to wait till I've lived with a man twenty-five years to
understand why you can't be tactful with papa?"
"You may understand some things before that," Mrs. Adams said,
tremulously. "You may understand how you hurt me sometimes. Youth
can't know everything by being intelligent, and by the time you could
understand the answer you're asking for you'd know it, and wouldn't
need to ask. You don't understand your father, Alice; you don't know

what it takes to change him when he's made up his mind to be
stubborn."
Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. "Well, I don't think
making scenes ever changes anybody," she grumbled. "I think a little
jolly persuasion goes twice as far, myself."
"'A little jolly persuasion!' " Her mother turned the echo of this phrase
into an ironic lament. "Yes, there was a time when I thought that, too!
It didn't work; that's all."
"Perhaps you left the 'jolly' part of it out, mama."
For the second time that morning--it was now a little after seven
o'clock--tears seemed about to offer their solace to Mrs. Adams. "I
might have expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss a
chance," she said, gently. "It seems queer you don't some time miss just
ONE chance!"
But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to be little concerned.
"Oh, well, I think there are better ways of managing a man than just
hammering at him."
Mrs. Adams uttered a little cry of pain. "'Hammering,' Alice?"
"If you'd left it entirely to me," her daughter went on, briskly, "I believe
papa'd already be willing to do anything we want him to."
"That's it; tell me I spoil everything. Well, I won't interfere from now
on, you can be sure of it."
"Please don't talk like that," Alice said, quickly. "I'm old enough to
realize that papa may need pressure of all sorts; I only think it makes
him more obstinate to get him cross. You probably do understand him
better, but that's one thing I've found out and you haven't. There!" She
gave her mother a friendly tap on the shoulder and went to the door.
"I'll hop in and say hello to him now."

As she went, she continued the fastening of her blouse, and appeared in
her father's room with one hand still thus engaged, but she patted his
forehead with the other.
"Poor old papa-daddy!" she said, gaily. "Every time he's better
somebody talks him into getting so mad he has a relapse. It's a shame!"
Her father's eyes, beneath their melancholy brows, looked up at her
wistfully. "I suppose you heard your mother going for me," he said.
"I heard you going for her, too!" Alice laughed. "What was it all
about?"
"Oh, the same danged old story!"
"You mean she wants you to try something new when you get well?"
Alice asked, with cheerful innocence. "So we could all have a lot more
money?"
At this his sorrowful forehead was more sorrowful than ever. The deep
horizontal lines moved upward to a pattern of suffering so familiar to
his daughter that it meant nothing to her; but he spoke quietly. "Yes; so
we wouldn't have any money at all, most likely."
"Oh, no!" she laughed, and, finishing with her blouse, patted his cheeks
with both hands. "Just think how many grand openings there must be
for a man that knows as much as you do! I always did believe you
could get rich if you only cared to, papa."
But upon his forehead the painful pattern still deepened. "Don't you
think we've always had enough, the way things are, Alice?"
"Not the way things ARE!" She patted his cheeks again; laughed again.
"It used to be enough, maybe anyway we did skimp along on it-- but
the way things are now I expect mama's really pretty practical in her
ideas, though, I think it's a shame for her to bother you about it while
you're so weak. Don't you worry about it, though; just think about other
things till you get strong."

"You know," he said; "you know it isn't exactly the easiest thing in the
world for a man of my age to find these grand openings you speak of.
And when you've passed half-way from fifty to sixty you're apt to see
some risk in giving up what you know how to do and trying something
new."
"My, what a frown!" she cried, blithely. "Didn't I tell you to stop
thinking about it till you