“Yes, ‘this afternoon, I mean, Walter,’ ” he returned, burlesquing her voice at least happily enough to please himself; for he laughed applausively. “Oh, you never saw me! I passed you close enough to pull a tooth, but you were awful busy. I never did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when you’re towin’ a barge. My, but you keep your hands goin’! Looked like the air was full of ‘em! That’s why I’m onto why you look so tickled this evening; I saw you with that big fish.”
Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently; she was not displeased with this rallying. “Well, what of it, Walter?” she asked. “If you happen to see your sister on the street when some nice young man is being attentive to her–-“
Walter barked and then cackled. “Whoa, Sal!” he said. “You got the parts mixed. It’s little Alice that was ‘being attentive.’ I know the big fish she was attentive to, all right, too.”
“Yes,” his sister retorted, quietly. “I should think you might have recognized him, Walter.”
Walter looked annoyed. “Still harpin’ on THAT!” he complained. “The kind of women I like, if they get sore they just hit you somewhere on the face and then they’re through. By the way, I heard this Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet friend Mildred’s steady. What you doin’ walkin’ as close to him as all that?”
Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof, “Why Walter!”
“Oh, never mind, mama,” Alice said. “To the horrid all things are horrid.”
“Get out!” Walter protested, carelessly. “I heard all about this Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb’s such a talker I wonder he don’t ruin his grandfather’s business; he keeps all us cheap help standin’ round listening to him nine-tenths of our time. Well, Joe told me this Russell’s some kin or other to the Palmer family, and he’s got some little money of his own, and he’s puttin’ it into ole Palmer’s trust company and Palmer’s goin’ to make him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a keep-the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb says.”
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. “I don’t see–-” she began.
“Why, this Russell’s supposed to be tied up to Mildred,” her son explained. “When ole Palmer dies this Russell will be his son-in-law, and all he’ll haf’ to do’ll be to barely lift his feet and step into the ole man’s shoes. It’s certainly a mighty fat hand-me- out for this Russell! You better lay off o’ there, Alice. Pick somebody that’s got less to lose and you’ll make better showing.”
Mrs. Adams’s air of thoughtfulness had not departed. “But you say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own account, Walter.”
“Oh, Joe Lamb says he’s got some little of his own. Didn’t know how much.”
“Well, then–-“
Walter laughed his laugh. “Cut it out,” he bade her. “Alice wouldn’t run in fourth place.”
Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though estimating the value of a specimen in a collection not her own. “Yes,” she said, indifferently. “You REALLY are vulgar, Walter.”
He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to her and patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Good ole Allie!” he said. “HONEST, you wouldn’t run in fourth place. If I was you I’d never even start in the class. That frozen-face; gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours.”
“Walter!” his mother said again.
“Well, ain’t I her brother?” he returned, seeming to be entirely serious and direct, for the moment, at least. ”I like the ole girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I’m kind of sorry for her.”
“But what’s it all ABOUT?” Alice cried. “Simply because you met me downtown with a man I never saw but once before and just barely know! Why all this palaver?”
“‘Why?’” he repeated, grinning. “Well, I’ve seen you start before, you know!” He went to the door, and paused. “I got no date to-night. Take you to the movies, you care to go.”
She declined crisply. “No, thanks!”
“Come on,” he said, as pleasantly as he knew how.
“Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at that frozen-face joint. I’ll get you some chop suey afterward.”
“No, thanks!”
“All right,” he responded and waved a flippant adieu. “As the barber says, ‘The better the advice, the worse it’s wasted!’ Good-night!”
Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house, she shook her head, reconsidering. “Perhaps I ought to have gone with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful people are his friends—at least for one night.”
“Oh, I’m sure Walter’s a GOOD boy,” Mrs. Adams said, soothingly; and this was what she almost always said when either her husband or Alice expressed such misgivings. “He’s odd, and he’s picked up right queer manners; but that’s only because we haven’t given him advantages like the other young men. But I’m sure he’s a GOOD boy.”
She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. “Of course Walter could take his place with the other nice boys of the town even yet,” she said. “I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all belong to the country clubs and have cars and–-“
“Let’s don’t go into that any more, mama,” the daughter begged her. “What’s the use?”
“It COULD be of use,” Mrs. Adams insisted. “It could if your father–-“
“But papa CAN’T.”
“Yes, he can.”
“But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN’T give up a business he’s been in practically all his life, and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he’s right about it, too, of course!”
Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour heightened by an old bitterness. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He talks that way; but he knows better.”
“How could he ‘know better,’ mama?”
“HE knows how!”
“But what does he know?”
Mrs. Adams tossed her head. “You don’t suppose I’m such a fool I’d be urging him to give up something for nothing, do you, Alice? Do you suppose I’d want him to just go ‘groping around’ like he was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. Little as his work at Lamb’s brings in, I wouldn’t be so silly as to ask him to give it up just on a CHANCE he could find something else. Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a little intelligence once in a while!”
Alice was puzzled. “But what else could there be except a chance? I don’t see–-“
“Well, I do,” her mother interrupted, decisively. “That man could make us all well off right now if he wanted to. We could have been rich long ago if he’d ever really felt as he ought to about his family.”
“What! Why, how could–-“
“You know how as well as I do,” Mrs. Adams said, crossly. “I guess you haven’t forgotten how he treated me about it the Sunday before he got sick.”
She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden violence inspired by the recollection; but Alice, enlightened, gave utterance to a laugh of lugubrious derision. “Oh, the GLUE factory again!” she cried. “How silly!” And she renewed her laughter.
So often do the great projects of parents appear ignominious to their children. Mrs. Adams’s conception of a glue factory as a fairy godmother of this family was an absurd old story which Alice had never taken seriously. She remembered that when she was about fifteen her mother began now and then to say something to Adams about a “glue factory,” rather timidly, and as a vague suggestion, but never without irritating him. Then, for years, the preposterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly because of some explosion on the part of Adams, when his daughter had not been present. But during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly gone back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and also reviving her husband’s irritation. Alice’s bored impression was that her mother wanted him to found, or buy, or do something, or other, about a glue factory; and that he considered the proposal so impracticable as to be insulting. The parental conversations took place when neither Alice nor Walter was at hand, but sometimes Alice had come in upon the conclusion of one, to find her father in a shouting mood, and shocking the air behind him with profane monosyllables as he departed. Mrs. Adams would be left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympathizing with the goaded man, inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings had been renewed, she always got the brooding and cryptic answer, “He COULD do it—if he wanted to.” Alice failed to comprehend the desirability of a glue factory—to her mind a father engaged in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams knew better than her mother whether such an enterprise would be profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for she had heard him shouting at the end of one of these painful interviews, “You can keep up your dang talk till YOU die and I die, but I’ll never make one God’s cent that way!”