Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/434

 dred and fifty from that old wretch! If your father'd just had the gumption to hold out, they'd have had to pay him anything he asked. If he'd just had the gumption and a little manly courage"

"Hush!" Alice whispered, for her mother's voice grew louder. "Hush! He'll hear you, mama."

"Could he hear me too often?" the embittered lady asked. "If he'd listened to me at the right time, would we have to be taking in boarders and sinking down in the scale at the end of our lives, instead of going up? You were both wrong; we didn't need to be so panicky—that was just what that old man wanted: to scare us and buy us out for nothing' If your father'd just listened to me then, or if for once in his life he'd just been half a man"

Alice put her hand over her mother's mouth, "You mustn't! He will hear you!"

But from the other side of Adams's closed door his voice came querulously. "Oh, I hear her, all right!"

"You see, mama?" Alice said, and, as Mrs. Adams turned away, weeping, the daughter sighed; then went in to speak to her father.

He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow behind his head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. Adam's wrapper swathed him no more; he wore a