Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/438

 "Well, well," Adams said. "Young people are entitled to their own privacy; I don't want to pry." He emptied his pipe into a chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and reverted to a former topic. "Speaking of dying"

"Well, but we weren't!" Alice protested.

"Yes, about not knowing how to live till you're through living—and then maybe not!" he said, chuckling at his own determined pessimism. "I see I'm pretty old because I talk this way—I remember my grandmother saying things a good deal like all what I'm saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young fellow—she was a right gloomy old lady, I remember. Well, anyhow, it reminds me: I want to get on my feet again as soon as I can; I got to look around and find something to go into."

Alice shook her head gently. "But, papa, he told you"

"Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at me!" Adams interrupted, peevishly. "He said I'd be good for some kind of light job—if I could find just the right thing. 'Where there wouldn't be either any physical or mental strain,' he said. Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I'll fed better if I can just get out looking for it."