Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/65

 than he and I cost our parents he gives them—enough!"

"But Walter" Alice faltered. "Walter doesn't cost him anything at all any more." And she concluded, in a stricken voice, "It's all—me!"

"Why shouldn't it be?" her mother cried. "You're young—you're just at the time when your life should be fullest of good things and happiness. Yet what do you get?"

Alice's lip quivered; she was not unsusceptible to such an appeal, but she contrived the semblance of a protest. "I don't have such a bad time—not a good deal of the time, anyhow. I've got a good many of the things other girls have"

"You have?" Mrs. Adams was piteously satirical. "I suppose you've got a limousine to go to that dance to-night? I suppose you've only got to call a florist and tell him co send you some orchids? I suppose you've"

But Alice interrupted this list. Apparently in a single instant all emotion left her and she became businesslike, as one in the midst of trifles reminded of really serious matters. She got up from the bed and went to the door of the closet where she kept her dresses. "Oh, see here," she said, briskly, "I've