Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/80

 up to. You don't want to make me eat; you want to make me listen."

"Well, you must listen!" She retained her grasp upon his arm, and made it tighter. "Walter, please!" she entreated, her voice becoming tremulous. "Please don't make me so much trouble!"

He drew back from her as far as her hold upon him permitted, and looked at her sharply. "Look here!" he said. "I get you, all right! What's the matter of Alice goin' to that party by herself?"

"She just can't!"

"Why not?"

"It makes things too mean for her, Walter. All the other girls have somebody to depend on after they get there."

"Well, why doesn't she have somebody?" he asked, testily. "Somebody besides me, I mean! Why hasn't somebody asked her to go? She ought to be that popular, anyhow, I sh'd think—she tries enough!"

"I don't understand how you can be so hard," his mother wailed, huskily. "You know why they don't run after her the way they do the other girls she goes with, Walter. It's because we're poor, and she hasn't got any background."