"I guess that's something we just have
to leave work out itself. What you going to do with a boy nineteen or
twenty years old that makes his own living? Can't whip him. Can't keep
him locked up in the house. Just got to hope he'll learn better, I
suppose."

"Of course he didn't want to go to the Palmers'," Alice explained,
tolerantly--"and as mama and I made him take me, and he thought that was
pretty selfish in me, why, he felt he had a right to amuse himself any
way he could. Of course it was awful that this--that this Mr. Russell
should----" In spite of her, the recollection choked her.

"Yes, it was awful," Adams agreed. "Just awful. Oh, me, my!"

But Alice recovered herself at once, and showed him a cheerful face.
"Well, just a few years from now I probably won't even remember it! I
believe hardly anything amounts to as much as we think it does at the
time."

"Well--sometimes it don't."

"What I've been thinking, papa: it seems to me I ought to DO something."

"What like?"

She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as she told him: "Well,
I mean I ought to be something besides just a kind of nobody. I ought
to----" She paused.

"What, dearie?"

"Well--there's one thing I'd like to do. I'm sure I COULD do it, too."

"What?"

"I want to go on the stage: I know I could act." At this, her father
abruptly gave utterance to a feeble cackling of laughter; and when
Alice, surprised and a little offended, pressed him for his reason, he
tried to evade, saying, "Nothing, dearie. I just thought of something."
But she persisted until he had to explain.

"It made me think of your mother's sister, your Aunt Flora, that died
when you were little," he said. "She was always telling how she was
going on the stage, and talking about how she was certain she'd make a
great actress, and all so on; and one day your mother broke out and said
she ought 'a' gone on the stage, herself, because she always knew she
had the talent for it--and, well, they got into kind of a spat about
which one'd make the best actress. I had to go out in the hall to
laugh!"

"Maybe you were wrong," Alice said, gravely. "If they both felt it, why
wouldn't that look as if there was talent in the family? I've ALWAYS
thought----"

"No, dearie," he said, with a final chuckle. "Your mother and Flora
weren't different from a good many others. I expect ninety per cent. of
all the women I ever knew were just sure they'd be mighty fine actresses
if