possessed by the other
girls who flung the phrase at her, wooden things, jealous of everything
they were incapable of themselves; and then Alice, getting more
championship than she sought, grew uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should repeat
such defenses "outside the family"; and Mrs. Adams ended by weeping
because the daughter so distrusted her intelligence. Alice frequently
thought it necessary to instruct her mother.

Her morning greeting was an instruction to-day; or, rather, it was
an admonition in the style of an entreaty, the more petulant as Alice
thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the posturings to
the mirror. This was a needless worry; the mother had caught a thousand
such glimpses, with Alice unaware, and she thought nothing of the one
just flitted.

"For heaven's sake, mama, come clear inside the room and shut the door!
PLEASE don't leave it open for everybody to look at me!"

"There isn't anybody to see you," Mrs. Adams explained, obeying. "Miss
Perry's gone downstairs, and----"

"Mama, I heard you in papa's room," Alice said, not dropping the note of
complaint. "I could hear both of you, and I don't think you ought to get
poor old papa so upset--not in his present condition, anyhow."

Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. "He's better all the
time," she said, not disturbed. "He's almost well. The doctor says so
and Miss Perry says so; and if we don't get him into the right frame
of mind now we never will. The first day he's outdoors he'll go back to
that old hole--you'll see! And if he once does that, he'll settle down
there and it'll be too late and we'll never get him out."

"Well, anyhow, I think you could use a little more tact with him."

"I do try to," the mother sighed. "It never was much use with him. I
don't think you understand him as well as I do, Alice."

"There's one thing I don't understand about either of you," Alice
returned, crisply. "Before people get married they can do anything they
want to with each other. Why can't they do the same thing after they're
married? When you and papa were young people and engaged, he'd have done
anything you wanted him to. That must have been because you knew how to
manage him then. Why can't you go at him the same way now?"

Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, making no other response;
but Alice persisted. "Well, WHY can't you? Why can't you ask him to do
things the way you used to ask him when you were just in love w