ith each
other? Why don't you anyhow try it, mama, instead of ding-donging at
him?"

"'Ding-donging at him,' Alice?" Mrs. Adams said, with a pathos somewhat
emphasized. "Is that how my trying to do what I can for you strikes
you?"

"Never mind that; it's nothing to hurt your feelings." Alice disposed of
the pathos briskly. "Why don't you answer my question? What's the matter
with using a little more tact on papa? Why can't you treat him the way
you probably did when you were young people, before you were married? I
never have understood why people can't do that."

"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently. "Maybe
you will when you've been married twenty-five years."

"You keep evading. Why don't you answer my question right straight out?"

"There are questions you can't answer to young people, Alice."

"You mean because we're too young to understand the answer? I don't see
that at all. At twenty-two a girl's supposed to have some intelligence,
isn't she? And intelligence is the ability to understand, isn't it?
Why do I have to wait till I've lived with a man twenty-five years to
understand why you can't be tactful with papa?"

"You may understand some things before that," Mrs. Adams said,
tremulously. "You may understand how you hurt me sometimes. Youth
can't know everything by being intelligent, and by the time you could
understand the answer you're asking for you'd know it, and wouldn't need
to ask. You don't understand your father, Alice; you don't know what it
takes to change him when he's made up his mind to be stubborn."

Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. "Well, I don't think
making scenes ever changes anybody," she grumbled. "I think a little
jolly persuasion goes twice as far, myself."

"'A little jolly persuasion!'" Her mother turned the echo of this phrase
into an ironic lament. "Yes, there was a time when I thought that, too!
It didn't work; that's all."

"Perhaps you left the 'jolly' part of it out, mama."

For the second time that morning--it was now a little after seven
o'clock--tears seemed about to offer their solace to Mrs. Adams. "I
might have expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss a chance,"
she said, gently. "It seems queer you don't some time miss just ONE
chance!"

But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to be little concerned.
"Oh, well, I think there are better ways of managing a man than just
hammering at him."

Mrs. Ada