se probably anybody could
make it if they wanted to."

"I SAID you didn't know anything about it. Nobody else could make it.
Your father knows a formula for making it."

"What of that?"

"It's a secret formula. It isn't even down on paper. It's worth any
amount of money."

"'Any amount?'" Alice said, remaining incredulous. "Why hasn't papa sold
it then?"

"Just because he's too stubborn to do anything with it at all!"

"How did papa get it?"

"He got it before you were born, just after we were married. I didn't
think much about it then: it wasn't till you were growing up and I saw
how much we needed money that I----"

"Yes, but how did papa get it?" Alice began to feel a little more
curious about this possible buried treasure. "Did he invent it?"

"Partly," Mrs. Adams said, looking somewhat preoccupied. "He and another
man invented it."

"Then maybe the other man----"

"He's dead."

"Then his family----"

"I don't think he left any family," Mrs. Adams said. "Anyhow, it belongs
to your father. At least it belongs to him as much as it does to any one
else. He's got an absolutely perfect right to do anything he wants to
with it, and it would make us all comfortable if he'd do what I want him
to--and he KNOWS it would, too!"

Alice shook her head pityingly. "Poor mama!" she said. "Of course he
knows it wouldn't do anything of the kind, or else he'd have done it
long ago."

"He would, you say?" her mother cried. "That only shows how little you
know him!"

"Poor mama!" Alice said again, soothingly. "If papa were like what you
say he is, he'd be--why, he'd be crazy!"

Mrs. Adams agreed with a vehemence near passion. "You're right about him
for once: that's just what he is! He sits up there in his stubbornness
and lets us slave here in the kitchen when if he wanted to--if he'd so
much as lift his little finger----"

"Oh, come, now!" Alice laughed. "You can't build even a glue factory
with just one little finger."

Mrs. Adams seemed about to reply that finding fault with a figure
of speech was beside the point; but a ringing of the front door bell
forestalled the retort. "Now, who do you suppose that is?" she wondered
aloud, then her face brightened. "Ah--did Mr. Russell ask if he
could----"

"No, he wouldn't be coming this evening," Alice said. "Probably it's the
great J. A. Lamb: he usually stops for a minute on Thursdays to ask how
papa's getting along. I'll go."

She tossed her apron off, and a