don't they make you a member of the firm? That's what they
ought to've done! Yes, and long ago!"

Adams laughed, but sighed with more heartiness than he had laughed.
"They call me their 'oldest stand-by' down there." He laughed again,
apologetically, as if to excuse himself for taking a little pride in
this title. "Yes, sir; they say I'm their 'oldest stand-by'; and I guess
they know they can count on my department's turning in as good a report
as they look for, at the end of every month; but they don't have to take
a man into the firm to get him to do my work, dearie."

"But you said they depended on you, papa."

"So they do; but of course not so's they couldn't get along without me."
He paused, reflecting. "I don't just seem to know how to put it--I
mean how to put what I started out to say. I kind of wanted to tell
you--well, it seems funny to me, these last few years, the way your
mother's taken to feeling about it. I'd like to see a better
established wholesale drug business than Lamb and Company this side the
Alleghanies--I don't say bigger, I say better established--and it's kind
of funny for a man that's been with a business like that as long as
I have to hear it called a 'hole.' It's kind of funny when you think,
yourself, you've done pretty fairly well in a business like that, and
the men at the head of it seem to think so, too, and put your salary
just about as high as anybody could consider customary--well, what I
mean, Alice, it's kind of funny to have your mother think it's mostly
just--mostly just a failure, so to speak."

His voice had become tremulous in spite of him; and this sign of
weakness and emotion had sufficient effect upon Alice. She bent over him
suddenly, with her arm about him and her cheek against his. "Poor papa!"
she murmured. "Poor papa!"

"No, no," he said. "I didn't mean anything to trouble you. I just
thought----" He hesitated. "I just wondered--I thought maybe it wouldn't
be any harm if I said something about how things ARE down there. I
got to thinking maybe you didn't understand it's a pretty good place.
They're fine people to work for; and they've always seemed to think
something of me;--the way they took Walter on, for instance, soon as I
asked 'em, last year. Don't you think that looked a good deal as if they
thought something of me, Alice?"

"Yes, papa," she said, not moving.

"And the work's right pleasant," he went on. "Mighty nice boys in our
department, Alice. Well