Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 218, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 January 1923 — Page 8

8

ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON Copyright, 1921, by Doobledajr, Page & Cos.

Bos in Here Because of financial circumstances ALICE ADAMS did not have the opportunity to attend fashionable schools ana pive a ‘‘commg out ’ party when she was old enough to be presented formally to society and now most friends of her carl, girlhood overlook her. She fee's this lack of social prestige very keenly at the ball riven by MILDRED PALMEB. , _ Alice has been using her best erroris to pass away her time between the chaperons. the dressing room and a seciurjca spot in the eoiTidor, having danced only with her brother. Walter, and the pudgy and blundering FRANK DOWLING. She sits rertiessiy In the corridor when , FRANK MALONE, who has been very at HENRIETTA LAMB, breaks ~h f T loneliness unwelcomed and refers bach o old times when he called on ber as much as three times a his presence when Mildred brings apthi'r TfncsEl L to danco with her. ls hnpraSd with his kindliness. ffihSta hSW the dance and promises to locate her brother for her. she has requested. Go on with the story. IT was to be a long moment, Alice decided, presently. Mrs. Dresser had grown restive: and her nods and vague responses to her young dependent’s gaieties were as meager as they could well be. Evidently the matron had no intention of appearing to her world In the light of a chaperone for Alice Adams: and she finally made this clear. With a word or two of excuse, breaking into something Alice was saying, she rose and went to sit next to Mildre Is mother, who had become the nucleus of the cluster. So Alice was left very much against the wall, with short stretches of vacant chairs on each side of her. She had colne to the end oi picture-mak-ing and could only pretend that there was something amusing the matter with the arm of her chair. She supposed that Mildred's Mr. Russell had forgotten Walter by this time. “I’m not even an intimate enough friend of Mildred’s for him to have thought he ought to bother to tell me he couldn’t find him, she thought. And then she saw Russell coming across the room toward her, with Walter beside him. She Jumped up gaily. “Oh, thank you!” she cried. "I know this naughty boy must ha\ e been terribly hard to find. Mildred 11 never forgive me! I've put you to so much —” “Not at all," he said amiably, and went away, leaving the brother and sister together. “Walter, let’s dance Just once more,” Alice said, touching his arm placatively. “I thought—well, perhaps we might go home then.” But Walter's expression was that of a person upon whom an outrage has Just been perpetrated. "No,” he said. “We’ve stayed this long, 1 m goin’ to wait and see what they got to eat. And you look here"’ lie turned upon her angrily. “Don't you ever do that again”’ “Do what?” “Send somebody after me that pokes his nose into every comer of the house till he finds me! ‘Are you Mr. Walters Adams?’ he says. 1 guess he must asked everybody in ♦he place if they were Mr. Walter Adams! Well, I’ll bet a few' iron men you wouldn't send anybody to hunt for me again if you knew where he found me!” “Where was U?” Waiter decided that he fit punishment was to know. “I was shootin’ dice with those coons in the cloakroom.” “And he saw you?” “Unless he was blind!” said Walter. “Come on. I’ll dance this one more dance with you. Supper comes after that, and then we’ll go home. Mrs. Adams heard Alice’s key turning in the fron door and hurried down the stairs to meet her. “Did you get wet coining in, darling?” she asked. “Just lovely!” Alice said, cheerily; and after she had arranged the latch ro. Walter, who had gone to return t le little car, she followed her mother upstairs and hummed a dance-tune on the way. “Oh, I’m so glad you bad a nice time,” Mrs. Adams said, a3 they reached the door of her daughter’s room together. “You deserved to, and It’s lovely to think —” But at this, without warning, Alice threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing so loudly that in his room, close by, her father, half drowsing through the night, started to full wakefulness. CHAPTER IX ON A morning, a week after this collapse of festal hopes, Mrs. Adams and her daughter were concluding a three days’ disturbance, the “srring house-cleaning”—post-poned until now by Adams’ long illness—and Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in her mother’s room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a packet of letters wrapped in worn muslin. She called to her mother, who was scrubbing the floor of the hallway Just beyond the open door. “These old letters you had m the bottom drawer, weren’t they tome papa wrote you before you were married?” Mrs. Adams laughed and said: “Yes. Just put ’em back where they were — or else up in the attic —anywhere you want to.” “Do you mind if I read one, mama?” Mrs. Adams laughed again. “Oh, T guess you can if you want to. I expect they're pretty funny!” Alice laughed in response, and chose the topmost letter of the packet. “My dear, beautiful girl,” it began: and she stared at these singular words. They gave her a shock like that caused by overhearing some bewildering impropriety: and, having read them over to herself several times, she went on to experience other shocks. “My dear Beautiful Girl: “This time yesterday I had a mighty bad case of blues because T v>d not had a word from you in two whole long days and when I do not bear from you every day things look mighty down in the mouth to me. Now it is all so different because your letter has arrived and besides I have got a piece of news I believe you will think as fine as I do. Darling. you will be surprised, so get ready to hear about a big effect on our future. It is this way. I had sort of a suspicion the head of the firm kind of took a fancy to me from the first when I went there, and liked the way I attended to my work and ro when he took me on this business

trip with him I felt pretty sure of it and now it turns out I was about right. In return I guess I have got about the best boss In this world and l believe you will think so too. Yes, sweetheart, after the talk I have Just had with him If J. A. Lamb asked me to cut my hand off for him I guess I would come pretty near doing It because what he says means the end of our waiting to be together. I'rom New Years on he Is going to put me In entire charge of the sundries dept, and what do you think is going to be my salary? Eleven hundred cool dollars a year ($1,100.00). That's all! Just only a cool eleven hundred per annum! Well, I guess that will show your mother whether I can take care of you or not. And oh how I would like to see your dear, beautiful, loving face when you get this news. “I would like to go out on the pub11' streets and Just dance and shout and it is all I can do to help doing It, especially when I know we will be talking it over together this time next week, and oh my darling, now that your folks have no excuse for putting it off any longer we might ho In our own little home before Xmas. Would you be glad? ‘“Well, darling, this settles everything and makes our future just about as smooth for us as anybody could ask. I can hardly realize after all this waiting life’s troubles are over for you and me and we have nothing to do but. to enjoy the happiness granted us by this wonderful, beautiful thing we call life. I know T am not any poet and the one I tried about you the day of the picnic was tearful but the way I think about you is a poem. “Write me what you think of the news. I know but write me anyhow. I’ll get It before we start home and I can be reading it over all the time on the train. “Your always loving “VIRGIL.” The sound of her mother’s diligent scrubbing in the hall came back slowly to Alice's hearing, as she restored the letter to the packet, wrapped the packet in its muslin covering, and returned It to the drawer She had remained upon her knees while she read the letter; now -she sank backward, sitting upon the floor with her hands behind her, an unconscious relaxing for better ease to think. Upon her face there had fallen a look of wonder. For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is everlasting movement. Youth really believes what is running water to be a permanent crystallization and sees time fixed to a point; some people have dark hair, some people have blonde hair, some people have gray hair. Until this moment, Alice had no conviction thai there was a universe before she cam - into It. She had always thought of t as the background of herself; the moon was something to make her prettier on a summer night. But this old letter, through which -he saw still flickering an ancient star light of young iove, astounded hei Faintly before her it revealed tic w hole lives of her father and mother, who had been young, after all—they really had—and their youth was now so utterly passed from them that the picture of it, in the letter, was lik<a burlesque of them. And so she, her -elf, must pass to such changes, too and all that now seemed vital to her would be nothing. When her work was finished, that afternoon, she went into her father's room. His recovery had progressed well enough to permit the ..departure of Miss Perry, and Adams, wealing one of Mrs. Adam’s wrappers over his night-gown, sat in a high backed chair by a closed window. The weather was warm, but the closed window and the flannel wrapper had not sufficed him; round his shoulders he had an old crocheted scarf of Alice's; his legs were wrapped in a heavy comfort, and, with these swathings about him, and his eyes closed, his thin and grizzled head making but a slight Indentation in the pillow supporting it, he looked old and little and queer. Alice would have gone out softly, but without opening his eyes, he spoke to her: “Don't go, dearie. Come sit with the old man a little while.” She brought a chair near his. 'T thought you were napping.” “Xo. I don't hardly ever do that. I just drift a little sometimes.” “How do you mean you drift, papa?” He looked at her vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know. Kind of pictures. They get a little mixed up—old times with times still ahead, like planning what to do, you know. That’s as near a nap as I get—when the pictures mix up some. I suppose it’s sort* of drowsing." She took one of his bands and stroked it. "What do you mean when you say you have pictures like ‘planning what to do'?” she asked. “I mean planning what to do when I get out and able to go to work again.” “But that doesn't need any planning,” Alice said, quickly. "You’re “You’re going back to your old place at Lamb’s, of course?” Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but made no other re sponse. “Why, of course you are!” she cried. “What are you talking about?” His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the eyes, open in a haggard stare. “I heard you the other night when you came from the party.” he said. "I know what was the matter.” “Indeed, you don’t,” she assured him. “You don’t know anything about it, because there wasn’t anything the matter at all.” “Don’t you suppose I heard you crying? What’d you cry for If there wasn't anything the matter?” “Just nerves, papa. It wasn't anything else in the world.” “Never mind,” t he £*rid. “Your mother tola me." “She promised me not to!” At that Adams laughed mournfully. “It wouVdn’t be very likely I'd hear you so upset and not ask about it, even if she didn’t come and tell me on her own hook. You needn’t try to fool me; I tel! you I know what was the matter.” “The only matter was I had a silly lit,” Alice protested. “It did me good, too.” “How’s that?” “Because I’ve decided to do something about it, papa.” “That isn’t the way your mother

DOINGS OF THE DUFFS—

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looks at it,” Adams said, ruefully. “She thinks it’s our place to do something about it. Well, I don’t know —I don’t know; everything seems so changed these days. You’ve always been a good daughter, Alice, and you might to have as much as any of these girls you go with; she’s convinced me she s right about that. The trouble is—” He faltered, apologetically, then went on, “I mean the question is —how to get it for you.”

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

“No!” she cried. “I had no business to make such a fuss just because a lot of idiots didn't break their necks to get dances with me and because I got mortified about Walter —Walter was pretty terrible—” “Oh, me, my!” Adams lamented. “I guess that's something we just have to leave work out Itself. What you going to do with a boy 19 or 21 years old that makes his own living? Can’t whip hirm Can’t keep him locked

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up in the house. Just got to hope he’ll learn better, I suppose.” “Os course he didn’t want to go to the Palmers’,” Alice explained, tolerantly—“and as mamma 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 lie could. Os course it was awful that this —that this Mr. Russell should—” In spite of her, the recollection choked her.

Danny Makes a Discovery

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“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 1 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 might to do some-

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

thing.” “What like?” She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as sne 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?”

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“I want to go on the stage: 1 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. (To Be Continued^

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN