Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 223, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 January 1923 — Page 8

8

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

Begin her* Retails'' YIRGUj ADAMS, salary H Insufficient to provide siil-Ii luxuries sos his daughter. ALICE, as are enjoyed by her friends. MILDRED PALMKit and HENRIETTA LAMB, she is thinking seriously ol gnimr fro the stage. Since meeting' ARTHUR RUSSELL Alice resenU her habit of presenting to the world a rosy false sell, but thuiks she must continue to play her make-believe part. Her brother WALTER, hears from JOE LAMB that It Is expected Arthur Russell will marry Mildred Palmer and upon tier lather's death will take hia place in business. Mrs. Adams Is trying to Induce her husband to start a glue factory and use the excellent secret formula he lias bad hi his possession for years. After a long illness Mr. Adams is visited by hie old employer, Mr. .1 A. Lamb, who assures him that his position is open whenever he is thoroughly well. Go on with the story BUT Mrs-. Adame failed In sympathy tiport this point; “He didn’t say anything^about raising youtr father’s salary, did he?” she asked-, dryly*. “No.” “No. I thought not-.’' She would have said more, but Alice, indisposed listen, began to whistle, ran up the stairs, and went to sit with her father. She found him bright-eyed with the excitement a first caller brings into a slow convalescence: his cheeks showed actual 1 tints of color: and b** was smiling tremulously ns he filled and lit his pipe. She brought the crocheted scarf and put ii about his shoulders again, then took a chair near him. “I believe seeing Mr. Lamb did do you good, papa.’’ she said. “I sort of thought it might, and that’s why I let him come up. You really look a little like your old self again-.” * Adams exhaled a breathy "Hal” with the smoke of his pipe as he waved the match to extinguish it. “That’s fine,” he said. “The smoke I had before dinner didn’t taste the way It used to. and I kind of wondered if I’d lost my liking for tobacco, but this one seems to be all right. You bet it. did me good to see J. A. Lamb! He’s the biggest man that’s ever lived in this town or ever will live here: and yoti can take all the governors and senators or anything they've raised here, and put ’em in a pot with him. and they won t come out one-two-three alongside o’ him! And to think as big a man as that, with all his interests and everything he's got on his mind —to think he’d never let anything prevent him from coming here once every week to ask how I was getting along, and then walk right upstairs and kind of call on me. as it were—well, it makes me sort of feel as if I wasn't so much of a nobody, so to speak, as your mother seems to like to make out sometimes.” “How foolish, papa! Os course you’re not ‘a nobody.' ” Adams chuckled faintly upon his pipe stem, what vanity he toad seeming to be further stimulated by his daughter’s applause. ’*l guess there aren't a whole lot of people in this town that could claim S. A. showed that much Interest in ’em.” he said. “Os course, I don’t set up to believe it's all because of merit, or anything like that. He’d do the same for anybody else that’d been with the company as long as T have, but still it is something to be with the company that long and have him show he appreciates it.” “Yes, indeed, it is. papa.” “Yes. sir.” Adams said, reflectively. “Yes, sir, I guess that’s so. And besides. it all goes to show what that man is, Alice. Simon pure! There’s never been anybody work for him' that didn’t respect him more than they did any other man in the world, I guess. And when you work for him you know he respects you. too. Right from the start you get the feeling that J. A. puts absolute confidence in you: and- that's mighty stimulating: It makes you -want to show him he hasn’t misplaced it.. There's great big moral values to the way a man like him gets you to feeling about your relations with the business; it ain’t just dollars and cents —not by any means!” He was silent for a time, then returned with increasing enthusiasm to this theme, and Alice was glad to see so much renewal of life in him: he had not spoken with a like cheerful vigour since before his illness. The visit of his idolized great man had indeed been good for him. putting new spirit into him; and liveliness of the body followed that of the spirit. His improvement carried over the r.lght; he slept well and awoke late, declaring that he was “pretty near a well man and ready for business right now.” Moreover., having slept CORN r Lift Off with Fingers 31) Doesn’t hurt a bit! Drop a little “Freezone” on an aching corn, Instantly that corn stops hurting, then shortly you life it right off with fingers. Truly! Your druggist sells a tiny bottle of “Freezone” for a few cents, sufficient to remote every hard corn, soft corn, or corn between the toes, and the calsoreness or irritation.—

again in the afternoon, he dressed and went down to dinner, leaning but lightly on Alice, who conducted him. “My! but you and your mother have been at it with your scrubbing and dusting!” he said, as they came through the “living room.” "I don’t know I ever did see the house so spick and span before!” His glance fell upon a few carnations in a vase, and he chuckled admiringly. “Flowers, too! So that’s what you coaxed that dollar and a half out o’ me for this morning!” Other embellishments brought forth his comment when he had taken his old seat at the head of the small din-r.er-table. “Why, I declare, Alice!” he exclaimed. “I been so busy looking at all the spick-and-spanishness after the house-cleaning, and the flowers out In the parlour—‘living-room’ I suppose you want me to call it. if I just got to be fashionable—l been so busy studying over all this so-and-so, I declare I never noticed you till this minute! My, but you are all dressed up! Wliat’s goin’ on? What’s it about; you so all dressed up, and flowers in the parlor and everything?” “Don’t you see, papa? It's in honor of your coming downstairs again, of course.” “Oh, so that's it," he said. "I never would ’a’ thought of that. I guess.” But Walter looked sidelong at his father, and gave forth his sly and knowing laugh. “Neither would I!” lie said.

Adams lifted his eyebrows jocosely. “You're jealous, are you, sonny? You don't want the old man to think our young lady’d make so much fuss over him, do you?” "Go on thinkin’ It's over you,” Walter retorted, amused. “Go on and think it. It'll do you good.” “Os course I’ll think It,” Adams said. “It isn’t anybody’s birthday. Certainly the decorations are on account of me coming downstairs. Didn't you hear Alice say so?” “Sure, I heard her say so.” “Well, then ” Walter interrupted him with a little music. Looking shrewdly at Alice, he sang: "I was walkin’ out on Monday with my sweet thing. She's my neat thing. My sweet thing: I'll go round on Tuesday night to see her. Oh, how we’ll spoon ” “Walter!” his mother cried. “Where do you learn such vulgar songs?” However, she seemed not greatly displeased with him, and laughed as she spoke. “So that's It, Alice!” said Adams. "Playing the hypocrite with your old man, are you? It's some new beau, is it?” “I only wish it were,” she cried, calmly. “No. It's just what I said: it’s all for you, dear.” “Don't let her con you,” Walter ad- ’ vised his father. “She's got expectations. You hang around downstairs a while after dinner and you’ll see." But the prophecy failed, though Adams went to his own room with out waiting to test it. No one came Alice staved in the “living-room'' until half-past nine, when she went slowly upstairs. Her mother, almost tearful, met her at the top. and whis pered, “You mustn’t mind, dearie.’ “Mustn’t mind what?” Alice asked, and then, as she went on her way. laughed scornfully. “What utter non sense!” she said. Next day she cut the stems of the rather scant show of carnations and refreshed them with new water. At dinner, her father, still in high spirits, observed that she had again “dressed up” In honour of his second descent of the stairs: and Walter repeated his fragment of objectionable song; but these jocularities were rendered point less by the eventless evening that fol lowed: and in the morning the car nations began to appear tarnished ami flaccid. Alice gave them a long look, then threw them away; and neither Walter nor her father was inspired to any rallying by her plain costume for that evening. Mrs. Adams was visibly depressed. When Alice finished helping her mother with the dishes, she went outdoors and sat upon the steps of the little front veranda. The night, gentle with warm air from the South, surrounded her pleasantly, and the per petual smoke was thinner. Now that the furnaces of dwelling houses were no longer fired, life in that city had begun to be less like life In a railway tunnel; people were aware of summer in the air, and in the thickened foliage of the shade trees, and in the sky. Stars were unveiled by the passing of the denser smoke fogs, and tonight they could be seen clearly; they looked warm and near. Other girls sat upon verandas and stoops in Alice’s street, cheerful as young fishermen along the banks of a stream. Alice could hear them from time to time; thin sopranos persistent in laughter that fell dismally upon her ears. She had set no lines or nets herself, and what she had of “expectations.” as Waltr called them, were vanished. For Alice was ex perienced; and one of the conclusions she drew from her experience was that when a man says, “I’d take you for anything you wanted me to,” he may mean it or he ray not; but, if he does, he Mill not postpone the first opportunity to say something more. Little affairs, once begun, must be warmed quickly; for if they cool they are dead. But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. When she tossed away the carnations she likewise tossed sway her thoughts of that young man. She had been like a boy who, sees upon the street, some distance before him, a bit of something round and glittering, a possible dime. He hopes it is a dime, and. until he comes near enough to make sure, he plays that it is a dime. In his mind he has an adventure with it; he buys something delightful. If he picks it up. dis covering only some tin-foil which has happened upon a round shape, he feels a sinking. A dullness falls upon him. So Alice was dull with the lass of an adventure; and when the laughter of other girls reached her. intermittently. she had not sprightllness enough left in her to be envious of their gaiety. Besides, these neighbours were ineligible even for her envy, being of another caste; they could never know a dance at the Palmers’, except remotely, through a newspaper. Their laughter was for thy> encouragement of snappy young nfn of the stores and orifices down-torn, clerks, book-

DOINGS OF THE DUFFS—

YOU HAVE A LOVELY HOME?\' here, nrs. duff - every- L Thing is so complete- / 5)7* down :• I KNOW You MUST BAILEY, ; BE HAPPY HERE -if YOU DON’T HAVE jjjjj. -y. -M t. -VE--

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THEM DAYS IS GONE FOREVER—

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nka servk* "2 THE SHOW TROUPE THAT WAS TO PLAY AT THE Opßy HOUSE LAST MIGHT MOVED TD THE C-EAiTRtAL. HOTEL. OFFICE, WHEN “THE" FIRE WENT OUT /N THE DEPOT WAITING ROOM STOVE , L.ATE TODAY-

flcepers, what not —some of them probably graduates of Frlnck’s Business College. Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway mounting between close walls to disappear in upper shadows, her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

TIIE OLD HOME TOWN— By STANLEY

suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts, as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveler, still roaming the world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his family burial lot: “I wonder if I shall end there.” The foreboding passed abruptly,

THE US DiAJS APOLJLS TIMES

=x \ I’LL SAY Vs/E DON’T CARE \ 50 MUCH FOR THE PEOPLE \ who moved into Your, j CYC HOME - THEY GET y ALONG LIKE TWO 6TRANGE J DON TTH&Y BULLDOGS-THEY CERTAINLY (SET ALONG HAVE THEIR UPS AND DOWNS J WELL ? AND LEFTS AND RIGHTS !

Some Gossip From the Old Neighborhood

with a jerk of her breath, as the street lamp revealed a tall and easy figure approaching from the north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given Russel up—and he came. What luck for me!” he exclaimed. “To find you here alone!” Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving. “I'm

GET ALONG? THEY START JUST \ AS SOON AS THEY GET UP AND i KEEP IT UP UNTIL HE GOES To S WORK-* NS DOES^GO UNTIL ASOUT / TEN o‘ClOck- SO THEY HAVE PLENTY J OF TIME TO GET WELL ACQUAINTED J WITH EACH OTHER- “ THEY ARE J t THE BEST LITTLE BORROWERS IN / - —‘

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Vamp This On Your Viola

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glad it happened so,” she said. “Let’s stay out here, shall we? Do you think it's too prtmftcial to sit on a girl’s front steps with her?” * “ ‘Provincial?’ Why, it’s the very best of our institutions,” he returned, taking his place beside her. "At least I think so tonight.” “Thanks! Is that practice for other nights somewhere else?” “No,” he laughed. “The practicing

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

or It BOAI.'III N'C HOUSE—By AHERN

all led up to this. Did I come too soon?” “No.” she replied, gravely. “Just in time!” I’m glad to be so accurate; I’ve spent two evenings wanting to come, Miss Adams, instead of doing what I was doing.” “What was that?” "Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow citizens are immensely

SO FAR,THEY OWE ME ABOUT \ THREE DOZEN OF EGGS AND FOUR, J Pounds of sugar-they had S) X OF OOR-VKYpoLA RECORDS Bor SHE BROKE THEM ALL BY ) THROWING THEM AT HIM - I KNOW SHE’LL HAVE TO BORROW SOME /L, , v Dishes next Because they / used upa urr of them jn a /

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f SEE, DSbOTHIMH. JUMBO \ L f Hill

hospitable to a newcomer.” “Oh, no,” Alice said. “We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you find yourself charmed?” “One was a men’s dinner,” he ex plained. “Mr. Palmer seemed to think 1 ought to be shown to the principal business men.” “What was the other dinner?” “My cousin Mildred gave it.” (To Be Continued.)

JAN. 26, 1926

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN