“What’s the matter, papa? Getting awful sick of lying on his tired old back, I expect.”
“I’ve had kind of a poor morning,” Adams said, as she patted his hand comfortingly. “I been thinking–-“
“Didn’t I tell you not to?” she cried, gaily. “Of course you’ll have poor times when you go and do just exactly what I say you mustn’t. You stop thinking this very minute!”
He smiled ruefully, closing his eyes; was silent for a moment, then asked her to sit beside the bed. “I been thinking of something I wanted to say,” he added.
“What like, papa?”
“Well, it’s nothing—much,” he said, with something deprecatory in his tone, as if he felt vague impulses toward both humour and apology. “I just thought maybe I ought to’ve said more to you some time or other about—well, about the way things ARE, down at Lamb and Company’s, for instance.”
“Now, papa!” She leaned forward in the chair she had taken, and pretended to slap his hand crossly. “Isn’t that exactly what I said you couldn’t think one single think about till you get ALL well?”
“Well–-” he said, and went on slowly, not looking at her, but at the ceiling. “I just thought maybe it wouldn’t been any harm if some time or other I told you something about the way they sort of depend on me down there.”
“Why don’t they show it, then?” she asked, quickly. “That’s just what mama and I have been feeling so much; they don’t appreciate you.”
“Why, yes, they do,” he said. “Yes, they do. They began h’isting my salary the second year I went in there, and they’ve h’isted it a little every two years all the time I’ve worked for ‘em. I’ve been head of the sundries department for seven years now, and I could hardly have more authority in that department unless I was a member of the firm itself.”
“Well, why 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, they are in all the departments, for that matter. We have a good deal of fun down there some days.”
She lifted her head. “More than you do at home ‘some days,’ I expect, papa!” she said.
He protested feebly. “Now, I didn’t mean that— I didn’t want to trouble you–-“
She looked at him through winking eyelashes. “I’m sorry I called it a ‘hole,’ papa.”
“No, no,” he protested, gently. “It was your mother said that.”
“No. I did, too.”
“Well, if you did, it was only because you’d heard her.”
She shook her head, then kissed him. “I’m going to talk to her,” she said, and rose decisively.
But at this, her father’s troubled voice became quickly louder: “You better let her alone. I just wanted to have a little talk with you. I didn’t mean to start any—your mother won’t–-“
“Now, papa!” Alice spoke cheerfully again, and smiled upon him. “I want you to quit worrying! Everything’s going to be all right and nobody’s going to bother you any more about anything. You’ll see!”
She carried her smile out into the hall, but after she had closed the door her face was all pity; and her mother, waiting for her in the opposite room, spoke sympathetically.
“What’s the matter, Alice? What did he say that’s upset you?”
“Wait a minute, mama.” Alice found a handkerchief, used it for eyes and suffused nose, gulped, then suddenly and desolately sat upon the bed. “Poor, poor, POOR papa!” she whispered.
“Why?” Mrs. Adams inquired, mildly. “What’s the matter with him? Sometimes you act as if he weren’t getting well. What’s he been talking about?”
“Mama—well, I think I’m pretty selfish. Oh, I do!”
