Then
she said:
"I don't know; I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems
to me I wasn't. I think I was just being sort of sadly happy
just then."
"Were you? Was it 'sadly,' too?"
"Don't you know?" she said. "It seems to me that only little
children can be just happily happy. I think when we get older
our happiest moments are like the one I had just then: it's as if
we heard strains of minor music running through them--oh, so
sweet, but oh, so sad!"
"But what makes it sad for YOU?"
"I don't know," she said, in a lighter tone. "Perhaps it's a
kind of useless foreboding I seem to have pretty often. It may
be that--or it may be poor papa."
"You ARE a funny, delightful girl, though!" Russell laughed.
"When your father's so well again that he goes out walking in the
evenings!"
"He does too much walking," Alice said. "Too much altogether,
over at his new plant. But there isn't any stopping him." She
laughed and shook her head. "When a man gets an ambition to be a
multi-millionaire his family don't appear to have much weight
with him. He'll walk all he wants to, in spite of them."
"I suppose so," Russell said, absently; then he leaned forward.
"I wish I could understand better why you were 'sadly' happy."
Meanwhile, as Alice shed what further light she could on this
point, the man ambitious to be a "multi-millionaire" was indeed
walking too much for his own good.
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