"
"No doubt," Alice said, as she opened her door to depart. "I
don't suppose we'll mind having any of 'em as much as we thought
we would. Good-bye."
But her mother detained her, catching her by the arm. "Alice,
you do hate it, don't you!"
"No," the girl said, quickly. "There wasn't anything else to
do."
Mrs. Adams became emotional at once: her face cried tragedy, and
her voice misfortune. "There MIGHT have been something else to
do! Oh, Alice, you gave your father bad advice when you upheld
him in taking a miserable little ninety-three hundred and fifty
from that old wretch! If your father'd just had the gumption to
hold out, they'd have had to pay him anything he asked. If he'd
just had the gumption and a little manly COURAGE----"
"Hush!" Alice whispered, for her mother's voice grew louder.
"Hush! He'll hear you, mama."
"Could he hear me too often?" the embittered lady asked. "If
he'd listened to me at the right time, would we have to be taking
in boarders and sinking DOWN in the scale at the end of our
lives, instead of going UP? You were both wrong; we didn't need
to be so panicky--that was just what that old man wanted: to
scare us and buy us out for nothing! If your father'd just
listened to me then, or if for once in his life he'd just been
half a MAN----"
Alice put her hand over her mother's mouth.
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