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 said, calmly. "No. It's just what I said:
it's all for you, dear."

"Don't let her con you," Walter advised 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 without
waiting to test it. No one came.

Alice stayed in the "living-room" until half-past nine, when she went
slowly upstairs. Her mother, almost tearful, met her at the top, and
whispered, "You mustn't mind, dearie."

"Mustn't mind what?" Alice asked, and then, as she went on her way,
laughed scornfully. "What utter nonsense!" 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 pointless by
the eventless evening that followed; and in the morning the carnations
began to appear tarnished and 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
perpetual 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 to-night 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 Walter called them, were
vanished. For Ali