can't is because
Henrietta Lamb hasn't invited her. Do you want to know why Henrietta
hasn't invited her? It's because she knows Alice can't get even, and
because she thinks Alice ought to be snubbed like this on account of
only being the daughter of one of her grandfather's clerks. I HOPE you
understand!"

"Oh, my, my!" he said. "OH, my, my!"

"That's your sweet old employer," his wife cried, tauntingly. "That's
your dear, kind, grand old Mister Lamb! Alice has been left out of a
good many smaller things, like big dinners and little dances, but this
is just the same as serving her notice that she's out of everything! And
it's all done by your dear, grand old----"

"Look here!" Adams exclaimed. "I don't want to hear any more of that!
You can't hold him responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I
guess! He probably doesn't know a thing about it. You don't suppose he's
troubling HIS head over----"

But she burst out at him passionately. "Suppose you trouble YOUR head
about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless you want to
see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She's still young
and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn't
bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to
give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in
your breast instead of a heart!"

"Oh, my, my!" he groaned. "What's my heart got to do with it?"

"Nothing! You haven't got one or you'd give her what she needed. Am I
asking anything you CAN'T do? You know better; you know I'm not!"

At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his
knees; and he looked at her fixedly. "Now, tell me," he said, slowly.
"Just what ARE you asking?"

"You know!" she sobbed.

"You mean you've broken your word never to speak of THAT to me again?"

"What do _I_ care for my word?" she cried, and, sinking to the floor at
his feet, rocked herself back and forth there. "Do you suppose I'll
let my 'word' keep me from struggling for a little happiness for my
children? It won't, I tell you; it won't! I'll struggle for that till I
die! I will, till I die till I die!"

He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, shaking all over, he
got up and began with uncertain steps to pace the floor.

"Hell, hell, hell!" he said. "I've got to go through THAT again!"

"Yes, you have!" she sobbed. "Till I die."

"Yes; that's what you been after all the time I