y. You were supposed to die in the
service, she said bitterly, and her daughter, a little mystified,
accepted this explanation. Adams had not spoken to her of his surrender;
he seemed not inclined to speak to her at all, or to any one.

Alice was not serious too long, and she began to laugh as she came
to the end of her decorative sketch. "After all, the whole thing is
perfectly ridiculous," she said. "In fact, it's FUNNY! That's on account
of what papa's going to throw over the Lamb business FOR! To save your
life you couldn't imagine what he's going to do!"

"I won't try, then," Russell assented.

"It takes all the romance out of ME," she laughed. "You'll never go for
a Parisian walk with me again, after I tell you what I'll be heiress
to." They had come to the entrance of the little park; and, as Alice had
said, it was a pretty place, especially on a day so radiant. Trees of
the oldest forest stood there, hale and serene over the trim, bright
grass; and the proletarians had not come from their factories at this
hour; only a few mothers and their babies were to be seen, here and
there, in the shade. "I think I'll postpone telling you about it till we
get nearly home again," Alice said, as they began to saunter down one of
the gravelled paths. "There's a bench beside a spring farther on; we
can sit there and talk about a lot of things--things not so sticky as my
dowry's going to be."

"'Sticky?'" he echoed. "What in the world----" She laughed despairingly.

"A glue factory!"

Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as from amusement; and
she remembered to tell him that the project of a glue factory was still
"an Adams secret." It would be known soon, however, she added; and the
whole Lamb connection would probably begin saying all sorts of things,
heaven knew what!

Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working always gaily, or with at
least the air of gaiety; and even as she rattled on, there was somewhere
in her mind a constant little wonder. Everything she said seemed to be
necessary to support something else she had said. How had it happened?
She found herself telling him that since her father had decided on
making so great a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last
to persuade him to give up that "foolish little house" he had been so
obstinate about; and she checked herself abruptly on this declivity just
as she was about to slide into a remark concerning her own preference
for a "count