g for myself. There's no hurry."

"What arrangements for yourself, dearie?"

"I'll tell you afterwards--after I find out something about 'em myself."

"All right," he said, indulgently. "Keep your secrets; keep your
secrets." He paused, drew musingly upon his pipe, and shook his head.
"Funny--the way your mother looks at things! For the matter o' that,
everything's pretty funny, I expect, if you stop to think about it. For
instance, let her say all she likes, but we were pushed right spang to
the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn't taken it into his head to make that
offer for the works; and there's one of the things I been thinking about
lately, Alice: thinking about how funny they work out."

"What did you think about it, papa!"

"Well, I've seen it happen in other people's lives, time and time again;
and now it's happened in ours. You think you're going to be pushed right
up against the wall; you can't see any way out, or any hope at all; you
think you're GONE--and then something you never counted on turns up;
and, while maybe you never do get back to where you used to be, yet
somehow you kind of squirm out of being right SPANG against the wall.
You keep on going--maybe you can't go much, but you do go a little. See
what I mean?"

"Yes. I understand, dear."

"Yes, I'm afraid you do," he said. "Too bad! You oughtn't to understand
it at your age. It seems to me a good deal as if the Lord really meant
for the young people to have the good times, and for the old to have
the troubles; and when anybody as young as you has trouble there's a big
mistake somewhere."

"Oh, no!" she protested.

But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine error: "Yes, it
does look a good deal that way. But of course we can't tell; we're never
certain about anything--not about anything at all. Sometimes I look at
it another way, though. Sometimes it looks to me as if a body's troubles
came on him mainly because he hadn't had sense enough to know how not to
have any--as if his troubles were kind of like a boy's getting kept in
after school by the teacher, to give him discipline, or something or
other. But, my, my! We don't learn easy!" He chuckled mournfully. "Not
to learn how to live till we're about ready to die, it certainly seems
to me dang tough!"

"Then I wouldn't brood on such a notion, papa," she said.

"'Brood?' No!" he returned. "I just kind o' mull it over." He chuckled
again, sighed, and then, not looking at her, he said, "