“Oh, of course it don't amount to anything,” he said. “A person can stand a good deal of just smell. It don't WORRY me any.”
“I should think not especially as there isn't any.”
“Well,” he said, “I feel pretty fair over the whole thing—a lot better'n I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't know as there's any reason I shouldn't tell you so.”
She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice had tenderness in it as she responded: “There, honey! Didn't I always say you'd be glad if you did it?”
Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it. “Well,” he said, slowly, “it's a puzzle. Yes, sir, it's a puzzle.”
“What is?”
“Pretty much everything, I guess.”
As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their heads. Then the window darkened abruptly, but the song continued as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little veranda. “Mi chiamo Mimi,” she sang, and in her voice throbbed something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father and mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped with the click of the wire screen at the front door as Alice came out.
“My!” said her father. “How sweet she does sing! I don't know as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it did just then.”
“There's something that makes it sound that way,” his wife told him.