“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, “That Mr. Russell—your mother tells me he hasn't been here again—not since——”
“No,” she said, quietly, as Adams paused. “He never came again.”
“Well, but maybe——”