“Well, darn the luck, all right!” he consented, explosively. “I'll get her something to ride in. It means seventy-five cents.”
“Why, Walter!” Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. “Do you know how to get a cab for that little? How splendid!”
“Tain't a cab,” Walter informed her crossly. “It's a tin Lizzie, but you don't haf' to tell her what it is till I get her into it, do you?”
Mrs. Adams agreed that she didn't.
CHAPTER VI
Alice was busy with herself for two hours after dinner; but a little before nine o'clock she stood in front of her long mirror, completed, bright-eyed and solemn. Her hair, exquisitely arranged, gave all she asked of it; what artificialities in colour she had used upon her face were only bits of emphasis that made her prettiness the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of violets, each with the stems wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and the other she carried in her hand.
Miss Perry, called in by a rapturous mother for the free treat of a look at this radiance, insisted that Alice was a vision. “Purely and simply a vision!” she said, meaning that no other definition whatever would satisfy her. “I never saw anybody look a vision if she don't look one to-night,” the admiring nurse declared. “Her papa'll think the same I do about it. You see if he doesn't say she's purely and simply a vision.”
Adams did not fulfil the prediction quite literally when Alice paid a brief visit to his room to “show” him and bid him good-night; but he chuckled feebly. “Well, well, well!” he said.
“You look mighty fine—MIGHTY fine!” And he waggled a bony finger at her two bouquets. “Why, Alice, who's your beau?”