Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house, she shook her head, reconsidering. “Perhaps I ought to have gone with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful people are his friends—at least for one night.”
“Oh, I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy,” Mrs. Adams said, soothingly; and this was what she almost always said when either her husband or Alice expressed such misgivings. “He's odd, and he's picked up right queer manners; but that's only because we haven't given him advantages like the other young men. But I'm sure he's a GOOD boy.”
She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. “Of course Walter could take his place with the other nice boys of the town even yet,” she said. “I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all belong to the country clubs and have cars and——”
“Let's don't go into that any more, mama,” the daughter begged her. “What's the use?”
“It COULD be of use,” Mrs. Adams insisted. “It could if your father——”
“But papa CAN'T.”
“Yes, he can.”
“But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a business he's been in practically all his life, and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he's right about it, too, of course!”
Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour heightened by an old bitterness. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He talks that way; but he knows better.”
“How could he 'know better,' mama?”