III
Money isn't everything, but it has so much to do with most things that even a dim, story-book vision of it stirred Alice's imagination. Luther, having no imagination, dismissed the vision from his mind after writing a letter to "Amos Hughes, Attorney at Law." Indeed, Luther had more practical things to think of than possible legacies, poor fellow. His balance-sheet for that month of June was very dark. More than once, after the office was closed for the day, he sat at his desk in his shirt-sleeves, hot and tired and grimy, poring over his ledger by the light of a swinging lamp. Alice grew worried about his pallor and the hollows in his cheeks; but there was nothing she could do, though she chafed against her helplessness to help, and revolved all sorts of schemes in her impractical girl-mind. Indeed, she went so far as to pour out her heart to Dr. Lavendar, in the hope that he could make some suggestion. She found the old man sitting in the wistaria arbor near his beehives, smoking peacefully, and throwing sticks to Danny, who needed exercise and scrambled after them into the tall grass, bringing them back with fatiguing alacrity.
"Look here, sir," said Dr. Lavendar, "don't find 'em so quick. I'm worn out pitching them."
Then Alice Gray came down between the box borders and said she wanted his advice; and Dr. Lavendar, glancing up at her, saw an uncertain lip and heard a catch in her voice; whereupon he told her to give Danny a run. "The scoundrel has kept me working for the last half-hour," he complained.
When she came back, flushed and laughing, and sat down on the arbor step, her voice was quite steady; so he listened placidly to her story.
"You want to get some work to help Lute, do you, good-for-nothing?"
"Yes," Alice said, eagerly. "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, can you think of anything? I wanted to go into the office and learn to set type, but Mrs. Gray—"
"Well?"
"Mrs. Gray said I had better learn to keep house economically. She said father wouldn't like it."