Adams had decided to begin smoking again, and Alice felt rather
degraded, as well as embarrassed, when she went into the large
shop her father had named, and asked for the cheap tobacco
he used in his pipe. She fell back upon an air of amused
indulgence, hoping thus to suggest that her purchase was made for
some faithful old retainer, now infirm; and although the calmness
of the clerk who served her called for no such elaboration of her
sketch, she ornamented it with a little laugh and with the
remark, as she dropped the package into her coat-pocket, "I'm
sure it'll please him; they tell me it's the kind he likes."

Still playing Lady Bountiful, smiling to herself in anticipation
of the joy she was bringing to the simple old negro or Irish
follower of the family, she left the shop; but as she came out
upon the crowded pavement her smile vanished quickly.

Next to the door of the tobacco-shop, there was the open entrance
to a stairway, and, above this rather bleak and dark aperture, a
sign-board displayed in begrimed gilt letters the information
that Frincke's Business College occupied the upper floors of the
building. Furthermore, Frincke here publicly offered "personal
instruction and training in practical mathematics, bookkeeping,
and all branches of the business life, including stenography,
typewriting, etc."

Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this signboard as though
it were something surprising and distasteful which she had never
seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she
almost always passed it when she came down-town, and never
without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused