was about fifteen her mother began now and then to say something
to Adams about a "glue factory," rather timidly, and as a vague
suggestion, but never without irritating him. Then, for years,
the preposterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly because
of some explosion on the part of Adams, when his daughter had not
been present. But during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly
gone back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and also
reviving her husband's irritation. Alice's bored impression was
that her mother wanted him to found, or buy, or do something, or
other, about a glue factory; and that he considered the proposal
so impracticable as to be insulting. The parental conversations
took place when neither Alice nor Walter was at hand, but
sometimes Alice had come in upon the conclusion of one, to find
her father in a shouting mood, and shocking the air behind him
with profane monosyllables as he departed. Mrs. Adams would be
left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympathizing with the
goaded man, inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings
had been renewed, she always got the brooding and cryptic answer,
"He COULD do it--if he wanted to." Alice failed to comprehend
the desirability of a glue factory--to her mind a father engaged
in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a
father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams
knew better than her mother whether such an enterprise would be
profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for
she had heard him shouting at the end of one of these painful
interviews, "You can keep up your dang talk till YOU die and _I_
die, but I'll never make one God's cent that way!"

There had been a culmination. Returning from church on the
Sunday preceding the collapse with which Adams's illness