had begun, Alice found her mother downstairs, weeping and
intimidated, while her father's stamping footsteps were loudly
audible as he strode up and down his room overhead. So were his
endless repetitions of invective loudly audible: "That woman!
Oh, that woman; Oh, that danged woman!"

Mrs. Adams admitted to her daughter that it was "the old glue
factory" and that her husband's wildness had frightened her into
a "solemn promise" never to mention the subject again so long as
she had breath. Alice laughed. The "glue factory" idea was not
only a bore, but ridiculous, and her mother's evident seriousness
about it one of those inexplicable vagaries we sometimes discover
in the people we know best. But this Sunday rampage appeared to
be the end of it, and when Adams came down to dinner, an hour
later, he was unusually cheerful. Alice was glad he had gone
wild enough to settle the glue factory once and for all; and she
had ceased to think of the episode long before Friday of that
week, when Adams was brought home in the middle of the afternoon
by his old employer, the "great J. A. Lamb," in the latter's
car.

During the long illness the "glue factory" was completely
forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh was rueful as well as
derisive now, in the kitchen, when she realized that her mother's
mind again dwelt upon this abandoned nuisance. "I thought you'd
got over all that nonsense, mama," she said.

Mrs. Adams smiled, pathetically. "Of course you think it's
nonsense, dearie. Young people think everything's nonsense that
they don't know anything about."