to learn how to live till we're about ready to die, it certainly
seems to me dang tough!"

"Then I wouldn't brood on such a notion, papa," she said.

"'Brood?' No!" he returned. "I just kind o' mull it over." He
chuckled again, sighed, and then, not looking at her, he said,
"That Mr. Russell--your mother tells me he hasn't been here
again--not since----"

"No," she said, quietly, as Adams paused. "He never came again."

"Well, but maybe----"

"No," she said. "There isn't any 'maybe.' I told him good-bye
that night, papa. It was before he knew about Walter--I told
you."

"Well, well," Adams said. "Young people are entitled to their
own privacy; I don't want to pry." He emptied his pipe into a
chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and
reverted to a former topic. "Speaking of dying----"

"Well, but we weren't!" Alice protested.

"Yes, about not knowing how to live till you're through
living--and THEN maybe not!" he said, chuckling at his own
determined pessimism. "I see I'm pretty old because I talk this
way--I remember my grandmother saying things a good deal like all
what I'm saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young