"So they do; but of course not so's they couldn't get along
without me." He paused, reflecting. "I don't just seem to know
how to put it--I mean how to put what I started out to say. I
kind of wanted to tell you--well, it seems funny to me, these
last few years, the way your mother's taken to feeling about it.
I'd like to see a better established wholesale drug business than
Lamb and Company this side the Alleghanies--I don't say bigger, I
say better established--and it's kind of funny for a man that's
been with a business like that as long as I have to hear it
called a 'hole.' It's kind of funny when you think, yourself,
you've done pretty fairly well in a business like that, and the
men at the head of it seem to think so, too, and put your salary
just about as high as anybody could consider customary--well,
what I mean, Alice, it's kind of funny to have your mother think
it's mostly just--mostly just a failure, so to speak."

His voice had become tremulous in spite of him; and this sign of
weakness and emotion had sufficient effect upon Alice. She bent
over him suddenly, with her arm about him and her cheek against
his. "Poor papa!" she murmured. "Poor papa!"

"No, no," he said. "I didn't mean anything to trouble you. I
just thought----" He hesitated. "I just wondered--I thought
maybe it wouldn't be any harm if I said something about how
things ARE down there. I got to thinking maybe you didn't
understand it's a pretty good place. They're fine people to work
for; and they've always seemed to think something of me;--the way
they took Walter on, for instance, soon as I asked 'em, last
year. Don't you think that looked a good deal as if they thought
something of me, Alice?"