really hurt him."

"Well, doesn't he hurt us?"

"Never that I know of, mama."

"I don't mean by SAYING things," Mrs. Adams explained,
impatiently. "There are more ways than that of hurting people.
When a man sticks to a salary that doesn't provide for his
family, isn't that hurting them?"

"Oh, it 'provides' for us well enough, mama. We have what we
need--if I weren't so extravagant. Oh, _I_ know I am!"

But at this admission her mother cried out sharply.
"'Extravagant!' You haven't one tenth of what the other girls you
go with have. And you CAN'T have what you ought to as long as he
doesn't get out of that horrible place. It provides bare food
and shelter for us, but what's that?"

"I don't think we ought to try any more to change him."

"You don't?" Mrs. Adams came and stood before her. "Listen,
Alice: your father's asleep; that's his trouble, and he's got to
be waked up. He doesn't know that things have changed. When you
and Walter were little children we did have enough--at least it
seemed to be about as much as most of the people we knew. But
the town isn't what it was in those days, and times aren't what
they were then, and these fearful PRICES aren't the old prices.
Everything else but your father has changed, and all the time