"Yes, sir; they say I'm their 'oldest stand-by'; and I guess they know they can count on my department's turning in as good a report as they look for, at the end of every month; but they don't have to take a man into the firm to get him to do my work, dearie." "But you said they depended on you, papa." "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.