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ALICE
55

"He blames me for your taking the money from Mr. Fuller?"

"No!" Dave denied but halted the car.

"Davey, I know!"

"You don't; you don't understand at all. He doesn't say anything against you as you, dear, he couldn't; not possibly. He likes you—for one of your sort," David added honestly. "He's said you're as lovely a worldly girl as could be. Oh, Alice!"

"Go on! I knew of course he considers me just worldly."

"I want you to be! Why not? See here; to show how far father is from us, I'll tell you one thing he said to me. He told me in plain words that my trouble was that I wanted to work for money to make you comfortable and to please you. That's wrong, in his mind—for a man to work for things to please his wife. He ought to be pleasing God all the time; or I ought to. I won't. I want to please you."

He went silent and Alice stayed very still. Then she said: "Doesn't he work to please your mother, Davey?"

"No; I never thought about that till yesterday; but it's true. He's consistent. That's how he's put his life over with mother and with himself; that's how he's had six children on a salary averaging a thousand dollars a year. He doesn't think of pleasing her; she's his partner in his game of forever pleasing God."

Again he stopped abruptly and then, at the sight of the monuments in the district of the dead beside him, he stirred almost savagely.

"Eternity makes me tired. I've seen my father