Everything's going to be all right, and you mustn't get to worrying about doing anything. We own this house it's all clear--and you've taken care of mama and me all our lives; now it's our turn.""No, sir!" he said, querulously. "I don't like the idea of being the landlady's husband around a boarding- house; it goes against my gizzard. _I_ know: makes out the bills for his wife Sunday mornings-- works with a screw-driver on somebody's bureau drawer sometimes--'tends the furnace maybe--one the boarders gives him a cigar now and then. That's a FINE life to look forward to! No, sir; I don't want to finish as a landlady's husband!"Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too accurately prophetic in every probability. "But, papa," she said, to console him, "don't you think maybe there isn't such a thing as a 'finish,' after all! You say perhaps we don't learn to live till we die but maybe that's how it is AFTER we die, too--just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe through trouble again, even after that.""Oh, it might be," he sighed. "I expect so.""Well, then," she said, "what's the use of talking about a 'finish?' We do keep looking ahead to things as if they'd finish something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything.
They're just part of going on. I'll tell you--I looked ahead all summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to myself, 'Well, if that happens, I'm finished!' But it wasn't so, papa. It did happen, and nothing's finished; I'm going on, just the same only----" She stopped and blushed.
"Only what?" he asked.
"Well----" She blushed more deeply, then jumped up, and, standing before him, caught both his hands in hers. "Well, don't you think, since we do have to go on, we ought at least to have learned some sense about how to do it?"He looked up at her adoringly.
"What _I_ think," he said, and his voice trembled;-- "I think you're the smartest girl in the world! I wouldn't trade you for the whole kit-and-boodle of 'em!"But as this folly of his threatened to make her tearful, she kissed him hastily, and went forth upon her errand.