Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/218

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208
ALICE ADAMS

"Yes; 'Mister Lamb!'" She mocked his voice. "What other old man would I be likely to mean, except J. A. Lamb?"

"What's he been doing now?" her husband inquired, satirically. "Where'd you get something new against him since the last time you———"

"Just this!" she cried. "The other night when that man was here, if I'd known how he was going to make my child suffer, I'd never have let him set his foot in my house."

Adams leaned back in his chair as though her absurdity had eased his mind. "Oh, I see," he said. "You've just gone plain crazy. That's the only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case."

"Hasn't that man made us all suffer every day of our lives?" she demanded. "I'd like to know why it is that my life and my children's lives have to be sacrificed to him?"

"How are they 'sacrificed' to him?"

"Because you keep on working for him! Because you keep on letting him hand out whatever miserable little pittance he chooses to give you; that's why! It's as if he were some horrible old Juggernaut and I had to see my children's own father throwing them under the wheels to keep him satisfied."