Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/324

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314
ALICE ADAMS

"What in the world do you suppose he wants all that money for?" his wife said, wonderingly. "I can't imagine what he could do with it. I wonder———" She paused. "I wonder if he———"

"If he what?" Adams prompted her irritably.

"If he could have bad—associates."

"God knows!" said Adams. "I don't! It just looks to me like he had something in him I don't understand. You can't keep your eye on a boy all the time in a city this size, not a boy Walter's age. You got a girl pretty much in the house, but a boy'll follow his nature. I don't know what to do with him!"

Mrs. Adams brightened a little. "He'll come out all right," she said. "I'm sure he will. I'm sure he'd never be anything really bad: and he'll come around all right about the glue-works, too; you'll see. Of course every young man wants money—it doesn't prove he's doing anything wrong just because he asks you for it."

"No. All it proves to me is that he hasn't got good sense—asking me for three hundred and fifty dollars, when he knows as well as you do the position I'm in! If I wanted to, I couldn't hardly let him have three hundred and fifty cents, let alone dollars!"