IN one fleeting moment all this came within the field of Alice's consciousness, and at the very same moment the way out—the ignoble, shameful and indecent way out—dawned monstrously upon her. She smiled falsely upon her son; she sent him down-stairs on a spurious errand; she hastily thrust his toys into an empty bureau drawer; she salved her protesting conscience with the indecent excuse, "He'll forget all about them by the time we are there," and continued to pack.
She packed as absorbedly as a mathematician solving some problem,—and there is no problem in higher mathematics as absorbing and as difficult as how to make things of a greater bulk fit into a space of lesser bulk,—and then she started at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
She turned around to confront her entire family of children. All of them appeared with arms overflowing, and overflowing, Alice noted, with Robert's things. He had picked out all his books of the largest size; he had packed in their respective boxes all of his stone blocks; he had picked out games; and his football, his baseball, bat, and a butterfly net were clattering about Sara's heels, and he said these words:
"Wait a minute while I get the magic lantern!"
With the suddenness of a cyclone, Alice's wrath burst. It was not a mere straw that had broken the poor camel's back, it was another full-sized load, and she fairly cried aloud under the injustice of it.
"Have you gone crazy, Robert Marcey?" she cried.
