WHAT with people from the Other Side straying in the daily adventures in life handed out to Alice were more exciting than any other adventures of the spirit which life had offer. She found what people called the "monotonous domestic life" often nerve-racking; it played over all the emotions from comedy to the blackest tragedy. It was funny and pathetic—everything in its diversity but dull. Its fault was that of being too absorbing, for whenever one wanted to take a vacation into the calm spaces of the outer world, from the crowding emotions which it was forever giving you, it would pull you back by handing you one of those absorbing adventures which it was forever preparing. That was why neither Tom nor Alice could endure conversation which began, "How do you stand the monotony of domestic life?"
Friends would ask in a tone of pity, "Don't you find Shoreham dull after having lived in New York?" Or a friend from his bachelor days would ask Thomas Marcey:
"Well, Marcey, who would have expected to see either you or Alice so domestic!"
Talk like this would have made Alice gnash her teeth if she had known how. It was her mother-in-law, however, who was proud of having had but one child, who aroused Alice's temper the easiest. The elder Mrs. Marcey was forever mourning:
"Oh, my dear, I hope that Jamie will be the last! Three children, and the oldest only eight, are really too
