"
"You see, papa, I'm going to take the commercial course at High and
learn stenography and typewriting, so it will just balance my
education fine."
"Well, little woman, whatever you say."
"You know what I say."
"Don't you think she is a bit too young?"
Mimetically: "No, I don't think she's a bit too young. The sooner you
wake up to the fact that your daughter is growing up, the better. She's
a graduate already from grammar school."
"Papa, I'm on the graduating program."
"For what, daughter?"
"A piano solo. 'Alice,' with variations."
"Well, Carrie, if that is the way you feel about it--if you think those
kind of lessons are good for her--"
"That is the way I feel about it."
These little acid places occurring somewhere in almost every day hardly
corroded into Lilly's accustomed consciousness. If they etched their way
at all into Mr. Becker's patient kind of equanimity, the utter quietude
of his personality, which could efface itself behind a newspaper for two
or even three hours at a time, never revealed it. His was the stolidity
of an oak, tickled rather than assailed by a bright-eyed woodpecker.
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