Lunch at the Palmers' — Alice Adams

Alice is not the only one dreading the evening. Russell has his own unease, and it is not chance. He was drawn to her at first sight at Mildred's dance. Since then their evenings have been spent on the little veranda, with the closed front door behind her, and every picture of her in his mind stops at that door. Her constant pleas that he ignore what people say have also made him nervous. He once joked that if he ever heard anyone say the name 'Alice Adams', he would run. She took it as a promise of loyalty. He meant it.

On the day of the dinner he lunches with the Palmers in their great cool dining-room, which looks out on a conservatory full of flowers. Mildred is quiet, pulling grapes from their stems without eating them. Then Mr. Palmer mentions 'this Virgil Adams'. Alfred Lamb has been laughing about his father at the club. The old man always boasted that he had never trusted the wrong man. He kept a useless clerk on the payroll for years as a kind of pension, and nursed him through his illness. Then the man walked off with the old man's glue secret. Just calmly stole it. Mrs. Palmer places the name at once: Mr. Lamb's pet swindler must be that Alice Adams's father.

Mrs. Palmer calls Alice a pushing sort of girl, who used to be a bit too conspicuous. Mildred says quietly that she rather dropped her. Russell turns red and cannot answer a simple question. Part of him wants to protest, but he has no heat for it. The deadliness of the story, the narrator says, is that nobody means any harm. It is told for a mild laugh, and Mrs. Palmer is large, kind and serene.

Alone with her mother, Mildred insists that his colour came from what they said. She knows, through Henrietta, who heard it from Ella Dowling, that Arthur has been with Alice almost every evening. Her mother answers, 'What of it?' Other young men have gone there almost every evening too, and Alice does not last. Arthur is impressionable but fastidious, and a girl belongs to her family. Had Mildred not noticed that he never said a word? Perhaps he was getting a little illumination. Half an hour later, Mrs. Palmer watches them cross the lawn from the hothouse. Arthur has a fine rose in his buttonhole and looks profoundly thoughtful.