# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 42

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. ​"Not a single one of those things, not one, am I going to take with me! March right straight down-stairs!"
"But——" began Robert.
"But me no buts!" replied Alice, regardless of the fact she was acting like Sara at her worst. "Get out! Go! And go quickly!"
Anger mounted hotly; she swept her offspring before her like leaves before the wind. She finished her packing with demoniac energy, and then, to gather together her shattered spirit, she left the packed and open trunks behind her and went forth from her home.
Once down at the seashore one would naturally suppose that one might forget Gladys Grayson. In fact, in the new environment all troubles seemed to have fallen from Alice's shoulders.
As the trunks were opened the children hung round with sniggers that boded no good. As Tom handed her things she disposed them in neat piles for putting away. It was only when a box of stone blocks, which had crushed a shirtwaist, came to view, and her husband exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, Alice, why did you bring these things?" that Alice realized the origin of her offsprings' untimely mirth. As another box of blocks were discovered, as books were extracted from the less tightly packed trays, louder and louder rose their mirth. Robert laughed till tears rolled down his cheeks, and when from one of Alice's hats there emerged a baseball, he rolled backward and forward, extravagantly, upon the floor.
"I didn't pack one of these things, not one of them!" she exclaimed with animation which bordered on exasperation.
"No," said Robert. "No, we sneaked 'um on her. She was awful mean, Father, she wouldn't let us take ​a single thing to play with, and Gladys told us how she sneaked things into the trunks. Mothers is always awful fierce, she says, when they're packing; so when Mother was out——" and again mirth overcame Robert, and Sara laughed with shrillness—"and I sneaked in Evelyn Dearie when mother wasn't looking. Evelyn Dearie is here in this room now!"
Tom Marcey mopped his streaming forehead.
"I think you children—" he began; but here there came to Alice a vision of herself, thrusting with guilty swiftness into a bureau drawer poor Jamie's cast-iron cars. The sight of the surreptitious toys salved her conscience. She joined her children in their laughter. There was only one sting in it, the shadow of Gladys was still over them.