"No. No. What put such ideas into
your head?"
You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of her
words was raging through his head:
"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying--that. Promise me."
And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protecting
her with her own daughter.
"Then, daddy, just one more thing," and her underlip caught while she
waited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear silly
one of loneliness--why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?"
"No, baby," he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if his
body were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?"
Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happy
self again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly bald
head, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne.
"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he held
suddenly very still and far from her reach.
Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived.
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