ing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the
flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her
eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness
of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her
wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise little laugh.

"Every move a Pickford. And so girlish withal."

Floss ignored him. "Hurry up with that waist, Rose!"

"I'm on the collar now. In a second." There was a little silence. Then:
"Floss, is--is Henry going to call for you--here?"

"Well, sure! Did you think I was going to meet him on the corner? He
said he wanted to see you, or something polite like that."

She finished her tea and vanished again. Al, too, had disappeared to
begin that process from which he had always emerged incredibly sleek,
and dapper and perfumed. His progress with shaving brush, shirt, collar
and tie was marked by disjointed bars of the newest syncopation whistled
with an uncanny precision and fidelity to detail. He caught the broken
time, and tossed it lightly up again, and dropped it, and caught it
deftly like a juggler playing with frail crystal globes that seem
forever on the point of crashing to the ground.

Pa stood up, yawning. "Well," he said, his manner very casual, "guess
I'll just drop around to the movie."

From the kitchen, "Don't you want to sit with ma a minute, first?"

"I will when I come back. They're showing the third installment of 'The
Adventures of Aline,' and I don't want to come in in the middle of it."

He knew the selfishness of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And
because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a burst of
temper.

"I've been slaving all day. I guess I've got the right to a little
amusement. A man works his fingers to the bone for his family, and then
his own daughter nags him."

He stamped down the hall, righteously, and slammed the front door.

Rose came from the kitchen, the pink blouse, warm from the iron, in one
hand. She prinked out its ruffles and pleatings as she went. Floss,
burnishing her nails somewhat frantically with a dilapidated and greasy
buffer, snatched the garment from her and slipped bare arms into it. The
front door bell rang, three big, determined rings. Panic fell upon the
household.

"It's him!" whispered Floss, as if she could be heard in the entrance
three floors below. "You'll have to go."

"I can't!" Every inch of her seemed to shrink and cower away from