and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly fluted the ruffles of the crepe blouse.  Floss appeared when the meal was half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset cover showing under her thin kimono.  She poured herself a cup of tea and drank it in little quick, nervous gulps.  She looked deliriously young, and fragile and appealing, 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 the thought.  “I can’t!” Her eyes darted to and fro like a hunted thing seeking to escape.  She ran to the hall.  “Al!  Al, go to the door, will you?”