"Gramaw, come out. Here is some one."
A long cooking fork in her hand, and a puff of steam hissing out after
her, Mrs. Schum peered into the hallway. She was strangely smaller,
Lilly thought, as if the flesh were beginning to wither off the rack of
her bones.
"Mrs. Schum! Dear Mrs. Schum!"
"Who's that?"
"Come out, gramaw. It's no one to be afraid of."
"Harry!" Her voice came cracking out like a shot. "Harry, are you in
trouble?"
"No--no--"
"Who is hounding you? If you are here about my grandson, madam, they are
all the time trying to get the best of my boy. He hasn't broken parole
since old Judge Delahanty down in the Twenty-third Street Court--"
"Mrs. Schum! Dear Mrs. Schum! Don't you know me? Please! Think, dearie,
the little girl out in St. Louis who used to plague you for bread
and butter--"
The old face loosened, the eyes peering through spectacles held across
the nose with a bit of twine.
"It isn't--Lilly--Becker?"
"Right the first time, gramaw!"
"Bless my heart! Bless my soul! Let me sit down. I'm right weak. Little
Lilly--Becker!"
They embraced there in a hallway hardly wide enough to contain them.
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