Won't you permit me to present my
husband, Gedney Daab? You have heard of him, I presume."
Lilly had. The "Dolorosa" above her desk was a print from a Gedney Daab.
He stepped forward then, lanky and rugged, with a great shock of
upstanding gray hair, with the path of his fingers through it and his
features with no scheme at all. Just very delightfully irregular, he
jutted out of any crowd.
"Zoe, Mr. and Mrs. Daab want to meet you."
She lifted her clean gaze, dropped a courtesy, and held out her hand
with the short, curved gesture of childhood.
"Hello!" he said, the timbre of real youth in his voice, which childhood
is so quick to detect from the silly enameling of tone coated on by
grown-ups for the occasion. "I want to paint you, youngster."
"Oh, Lilly, what fun!"
"Then she is your sister?"
"Oh no, Mrs. Daab; she is my daughter."
"But the name--"
"It's our way together."
"How droll!"
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
Gedney Daab looked down at her ardent artlessness without a burst of
laughter.
"Oh, as little girls go."
"Zoe knows God has merely given her a fair urn of a body, Mr.
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