With Albert it was strangely easier; there was a pause as wide as a hair
while he stood there blinking, and weighted with his unsurrendered
luggage.
"Albert," she said, finding the word at last.
At that moment, a "red cap," wild for fee, made for one of the brand-new
leather cases.
"Let go," he cried, in small anger. "That is a
six-dollar-and-ninety-eight-cent bag you are jerking."
Then he brought his gaze back to Lilly, his Adam's apple above the gray
necktie throbbing so that it seemed to her his entire body must
reverberate to the pistonlike process.
"Well," he said. "Well, well," the words dropping down into the dry well
of a gulp.
But somehow after the episode of the luggage, everything was easier, for
Lilly at least. She could smile now.
Very presently they were actually in a taxicab together, the talk of
the moment echoing against the silence of unspoken words taking shape
between them.
"Papa!" she said, finally, from the little folding seat opposite him,
stroking his hands and steadying herself with them against the throw of
the cab. "Oh, papa, papa!"
He smiled back through crinkles that were new to her, patting her in
turn and looking off.
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