His grandmother's and Lilly's possessions were sacred to him, but every morning, after the two roomers had departed, Mrs. Schum would tiptoe after, locking their doors and inserting the keys in her petticoat pocket.
"I like to keep things locked," she explained to Lilly one day, upon being intercepted. "You can never tell when a sneak thief will break into these apartment houses that haven't hall service. I've even heard of them entering through the fire escape."
"Of course, dear," said Lilly, through heartache for her.
There was an indescribable sweetness in Harry's attitude toward Zoe. There had been countless long evenings of her little girlhood when no waiting beside her bedside was too tedious—sometimes during three and four evenings a week of Lilly's enforced absence in the pursuit of vaudeville novelties. He was tireless and faithful as a watchdog, keeping awake by whittling at something no more fantastic than a clothespin. There were hundreds of them scattered about the house. It was the sole form his idleness took. He painted heads and eyes on them—cleverly, too—for Zoe, but as she grew older she began to disdain them, bullying him in much the fashion her mother had before her.
"I can hop up four steps on one foot," Lilly, with a little catch at her heart, chanced to overhear on one occasion.
"No, you can't," said Harry, smilingly and a little teasingly.
Catching at her ankle and flinging her curls, she made an unstaggering and easy ascent of not four, but eight.
"There!" she cried, slapping Harry boldly and resoundingly on the cheek.
"Don't you ever dare say I cannot do what I know I can do."
It left the red print of her little hand, and it was literally as if, as he looked away from her, he had turned the other cheek.
Almost immediately she caught his hand, placing her warm face to its back.