You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of her words was raging through his head:
"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying—that. Promise me."
And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protecting her with her own daughter.
"Then, daddy, just one more thing," and her underlip caught while she waited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear silly one of loneliness—why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?"
"No, baby," he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if his body were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?"
Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happy self again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly bald head, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne.
"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he held suddenly very still and far from her reach.
Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived. All the evening, long after Henry lay on his deep-mattressed bed, staring, the little apartment trilled to her laughter and the basso of Fred's.
* * * * *
A few weeks later there occurred a strike of the delivery men and truck drivers of the city, and Henry, especially hard hit because of the perishable nature of his product, worked early and late, oftentimes loading the wagons himself and riding alongside of the precariously driving "scab."