The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

I waved my hand in a gesture of deprecation, but I could not speak.

"Oh, I know," he insisted doggedly, though even now he cannot look me in the eyes, "you didn't do it specially for me. You did it because you are a man—you—bah! they don't make 'em like you, as I've told you. But you don't want praise from me, I know that. You don't need it. What's more to the point is, it's time I took a flat or small house in one of the suburbs and had the lot of them move over and live on me for a while. About time," he nodded his head and shifted his cigar, "about time!"

Every word was a stab, but I steeled myself for the ordeal. Wasn't that what I had been expecting all this time?

"When—do you want to make the change?" I endeavored to speak crisply, as when I address the National City or the Guaranty Trust over the telephone at Visconti's.

"Well, I thought I'd begin to look round to-morrow. There'll be the place to find, some furniture to get—the installment plan will help—whole job ought to be fixed up in two or three weeks, I guess," he added with a laugh. "Uncle Ranny will have to come to supper pretty often to keep the kids as happy as we'd like to see them, eh?"

"But a going household—" I spoke quickly in a sort of last spasm of pitiful expostulation—"it's quite a—an undertaking to set going?"

"Yes—I know," he nodded soberly. "Don't think I don't know I'll have to push the wheel hard—with both shoulders. But d'you know," he lifted a confidential eyebrow, "that young woman—Alicia—will be a great help to me—quite a little housekeeper, she is—quite a kid—I hope Laura will take after her."

My heart was of lead. If he was watching my face, he must have perceived a deadly pallor sweeping every drop of blood away from it. There was a pounding in my ear's like rushing waters.

"Alicia," I heard myself saying as one speaking after being rescued from drowning, "Alicia, you know, isn't my child—or yours. I can't send her to you. She—there are formalities—but, anyway, her wishes are a factor in the matter. I'll do anything, old man," my head seemed to swell suddenly and shoot upwards like a cork from an abyss, and my face was damp with perspiration—"anything, but I can't send that child to you unless—unless she is keen—you see that, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I see—certainly." He was looking away as he spoke. I have a lingering hope he had not been watching my face. "That's all true, of course. But put yourself in my place, Randolph. Here are three motherless children. She, that girl, has been a kind of mother to them. Seems to have a born faculty for it. What would I do without her, just starting in like that—you understand!"