"Go," he said.
Father McGowan again settled back of a bare table. A little boy sobbed in his arms. "Will you forgive me, little Saint Sebastian?" asked Father McGowan. The child's arms tightened around his neck. Father McGowan coughed.
"We're going to have some pink ice cream," he said after an interval. "Now here's my hanky. Gentlemen don't wipe their noses on their sleeves!"
"Will—will yuh bless the toad?" asked the child, after a damp smearing of Father McGowan's handkerchief. "He was a cripple. Ain't he cute, now?" he added in a tender, little voice. Then he brightened and said loudly, "But I'm glad he's dead, for they ain't no Father McGowan toads to be good to little toad-cripples!"
Father McGowan coughed, and tightened his arms about Sebastiano Santo of the slums.
"Oh, dearest Paw—I mean Papa!" said Cecilia. She clung to him. The lights of the New York station blurred through her tears. Then she veered away from him, and gathered Johnny close.
"Aw," he said, "cut it! There's one of the fellows over there." But "one of the fellows" faced the other direction, Johnny saw, and he allowed himself to hug Celie quickly. He was glad to see her, but he felt a vague resentment toward her because her coming made his throat so stuffy. He remembered the time when he used to sit on her lap and eat bread spread thickly with molasses. He didn't know quite why he was thinking of it in the Pennsylvania Station.... He remembered that he used to pull her curls and that she'd pretend to cry and then kiss him, and then they'd both laugh, and laugh. It was always a great joke. And then she'd look at the clock and fry potatoes and meat over a smelly stove, and say, "Now laugh! Paw's coming home. He needs all our laughs!"
"John dear!" said Cecilia. Johnny forgot the past, and swelled. Cecilia's use of his name made him feel a man.
"Mister, will yuh please attend to this here baggage?" he heard his father say.
"Don't call him 'Mister,'" he corrected Jeremiah in an undertone. Cecilia stepped from them to a group nearby.