“Another one of those syrup pitchers.”

“Oh dear!”—­plucking the twine—­“I hope not!”

“Some more nut picks.”

“Daddy, stop calamity howling.  Here’s the card.  Des Moines, Iowa.  ’From
Lucile Willis, with love to her new sister.’  Isn’t that the sweetest! 
It’s something with a pearl handle.”

“I know.  Another one of those pie-spade things.”

“Wrong!  Wrong!  It’s two pieces.  Oh!”

It was a fish set of silver and mother-of-pearl.  A large-bowled spoon and a sort of Neptune’s fork, set up in a white-sateen bed.

“Say now, that is neat,” said Henry, appraising each piece with a show of critical appreciation not really his.  All this spread of the gewgaws of approaching nuptials seemed meaningless to him; bored him.  Butter knives.  Berry spoons.  An embarrassment of nut picks and silver pitchers.  A sliver of silver paper cutter with a hilt and a dog’s-head handle.  And now, for Fred’s delectation this evening, the newly added fish set, so appropriately inscribed from his sister.

Tilting it against the lamp in the place of honor, Ann Elizabeth turned away suddenly, looking up at her father in a sudden dumb panic of which he knew nothing, her two hands at her fair, bare throat.  It was so hard again to swallow.  Impossible.

But finally, as was always the case, she did swallow, with a great surge of relief.  A little later, seated on her father’s knee and plucking at his tie in a futile fashion that he loved, she asked him: 

“Daddy—­about mother—­”

They seldom talked of her, but always during these rare moments a beautiful mood shaped itself between them.  It was as if the mere breath of his daughter’s sweetly lipped use of “mother” swayed the bitter-sweet memory of the woman he carried so faithfully in the cradle of his heart.

“Yes, baby—­about mother?”

“Daddy”—­still fingering at the tie—­“was mother—­was everything all right with her up—­to the very—­end?  I mean—­no nerv—­no pain?  Just all of a sudden the end—­quietly.  Or have you told me that just to—­spare me?”

She could feel him stiffen, but when his voice came it was even.

“Why, Ann, what a—­question!  Haven’t I told you so often how mother just peacefully passed on, holding a little pink you.”

Sweet-Beautiful—­his heart was tolling through a sense of panic—­Sweet-Beautiful.

“I know, daddy, but before—­wasn’t there any nerv—­any sickness?”

“No,” he said, rather harshly for him.  “No.  No.  What put such ideas into your head?”

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?”