studied him coldly; if he criticized them further she would leave.
He mopped a shining brow with a large colorful silk handkerchief.
"It throws me into a sweat," he admitted.

"Really, Mr. Feldt, you mustn't bother," she told him in one of her
few impulses of friendliness. "You see, we are very experienced." He
nodded without visible happiness at this truth. "I'm a jackass!" he
cried. "Judith tells me that all the time. If you could only see my
daughters," he continued with a new vigor; "such lovely girls as
they are. One dark like you and the other fair as a daisy. Judith
and Pansy. And my home that darling mama made before she died." The
handkerchief was again in evidence.

"Women and girls are funny. I can't get you there and not for
nothing will Judith make a step. It may be pride but it seems to me
such nonsense. I guess I'm old-fashioned and love's old-fashioned.
Homes have gone out of style with the rest. It's all these
restaurants and roofs now, yes, and studios. I tell the girls to
stay away from them and from artists and so on. I don't encourage
them at the apartment--a big lump of a feller with platinum
bracelets on his wrists. What kind of a man would that be! I'd like
to know who'd buy goods from him.

"Sometimes, I'm sorry I got a lot of money, but it made mama happy.
When she laid there at the last sick and couldn't live, I said, 'Oh,
if you only won't leave me I'll give you gold to eat.'" He was so
moved, his face so red, that Linda grew acutely embarrassed. People
were looking at them. She rose stiffly but, in spite of her effort
to escape him, he caught both her hands in his: