"If we were to wait ten years do you think I'd love her any more than I
do now?" he demanded of Emily. "I should think he'd understand."
"Men never do understand," said Emily--"fathers. They think their own
romance was unique, or they forget that there was ever any romance."
"If you could put in a word for us," ventured Derry.
"I am not sure that it would do any good; Bruce is a Turk."
A customer came, and Derry lingered disconsolately while Emily served
her. More customers, among them a tall spare man with an upstanding
bush of gray hair. He had a potted plant in his arms, wrapped in
tissue paper. He set it on the counter and went away.
When Miss Emily discovered the plant, she asked Derry, "Who put it
there?"
Derry described the man. "You were busy. He didn't stop."
The plant was a cyclamen, blood-red and beautiful.
Miss Emily managed to remark casually that she had loaned his father an
elephant, perhaps he had felt that he ought to make some return--but he
needn't--.
"_An elephant_?"
"Not a real one. But the last of my plush beauties."
She set the cyclamen on a shelf, and wrapped up the parcel of toys
which Derry had bought the day before, "I may as well take them to
Margaret Morgan's kiddies," he told her.
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