Her father sometimes tore the tumbled bed apart, and made it up again,
smoothing the limp sheets with clumsy fingers, and talking to Julia,
while he worked, of little girls who had brothers and sisters, and who
lived in the country, and hung their stockings up on Christmas Eve.
Emeline pretended not to notice either father or daughter at these
times, although she could have whisked Julia into bed in half the time
it took George to do it, and was really very kind to the child when
George was not there.
When George asked the little girl to find her hairbrush, and blundered
over the buttons of her nightgown, Emeline hummed a sprightly air. She
never bore resentment long.
"What say we go out later and get something to eat, George?" she would
ask, when George tiptoed out of the bedroom and shut the folding door
behind him. But several hours of discomfort were not to be so lightly
dismissed by George.
"Maybe," he would briefly answer. And invariably he presently muttered
something about asking "Cass" for the time, and so went down to the
saloon of "J. Cassidy," just underneath his own residence.
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