protect and set on their way in life. That was a wonderful thing. When he thought of it, he was frightened; and yet (he reflected) he would perhaps understand far better than most fathers how to help them. He had learned, he thought, bitterly, by his own blundering.
The little girl still clung tightly to his finger, and presently he found himself smiling, without knowing it. He was, oddly enough, suddenly happy, and conscious that no matter what fate befell him, it was good to be alive. He wasn't sorry any longer that he had helped to bring into existence these two fat, funny little morsels of life. He almost laughed, and then, bending down, he kissed first one and then the other on the tops of their round, dark little heads. They were his: he was a father. And it had happened without his wanting it, almost without his understanding how it had happened.
He was still bending over them when the door opened and, with a sense of falling spirits, he heard Naomi come in. Ever since that horrible day in his mother's parlor, she had made an effort to dress completely and neatly, but somehow it was impossible for her to accomplish it entirely. Little wisps of sandy hair fell down over the back of her high tight collar. Her white petticoat, showing itself an inch or two below her skirts, dragged on the floor. There was a smudge of the dust left behind by the dental salesman's wife on one side of her face. She might set herself in order a dozen times a day, but always, in some mysterious way, she was in disarray. At Megambo, it hadn't made any difference: in a place like that such things were lost in the whole cataclysm of disorder. But here
