Tiffany Girl Read Online Free Page B

be one of them.”
    Mother went completely still. “What did you say?”
    Flossie fiddled with the apron strings wrapped about her waist. “I said yes.”
    Releasing her, Mother took a step back and rested her fingertips against her mouth. “How much is he going to pay you?”
    “Five dollars a week.”
    “Oh, Flossie. You make much more sewing for me.”
    Flossie looked out the window above the kitchen worktable. The view was no more than a wall of soot-covered bricks from the building next door. “I make nothing working for you.”
    “But you won’t make anything working for him, either. You’ll be giving it all to your father either way, so what difference does it make?”
    Flossie moved her gaze from the window to her mother, her mother whose brown eyes were so much like her own. “I won’t be giving it to Papa because I won’t be living here. I’m moving out.”
    Mother sucked in a breath. “You’re speaking nonsense now. You can’t move out. You’re an unmarried, beautiful young woman. What will people think?”
    “I suppose they’ll think I’m a New Woman.”
    “You cannot,” Mother hissed. “Your father will, oh my, he will—”
    The front door opened, muffled sounds from the street outside briefly reached them before being shut off as the door closed.
    Mother paled. “Good heavens. Oh, my. Goodness me.” She whipped off her apron, patted her hair, and rushed toward the hall. At the last moment she turned back to Flossie. “We’ll talk about this later. Do not mention anything to your father.”
    Blowing out a quick breath of air, Flossie collected plates from the kitchen cabinet and took them to the dining room. A few minutes later Papa joined her, Mother just behind him.
    “There she is,” he said, his voice bright. “My little sunshine.”
    With charm and grace, he relieved her of the final plate, tookboth her hands in his, and placed a kiss on her cheek. “How are you, moppet?”
    Unlike Mother, he wouldn’t have forgotten it was her last day at the School of Applied Design. He knew she’d be understandably upset. And as he always did when she was unhappy, he took it upon himself to lift her spirits.
    He was quite accomplished at it, actually. He’d had twenty-one years of practice putting on a jovial mood to coax her out of her pout. She couldn’t think of a time when his engaging smile and sparkling brown eyes had failed to do so.
    She studied him anew. He’d benefited from Mother’s handiness with a needle. His well-cut jacket and gray striped trousers marked him as a New York man—perhaps not one of rank, but certainly one who did well for himself. Never did he have a piece of black hair out of place or a white collar anything less than perfectly stiff. Only in the last couple of years had gray begun to touch his temples.
    Her favorite part of his careful grooming, though, the one she always associated with him, was the subtle aroma of coconut that wafted about him. It was his secret ingredient for enriching the lather of the shaving soap he used in his shop and in his own toilet.
    Slipping an arm around her waist, he danced her about the table and sang, his beautiful tenor filling the dining room.
“ Of all the days that’s in the week
I dearly love but one day—
And that’s the day that comes betwixt
A Saturday and Monday. ”
    Unable to resist, she added the alto harmony to his favorite song.
“ For then I’m drest all in my best
To walk abroad with Flossie;
She is the darling of my heart,
Her hair so fine and glossy. ”
    The real words didn’t use her name, of course, but those of a girl named Sally who lived up in an alley. Still, Papa had changed the verses so often that when Flossie heard anyone else sing it properly, it always jolted her.
    He spun her through three more verses until he had her laughing and out of breath.
    “Now, there’s a good girl,” he said, bringing them to a stop. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “Am I smelling what I think