“Tom—” Higgins went behind the counter, poured a glassful of water, drank it. “Why don’t you just forget about sending her to school this term? I’ll raise her to a dollar and a half an hour, if you do.”

“That’s an idea,” Tom said. The column was only half finished and there was page six to lay out and the letters had to be written, but he tried to keep his voice casual and amused. The truth was, he ought to be grateful for the break. He’d been working since morning and had taken off only for a sandwich at six. “How about it, kitten?”

Ella giggled.

“No fooling,” Higgins said. “She’s been a real little help to me. I hate like the very dickens to lose her.”

“You cut that out. She’s spoiled enough as it is!”

“You’re wrong. She’s a fine girl.”

Higgins patted Ella on the back; then he wrote out a check and gave it to her.

“Next year?” he said.

Tom nodded. “Next year. If they haven’t condemned the building.”

He waited for Higgins to unlock the door, then he and Ella walked to the car and got in.

He asked his daughter if she’d had a hard day and she said that she hadn’t, and he asked her if she was looking forward to school and she said that she was, and then he stopped talking and it was quiet in the car. He loved Ella, and knew that she loved him—at least in the sense that not to love him would entail effort; though he also knew, in an odd, vague, unstated way, that it wasn’t (as he had heard her remark once to a friend) anything personal. Not that the two of them were uncomfortable together. It was just that Ella was a growing girl, with a thousand problems he could never hope to understand (perhaps because she did not bring them to him; or, it had occurred to him, perhaps because he’d never really tried to understand them), and he was, after all, quite busy these days. Of course, with a less demanding job, things would be different. He could then afford to take time off, talk to Ella, get to know her. He could find out what a fifteen-year-old really thought about. Be a friend.

I’ve got to do it, he told himself, as he had done a thousand times before. I’ve got to make the time. It isn’t right, leaving every­thing for Ruth. A girl needs a father as well as a mother . . .

Hell!

He turned sharply into the driveway and inched into a narrow doorless garage.

“Sorry I was late,” he said, again.