Francie Again: Adventures in Portugal by Hahn Emily

Author:Hahn, Emily [Hahn, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781504024730
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2015-11-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Fontoura was back and his students greeted him with a glad burst of effort, all except Francie. The world, her own little troubled world, followed her into the studio where it had no business to be, and she could not rid herself of it. Frivolous thoughts of parties, speculations as to Catarina, and, most especially, unhappy wonderings about Pop came between the painter and her work so persistently that Fontoura evidently saw her lack of interest. He practically gave up giving her any criticism at all.

A week of this uneasy state of mind nearly drove Francie to confide in Aunt Lolly, though Pop had not given her permission to do so. At last, however, a second letter from him put an end to suspense. It was as he had hinted before: his business was in trouble. In the first letter he had ever written to his daughter about adult affairs, he explained it.

“Things are pretty tight just now, tighter than I can remember them being in years. Naturally we expected a slight depression after the war and the boom and I was prepared for that, I thought. But what with this upset in the Middle East and one thing and another—”

Francie read it through, struggling with unfamiliar ideas. She knew she ought to be worried; she suspected Pop would actually have wanted her to show a certain amount of dismay. But at first her chief feeling was pride that he had talked to her as an equal. Then she began to muse about Pop as a person.

She dropped the letter to her lap and sat quietly, thinking back; she had never before tried to sum him up in just this way. It was almost impossible to think of her father as somebody needing anything—advice, or companionship, or help. He had always been in the picture just to supply all this.

Francie thought of the genial daddy of her baby years, a large, reassuring creature who dropped in at Aunt Norah’s sometimes, like Santa Claus, with his pockets full of surprises. As she grew older, of course he seemed to shrink a little, but he was still Pop, the ultimate mainstay, the person who loved her and tried to spend as much time as he could with her. This had not been a great deal. Aunt Norah had always explained how his work kept him away, moving around the world, working mysterious miracles for her sake. Francie had accepted the pleasant fact that she was the chief reason for the magnificent man’s efforts; she had long since stopped feeling surprise or gratification that this should be so.

Oh, there had been moments when she felt grateful. It was sweet of him, she recalled, when he made that tremendous effort to be there in Jefferson the first time she went to school—all the way from New York he had come, for the great day.

“You’re going to be a big girl, aren’t you?” he had said. “You’re a brave girl. You won’t cry. If

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