#159: Scout's Buddy; the Bridge Street House

Once the elder Daedelus and Andromeda had gone to bed at Peter's house, and once Alice, Dude, and their son had headed over to Bill and Regina's for the night,

 
Peter and Ophelia went back to the Glass Box house for some "alone time."

________________

"Wow," Daedelus said softly, peering into the baby's bassinet.  "Scout looks so ... small."

"You were pretty small YOURSELF until just recently," his father chuckled.

"When will Scout get bigger?  So we can play again?"

"Oh, I think it will still be a little while, son," Dude answered.  "But don't worry--you can still see her every day, and talk to her.  And make silly faces at her!  And she'll be grown up before you know it."

_______________

"You look a whole lot better than you did this morning!" Alice observed to Regina.

"Yeah, but by the time I stopped endlessly throwing up, my stomach and back were so sore I couldn't face leaving the house and being sociable."

The two families enjoyed a pleasant dinner together,

and a restful night's sleep.

Daedelus got up in the middle of the night for a glass of milk,

and stopped and looked at baby Scout once again.

_______________

The elder Daedelus and Andromeda moved into the Bridge Street rental house the next morning.

This was a quick process, since all they'd brought from Greece was clothing and--in Andromeda's case--jewelry.  ("I'm not going to leave it at the farmhouse so that the maid can steal it!" she had huffed to her husband before they left the country.)

Daedelus had gone to his U.S. bank again that morning, to arrange for money transfers to their farm manager so that the staff could be paid.

Returning to his rental house, he spied a young woman earnestly knocking on the front door.

"Hello, young lady!" he called out.  "May I help you?"

"Hi!  I'm Mena Johar--I live next door."

"Marvelous!" cried Daedelus.  "Please come and sit with me."

"I am Daedelus Musico.  My wife, Andromeda, and I moved in here just this morning."

'Yes," Mena replied, "I noticed activity here today, so came over to introduce myself.  I knocked on the door, but no one answered."

"Ah, my dear wife must be napping.  We had a very tiring day yesterday--our grandson's birthday party!  My son and his wife live over on Willow Lane."

Daedelus and Mena talked for a while, before Mena excused herself, saying she had to run errands.

"Hello, my dearest!" he called, entering the house.

He found his wife upstairs on the computer.

"There you are!" he exclaimed.  "We were just paid a visit by our next-door neighbor--did you not hear her knocking?"

"I peered out the window," she answered, not looking up, "but I did not like the look of her.  She looks foreign."

"My dear, WE are foreign," he chided her gently.

"She looks Albanian," Andromeda said disapprovingly.

"I believe she is Indian," Daedelus corrected her.  "And I do not think you have anything against Indians."

"No," Andromeda admitted, turning back to the computer.  "Their cuisine is quite good.  Unlike Albanians."