mit?" Lily demanded, proudly; "he's a reg'lar rascal! He
stuck out his tongue at the grocer's boy, yesterday, 'cause he stepped
on my pansy bed. I wish you could 'a' seen him."

Maurice swallowed a yawn. "He's fresh."

"'Course," Lily said, quickly, "I gave him a smack! He's getting a good
bringing up, Mr. Curtis. I give him a cent every morning, to say his
prayers."

Maurice didn't care a copper about Jacky's manners, or his morals,
either; but he said, carelessly, "A kid that's fresh is a bore."

Lily frowned. When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave
her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest--but
this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness.
"I don't need it; I've got three more mealers--well, one of 'em can't
pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary,
poor thing! I can take care of Jacky _myself_."

The emphasis puzzled Jacky's father for a moment. That Lily, seeing the
growing perfection of her handsome, naughty little boy, was becoming
uneasy lest Maurice might be moved to envy, never occurred to him. If it
had, he would of course have been enormously relieved; he might even
have played upon her fear of such an impossibility to induce her to move
away from Mercer! As it was, after listening to the account of the pansy
catastrophe, he got up to go, thankful that he had not had to lay eyes
on the child, whose voice he heard from the back yard.

Lily, friendly enough in spite of that moment of resentment, went to the
front door with him. She had grown rather stout in the last year or two,
but she was always as shiningly clean as a rose, and her little lodging
house was clean, too; she was indefatigably thorough--scrubbing and
sweeping and dusting from morning to night! "It's good business," said
little Lily; "and it is just honest, too, for they pay me good!" Her
only unbusinesslike quality was a generous kindliness, which sometimes
considered the "mealers'" purses rather than her own. She had, to be
sure, small outbursts of temper, when she "smacked" Jacky, or berated
her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even
before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the
very next day--but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability"
had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to
herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of