't
know!" Edith used to think. Sometimes, watching his civility--his
patience, his kindness, and especially his ability to hold his tongue
under the provocation of some laconic and foolish criticism from
Eleanor--Edith felt the old thrill of the Sir Walter Raleigh moment.
Yes; there was no one on earth like Maurice! Then she thought,
contritely, of good old Johnny. "If I hadn't known Maurice, I might have
liked Johnny," she thought; "he _is_ a lamb." When she reflected upon
Eleanor, something in her generous, careless young heart hardened:
"She's not nice to Maurice!" She had no sympathy for Eleanor. Youth,
having never suffered, is brutally unsympathetic. Edith had known
nothing but love,--given and received; so of course she could not
sympathize with Eleanor!

When the Sunday-night suppers were over, Eleanor and Maurice escorted
their guest back to Fern Hill; Edith always said, "Don't bother to go
home with me, Eleanor!" And Maurice always said, "I'll look after the
tyke, Nelly, you needn't go"; and Eleanor always said, "Oh, I don't
mind." Which was, of course, her way of "locking the door" to keep her
cat from a roof that became more alluring with every bolt and bar which
shut him from it.

On these trolley rides through Medfield Maurice was apt to be rather
silent, and he had a nervous way of looking toward the rear platform
whenever the car stopped to take on a passenger--"although," he told
himself, "what difference would it make if Lily did get on board? She's
so fat now, Edith wouldn't know her. And as for Lily, she's white. She'd
play up, like a 'perfect lady'!"

He was quite easy about Lily. He hadn't seen her for more than a year,
and she made no demands on him. She was living in the two-family house
on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and
feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard
for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and
where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with
color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which
was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help
Mrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot of
hyacinths blooming on his window sill.

Maurice (with grinding economies) sent her a quarterly money order, and
felt that he was, as he expressed it to himself, "square with the
game,"--with the Lily-and-Jacky game. He could ne