smiled, slept for a moment, then opened her eyes. "He doesn't
look ... like _her_?"
"Not in the least," Maurice said.
Jacky, quailing, tried to draw his hand away from those cool fingers;
but a look from his father stopped him.
"No," Eleanor murmured; "I see ... it won't do for"--Maurice bent close
to her lips, but he could not catch the next words--"for you to marry
her."
After that she was silent for so long that Maurice led the little boy
out of the room. As he brought him into the parlor, Henry Houghton, who
had just come in, looked at the father and son, and felt astonishment
tingle in his veins like an electric shock. He gripped Maurice's hand,
silently, and gave Jacky's ear a friendly pull.
"Edith," Maurice Said, "I would take him home, but I mustn't leave
Eleanor. Will you get one of the maids to put him on a Medfield car--"
"I'll take him," Edith said.
Maurice began to say, sharply, "_No!_" then he stopped; after all, why
not? "She must know the whole business by this time. Jacky's face gives
it all away." She might as well, he thought, know Jacky's mother, as she
knew his father.
Jacky, in a little growling voice, said, "Don't want _nobody_ to put me
on no car. I can--"
"Be quiet, my boy," Maurice said, gently. He gave Edith Lily's address
and went back upstairs.
Henry Houghton, watching and listening, felt his face twitch; then he
blew his nose loudly. "I'll look after him," he told Edith. "I--I'll
take him to--the person he lives with. It isn't suitable for a girl--"
In spite of the gravity of the moment his girl laughed. "Father, you
_are_ a lamb! No; I'll take him." Then she gave Jacky a cooky, which he
ate thoughtfully.
"We have 'em nicer at our house," he said. On the corner, waiting for
the Medfield car, Edith offered a friendly hand, which he refused to
notice. The humiliation of being taken home, "by a woman!" was scorching
his little pride. He made up his mind that if them scab Dennett boys
seen him getting out of the car with a woman, he'd lick the tar out of
them! All the way to Maple Street he sat with his face glued to the
window, never speaking a word to the "woman." When the car stopped he
pushed out ahead of her and tore down the street. Happily no Dennett
boys saw him!--but he dashed past his mother, who was standing at the
gate, and disappeared in the house.
Lily, bareheaded in the pale April sunshine, had been watching for him
rather anxiously. In deference to
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