He was to meet Mrs. Houghton at seven-thirty that night, and it occurred to him that if he told Eleanor he had some extra work to do at his desk he could wedge this call in between office hours and the time when he must go to the station—­("and they call me ’G.  Washington’!”) He felt no special cautiousness in going out to Maple Street; the few people he knew in Mercer did not frequent this locality, and if any of them should chance to see him—­a most remote possibility!—­why, was he not in the real-estate business, and constantly looking at houses?  On this particular afternoon, jolting along in the trolley car, he grimly amused himself with the thought of what he would do if, say, Eleanor herself should see him turning that infernally shrill bell on Lily’s door.  It was a wild flight of imagination, for Eleanor never would see him—­never could see him!  Eleanor, who only went to Medfield when their wedding anniversary came round, and she dragged him out to sit by the river and sentimentalize!  He thought of the loveliness of that past June—­and the contrasting and ironic ugliness of the present September....  Now, the little secret house in the purlieus of Mercer’s smoke and grime; then, the river, and the rippling tides of grass and clover, and the blue sky—­and that ass, lying at the feet of a woman old enough to be his mother!

He laughed as he swung off the car—­then frowned; for he saw that to reach Lily’s door he would have to pass a baby carriage standing just inside the gate.  He didn’t glance into the carriage at the roly-poly youngster.  He never, on the rare occasions when he went to see Lily, looked at his child if he could avoid doing so—­and she never asked him to.  Once, annoyed at Jacky’s shrill noisiness, he had protested, frowning:  “Can’t you keep it quiet?  It needs a spanking!” After that indifferent criticism ("For I don’t care how she brings it up!”) Lily had not wanted him to see her baby.  She could not have said just why—­perhaps it was fear lest Maurice would notice his growing perfection—­but when Jacky’s father came she kept Jacky in the background!  On this September afternoon she said, as she opened the door: 

“Why, you’re a great stranger!  Come right in!  Wait a second till I get Jacky.  I’ve just nursed him and I put him out there so I could watch him while I scrubbed the porch.”  She ran out to the gate, then pushed the carriage up the path.

“Let me help you,” Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, “Damn—­damn—!” Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with Lily’s help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the threshold into the house—­which always shone with immaculate neatness and ugly comfort.  He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the pillow.  Together they got the carriage into the hall—­Lily fumbling all the while with one hand to fasten the front of her dress and skipping a button or two as she did so; but he had a glimpse of the heavy abundance of her bosom, and thought to himself that, esthetically, maternity was rather unpleasant.