“Won’t.  We’re going to in-in-inter a hen.”

“Yes, you will!  You’re going to put on your new suit and go and see a lady—­”

“Lady?  Not on your life.”

“It’s Mr. Curtis wants you—­” Then Jacky’s yell, “Mr. Curtis?” and a dash up the back steps and into the dining room—­then, silent, grimy adoration!

Maurice gave his orders.  “Change your clothes, young man.  I’ll bring him back, Lily, as soon as she’s seen him.”

While he waited for the new suit Maurice walked up and down the little room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns.  The vision of Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable.  To drive it from his mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring of the Funeral Pomps Director were fighting over the dead hen; from the bathroom came the sound of a sputtering gush from the hot-water faucet; then splashes and whining protests, and maternal adjurations:  “You got to look decent!  I will wash behind your ears.  You’re the worst boy on the street!”

“Eleanor tried to save him,” he thought; “she came here, and begged for him!”

Above the bathroom noises came Lily’s voice, sharp with efficiency, but shaking with pity and a quick-hearted purpose of helping:  “Say, Mr. Curtis!  Could she eat some fresh doughnuts? (Jacky, if you don’t stand still I’ll give you a regular spanking!  I didn’t put soap in your eyes!) If she can, I’ll fry some for her to-morrow.”

Maurice, tramping back and forth, made no answer; he was saying to himself, “If she’ll just live, I will make her happy!  Oh, she must live!” It was then that, suddenly, agonizingly, in the midst of splashings, and Jacky’s whines, and Lily’s anxiety about soap and doughnuts, Maurice Curtis prayed ...

He did not know it was prayer; it was just a cry:  “Do something—­oh, do something! Do you hear me? She tried so hard to save Jacky.  Make her get well!” So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations—­Joy, and Law, and Life, and Love—­and lo! they were one—­a personality!  God.  In his frantic words he established a relationship with Him—­not It, any longer!  “Please, please make her get well,” he begged, humbly.

At that moment, at the door of the dining room, appeared an immaculate Jacky in his new suit, his face shining with bliss and soap.  He came and stood beside Maurice, waiting his monarch’s orders, and listening, without comprehension, to the conversation: 

“Nothing will be said to him that will ... give anything away.  She just wants to see him.  His presence in the room—­”

Jacky gave a little leap.  “Did you say presents!”

“—­his merely being there will please her.  She loves him, Lily.  You see, she’s always wanted children, and—­we’ve never had any.”