Jacky’s mother said, in a muffled voice, “My land!” Then she caught Jacky in her arms and kissed him all over his face.

“Aw, stop,” said Jacky, greatly embarrassed; to have Mr. Curtis see him being kissed, “like a kid!” was a cruel mortification.  “Aw, let up,” said Jacky.

When he and Mr. Curtis started in to town his eyes seemed to grow bluer, and his face more beaming, and his voice, asking endless questions, more joyous every minute.  In the car he shoved up very close to Maurice, and tried to think of something wonderful to tell him.  By and by, breathing loudly, he achieved:  “Say, Mr. Curtis, our ash sifter got broke.”  Then he shoved a little closer.  Just before they reached Mrs. Newbolt’s house the haggard, unhappy father gave his son orders: 

“There is a lady who wants to see you, Jacky.  She’s my wife.  Mrs. Curtis.  You are to be very polite to her, and kiss her—­”

“Kiss a lady!”

“Yes.  You’ll do what I tell you!  Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Jacky said, sniffling.

“You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you are spoken to.  Do you get on to that?”

“Yes, sir.  No, sir,” poor Jacky said, dejectedly.

It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened the front door to him.  She looked up into his eyes, then down into Jacky’s, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith’s cheek.

“I love you,” he said, gloomily.  “I done it,” he told Maurice. “He said I got to,” he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but pleased, took his little rough hand in hers.

Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped short in the middle of a sentence—­the relationship between the man and the child was unmistakable.  When she got her breath she said, coldly:  “There’s a change, Maurice.  Better go right upstairs.”

He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand.

“Well, upon my word!” said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, climbing figure in the new suit.  “I wouldn’t have believed such a thing of Maurice Curtis—­oh, my poor Eleanor!” she said, and burst out crying.  “I suppose she knows?  Did she want to see the child?  I always said she was a puffect angel!  But I don’t wonder she—­she got wet ...”

Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky’s shrinking lips touched her cheek.

“Take her hand,” Maurice told him, softly, and the little boy, silent and frightened, obeyed; but he kept his eyes on his father.

Eleanor, with long pauses, said:  “Dear ...  Jacky.  Maurice, did you give her ... five cents?  He must have ... music lessons.”

“Yes, Star,” he said, brokenly.  “Jacky,” he said, in a whisper, “say ’I love you.’”

But Jacky whispered back, anxiously, “But I said it to the other one?”