“Say it!” his father said.

“I love you,” said Jacky, trembling.

Eleanor 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.