was so uncomfortable, physically, that
he didn't think of that; and his preoccupation made him blind to
Eleanor's hurt look.

"I am willing to have you read all _my_ letters," she said.

"I'm not willing to have you read mine!" he retorted.

"Why not?" she demanded--"unless you have secrets from me."

"Oh, Eleanor, don't be an idiot!" he said, wearily.

"I believe you _have_ secrets!" she said--and burst out crying and ran
out of the room.

He called her back and apologized for his irritability; but as he got
better, he forgot that he had been irritable--he had something else to
think of! He must get down to the office and write to Mr. Houghton,
asking him to address personal letters to a post-office box. And he made
things still safer by going out to Medfield to see Lily and give her the
number of the box in case she, too, had occasion to write any "personal"
letters, which, indeed, she very rarely had. "I say _that_ for her!"
Maurice told himself. He hoped--as he always did when he had to go to
Maple Street, that he would not see It--an It which had, of course, long
before this, acquired sufficient personality to its father to be
referred to as "Jacky"; a Jacky who, in his turn, had discovered
sufficient personality in Maurice to call him "Mr. Gem'man"--a
corruption of his mother's title for her very infrequent visitor, "the
gentleman."

Jacky's "Mr. Gem'man" found the front door of the little house open,
and, looking in, saw Lily in the parlor, mounted on a ladder, hanging
wall paper. She stepped down, laughing, and moved her bucket of paste
out of his way.

"Won't you be seated?" she said. Her rosy face was beaming with
artistic satisfaction; "Ain't this paper lovely?" she demanded; "it's
one of them children's papers that's all the rage now. I call it a
reg'lar art gallery! Look at the pants on them rabbits! It pretty near
broke me to buy it. The swells put this kind of paper in 'nurseries,'
and stick their kids off in 'em; but that ain't _me_! I put it on the
parlor! Set down, won't you?"

Maurice sat down and, very much bored, listened while Lily chattered on,
with stories about Jacky:

"He says to the milkman yesterday, 'I like your shirt,' he says. And
Amos--that's his name--he said, 'You can get one like it when you're
grown up like me.' And Jacky, he says--oh, just as _sad_!--I'd rather
have it now, 'cause when I grow up, maybe I'll be a lady.'"

Maurice smiled perfunctorily.

"Ain't he the li