most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen.
Her face was as good-humored, and common, and pretty as ever; and she
had a fund of not too refined, but always funny, stories to tell
Maurice; so he liked her, after a fashion, and she liked him, after a
fashion, too, although she was a little afraid of him; his bored
preoccupation seemed like sternness to Lily. "Grouchiness," she called
it; "probably that's why he don't take to Jacky," she thought; "well,
it's lucky he don't, for he shouldn't have him!" But as Maurice, on the
little porch, said good-by, she really wondered at his queerness in not
taking to Jacky, who, grimy and handsome, was sitting on the ground,
spooning earth into an empty lard pail.

"Come in out o' the dirt, Sweety!" Lily called to him.

Jacky rose reluctantly, then stood looking, open-mouthed, at his
mother's visitor.

"Say," he remarked; "I kin swear."

"You don't say so!" said Maurice.

"I kin say 'dam,'" Jacky announced, gravely.

"You are a great linguist! Who instructed you in the noble art of
profanity?"

"Huh?" said Jacky, shyly.

"Who taught you?"

"Maw," said Jacky.

Maurice roared; Lily giggled,--"My soul and body! Listen to that child!
Jacky, you naughty boy, telling wrong stories. One of these days I'm
going to give you a reg'lar spanking." Then she stamped her foot, for
Jacky had settled down again in the dust; "Do you hear me? Come right in
out of the dirt! That's one on me!" she confessed, laughing: then added,
anxiously: "Say, Mr. Curtis, I do smack him when he says bad words;
honest, I do! He's getting a _good_ bringing up, though my mealers spoil
him something awful. But I'd just shake his prayers out of him, if he
forgot 'em."

Maurice, still laughing, said: "Well, don't become too proficient,
Jacobus. Good-by," he said again. And as he said it, Eleanor, in a
trolley car, glanced out of the window and saw him.

"Why, there's Maurice!" she said; and motioned to the conductor to stop.
Hunting for a cook had brought her to this impossible suburb, where
Maurice, no doubt, was trying to buy or sell a house. "I'll get out and
walk home with him," she thought, eagerly. But the car would not stop
until the end of the second block, and when she hurried back Maurice had
disappeared. He had either gone off in another direction, or else
entered the house; but she could not remember which house!--those
gingerbread tenements were all so much alike that i