But he was able to forget
it in thinking of the toys he had ordered for Jacky on the way home.
"I'd like to see him playing with them," he said to himself, reflecting
upon the track, and the engine, and the very expensive wonder of a tiny
snow plow. But he didn't yield to the impulse to see the boy for a
month. For one thing, he was afraid to. The recollection of that day
when Lily's doorstep had been the edge of a volcano still made him
shiver; and as Eleanor had briefly but definitely refused to take her
usual "vacation" at Green Hill without him, there was no time when he
could be sure that she would not wander out to Medfield! So it was not
until one August afternoon, when he knew that she was going to a
concert, that he went to Maple Street. But first he bought a top;--and
just as he was leaving the office, he went back and rummaged in a
pigeonhole in his desk and found a tiny gilt hatchet; "it will amuse
him," he thought, cynically.

Lily was not at home; but Jacky was sitting on the back doorstep,
twanging his jew's-harp. He was shy at first, and tongue-tied; then
wildly excited on learning that there were "presents" in Mr. Curtis's
pocket. When the top was produced, he dropped his jew's-harp to watch it
spin on a string held between Maurice's hands; then he devoted himself
to the hatchet, and chopped his father's knee, energetically. "Pity
there's no cherry tree round," said Maurice; "Look here, Jacobus, I want
you always to tell the truth. Understand?"

"Huh?" said Jacky. However, under the spell of his gifts he became quite
conversational; he said that one of these here automobiles drooled a lot
of oil. "An' it ran into the gutter. An' say, Mr. Curtis, I saw a
rainbow in a puddle. An' say, it was handsome." After that he got out
his locomotive and its cars. Maurice mended a broken switch for him, and
then they laid the tracks on the kitchen floor, and the big father and
the little son pushed the train under a table; that was a roundhouse,
Maurice told Jacky. ("Why don't they have a square house?" Jacky said);
and beneath the lounge--which was a tunnel, the bigger boy announced
("What is a tunnel?" said Jacky)--and over Lily's ironing board
stretched between two stools; "That's a trestle." ("What grows
trestles?" Jacky demanded.) Exercise, and a bombardment of questions,
brought the perspiration out on Maurice's forehead. He took off his
coat, and arranged the tracks so that the switches would stop derailing