trains. In the midst of it the door opened, and Jacky said, sighing,
"Maw."

Lily came in, smiling and good-natured, and very red-faced with the
fatigue of carrying a hideous leprous-leaved begonia she had bought; but
when she saw the intimacy of the railroad, she frowned. "He'll wear out
his pants, crawling round that way," she said, sharply. "Now, you get
up, Jacky, and don't be bothering Mr. Curtis."

"He brung me two presents. I like presents. Mr. Curtis, does God eat
stars?"

"God doesn't eat," Maurice said, amused; "I'd say 'brought,' instead of
'brung,' if I were you."

"Hasn't He got any mouth?" Jacky said, appalled.

"Well, no," Maurice began (entering that path of unanswerable questions
in which all parents are ordained to walk); "You see, God--why, God, He
hasn't any mouth. He--"

"Has He got a beak?" Jacky said, intensely interested.

"Lily, for Heaven's sake," Maurice implored, "doesn't he _ever_ stop?"

"Never," said Lily, resignedly, "except when he's asleep. And nobody can
answer him. But I wish he'd let up on God. I tell him whatever pops into
my head. When it comes to God, I guess one thing 's as true as another.
Anyway, nobody can prove it ain't."

Just as Maurice was going away, his theological son detained him by a
little clutch at his coat. "I'll give you a present next time you come,"
Jacky said, shyly.

Even the hope of a present did not lure Maurice out to Maple Street very
soon. But it was self-preservation, as well as fear of discovery, which
kept him away. "If I saw much of him I might--well, get kind of fond of
the little beggar."

The same thought may have occurred to Lily; at any rate, when, four
weeks later, Jacky's father came again; she didn't welcome him in
quite her old, sweet, hospitable way; but Jacky welcomed him!... Jacky
knew his mother as his slave; he showed her an absent-minded affection
when he wanted to get anything out of her; but he knew Mr. Curtis as
"The Man"--the man who "ordered him round," to be sure, but who
gave him presents and who,--Jacky boasted to some of his gutter
companions,--"could spit two feet farther than the p'leesman."

"Aw, how do you know?" the other boys scoffed.

Jacky, evading the little matter of evidence, said, haughtily, "I
_know_."

When "The Man" declared that next fall Jacky was to go to school,
_regularly_, and not according to his own sweet will, Jacky waited until
he was alone with his mother to kick and scream and say h