"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."