"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Lily, and jumped up and ran to her, and put her arms around her. ("Here, take mine! It's clean.") "Say, I'm that sorry for you, I don't know what to do!" Her own tears overflowed.
Eleanor, wincing away from the gush of perfumery from the little clean handkerchief, clutched at Lily's small plump hand—"I'll tell you what to do," Eleanor said; "Give me Jacky!"
Lily, kneeling beside her, cried, honestly and openly. "There!—now!" she said, patting Eleanor's shoulder; "don't you cry! Mrs. Curtis, now look,"—she spoke soothingly, as if to a child, with her arm around Eleanor—"you know I can't let my little boy go? Why, think how you'd feel yourself, if you had a little boy and anybody tried to get him. Would you give him up? 'Course you wouldn't! Why, I wouldn't let Jacky go away from me, even for a day, not for the world! An' he ain't anything to Mr. Curtis. Honest! That's the truth. Now, don't you cry, dear!"
"You can see him often; I promise you, you can see him."
In spite of her pity, Lily's yellow eyes gleamed: "'See' my own child? Well, I guess!"
"I'll give you anything," Eleanor said; "I have a little money—about six hundred dollars a year; I'll give it to you, if you'll let Mr. Curtis have him."
"Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars?" Lily said. "I wouldn't sell him for six thousand dollars, or six million!" She drew away from Eleanor's beseeching hands. "How long has Mr. Curtis thought enough of Jacky to pay six hundred dollars for him? You can tell Mr. Curtis, from me, that I ain't no cheap trader, to give away my child for six hundred dollars!" She sprang up, putting her clenched fists on her fat hips, and wagging her head. "Why," she demanded, raucously, "didn't you have a child of your own for him, 'stead of trying to get another woman's child away from her?"
It was a hideous blow. Eleanor gasped with pain; and instantly Lily's anger was gone.
"Say! I didn't mean that! 'Course you couldn't, at your age. I oughtn't to have said it!"
Eleanor, dumb for a moment after that deadly question, began, faintly: "Mr. Curtis will do so much for him, Mrs. Dale; he'll educate him, and—"