"Yes. You'll do what I tell you! Understand?"
"Yes, sir," Jacky said, sniffling.
"You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you are spoken to. Do you get on to that?"
"Yes, sir. No, sir," poor Jacky said, dejectedly.
It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened the front door to him. She looked up into his eyes, then down into Jacky's, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith's cheek.
"I love you," he said, gloomily. "I done it," he told Maurice. "He said I got to," he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but pleased, took his little rough hand in hers.
Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped short in the middle of a sentence—the relationship between the man and the child was unmistakable. When she got her breath she said, coldly: "There's a change, Maurice. Better go right upstairs."
He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand.
"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, climbing figure in the new suit. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing of Maurice Curtis—oh, my poor Eleanor!" she said, and burst out crying. "I suppose she knows? Did she want to see the child? I always said she was a puffect angel! But I don't wonder she—she got wet ..."
Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky's shrinking lips touched her cheek.