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 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--"