The bothered doctor half consented, and Maurice lifted Jacky, very gently; as he did so, the little fellow somehow squirmed a hand out of the infolding blanket, and made a hot clutch for his father's ear; he gripped it so firmly that, in spite of Maurice's wincing expostulation, he pulled the big blond head over sidewise until it rested on his own little head. That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the way downstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street. There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice lifted Jacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes, and Maurice said--the words suddenly tumbling from his lips: "Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart swelling in his throat: "Why did I say '_my_'?" As he walked home he tried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard me?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he was feeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "_I_ was the only one who could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't mean anything." He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water--black and swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge, was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his" little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyond Medfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him and trusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for his goodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody was ever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered. Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed _me_! Lily couldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? I believe it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into the gutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! What made him grab my ear?" When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under his fear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself--something stirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception: Paternal pride. "_What_ a grip!" CHAPTER XXIV