"I am as happy as I deserve to be," he said, without turning his head.
She came and stood beside him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Oh," she said, passionately, "if I only had a child! You are disappointed because we have no—"
His recoil was so sharp that she could not finish her sentence, but clutched at his arm to steady herself; before she could reproach him for his abruptness he had caught up his hat and left the room. She stood there quivering. "He would be happier and love me more, if we had a child!" she said again. She thought of the joy with which, when they first went to housekeeping, she had bought that foolish, pretty nursery paper—and again the old disappointment ached under her breastbone. Tears were just ready to overflow; but there was a knock at the door and old Mrs. O'Brien came in with her basket of laundry; she gave her beloved Miss Eleanor a keen look "It's worried you are, my dear? It ain't the wash, is it?"
Eleanor tried to laugh, but the laugh ended in a sob. "No. It's—it's only—" Then she said something in a whisper.
"No baby? Bless you, he don't want no babies! What would a handsome young man like him be wanting a baby for? No! And it would take your good looks, my dear. Keep handsome, Miss Eleanor, and you needn't worry about babies! And say, Miss Eleanor, never let on to him if you see him give a look at any of his lady friends. I'm old, my dear, but I noticed, with all my husbands—and I've had three—that if you tell'em you see'em lookin' at other ladies, they'll look again!—just to spite you. Don't notice'em, and they'll not do it. Men is children."
Eleanor, laughing in spite of her pain, said Mr. Curtis didn't "look at other ladies; but—but," she said, wistfully, "I hope I'll have a baby." Then she wiped her eyes, hugged old O'Brien, and promised to "quit worrying." But she didn't "quit," for Maurice's face did not lighten.
Henry Houghton, too, saw the aging heaviness of the young face when, having received the report of that interview with Lily, he came down to Mercer to go over the whole affair and see what must be done. But there was nothing to be done. Up in his room in the hotel he and Maurice thrashed it all out:
"She prefers to stay in Mercer," Maurice explained; "and she'll stay. There's nothing I can do; absolutely nothing! But she'll play fair. I'm not afraid of Lily."
If Mr. Houghton wished, uneasily, that his ward was afraid of Lily, he did not say so. He only told Maurice again that he was "betting on him."
"You won't lose," Maurice said, laconically.