"Why not?" Edith said.
"Well, she isn't—nice. She wasn't married. And Edith, it really isn't good taste to tell a man, right to his face, that he's handsome! I don't think any man likes flattery."
"You mean because I said Maurice was handsome? I didn't say it to his face—he was in the library. And it isn't flattery to tell the truth. He is! As for Mrs. Dale, she is married; this little Jacky was her baby! She said so. He had the bluest eyes! I never saw such blue eyes—except Maurice's. 'Course she's not a lady; but I don't see what right you have to say she isn't nice."
Eleanor, laughing, threw up despairing hands; "Edith, don't you know anything?"
"I know everything," Edith said, affronted; "I'm sixteen. Of course I know what you mean; but Mrs. Dale isn't—that. And," Edith ended, on the spur of the moment, "and I'm going to see her sometime!" The under dog always appealed to Edith Houghton, and when Eleanor left her, appalled by her failure to instill proprieties into her, Edith was distinctly hot. "I'm not going to see her!" she told herself. "I wouldn't think of such a thing. But I won't listen to Eleanor abusing her."
As for Eleanor, she confided her alarm to Maurice. "She mustn't go to see that woman!"
His instant horrified agreement was a satisfaction to her: "Of course not!"
"She won't listen to me," Eleanor complained; "you'll have to tell her she mustn't."
"I will," he said, grimly.
And the very next day he did. He happened (as it seemed) to start for his office just as Edith started for school, so they walked along together.