Johnny mumbled something to the effect that he could survive, even if Maurice wasn't back.
"I couldn't," Edith said. "I should simply die, in this house, if it wasn't for Maurice!"
As, whistling, she ran upstairs, Edith thought to herself that Johnny was a lamb! "But, compared to Maurice, he's awfully uninteresting." Edith, openly and audibly, compared every male creature to Maurice, and none of them ever measured up to him! His very moodiness had its charm; when he sat down at the piano after dinner and scowled over some new music, or when he lounged in his big chair and smoked, his face absorbed to the point of sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her opinion,—ardently appreciative if he liked the poem; if he didn't, it was "the limit."
Maurice was at home that Saturday night for which Edith had thrown the careless invitation to Johnny; and Mrs. Newbolt also dropped in to dinner. It was not a pleasant dinner. Eleanor sat in one of her empty silences; saw Maurice frown at an overdone leg of lamb; heard her aunt's stream of comments on her housekeeping; listened to Edith's teasing chatter to Johnny;—"What can Maurice see in her!" She thought. Before dinner was over, she excused herself; she had a headache, she said. "You won't mind, Auntie, will you?"
Mrs. Newbolt said, heartily, "Not a bit! My dear mother used to—"
Eleanor, picking up little Bingo, went with lagging step out of the room.
"Children," said Mrs. Newbolt, "why don't you make taffy this evening?"
"That's sense," said Edith; "let's! It's Mary's night out. Sorry poor old Eleanor isn't up to it."
Maurice frowned; "Look here, Edith, that isn't—respectful."
Edith looked so blankly astonished that Mrs. Newbolt defended her: "But Eleanor does look old! And she'll lose her figger if she isn't careful! My dear grandmother—used to say, 'Girls, I'd rather have you lose your vir—'"