"Oh, you can sing any old time," Edith said, lifting the lid of the coffee pot and stirring the brown froth with a convenient stick.
"And I'm just to look on?" Eleanor said.
"Why, wade, if you want to," her husband said; "It's safe enough to leave Edith's things here."
After that he was too much absorbed in shooing ants off the marmalade to give any thought to his wife. The luncheon (except to her) was the usual delightful discomfort of balancing coffee cups on uncertain knees, and waving off wasps, and upsetting glasses of water. Maurice talked about the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith.
Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith—and listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was jealous.
"I don't call it 'jealous,'" Eleanor said, "to be fond of a person."
"You can't really be fond of anybody, and be jealous," Edith announced; "or if you are, it is just Bingoism."
This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, "'Love forgets self, and jealousy remembers self.'"
Maurice grinned and said nothing—it was enough for him to see Eleanor hit, hard! But Johnny protested:
"If your girl monkeys round with another fellow," he said, "you have a right to be jealous."