"I'm not carrying billets-doux," Maurice retorted. "I suppose," he thought, listlessly, "it will be a short engagement." He went home by the path through the woods, and halfway back Edith met him—the shining hair dried, but inclined to tumble over her ears, so that her hat slipped about on her head. She said:
"Johnny lick you?"
"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat down on a wayside log to put a knot in a broken shoestring. Edith sat down, too, trying to keep her hat on, and cursing (she said) the unreliability of her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with his racket.
"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." He slashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged me down the mountain took it out of her."
Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfect lamb, Maurice! You are awfully"—she wanted to say "patient," but there was an implication in that; so she said, lamely—"nice to Eleanor."
"The Lord knows I ought to be!" he said, cynically.
"Yes; she just about killed herself to save you," Edith agreed.
"Oh, not because of that!"
The misery in his voice startled her; she said, quickly, "How do you mean, Maurice? I don't understand."
"I ought to be 'nice' to her."