"You were perfect! And they were all such idiots—except Mort. Mort told me you were very temperamental, and had a wonderful mind. I said, 'You bet she has!' The old ladies were pills."
"Oh, Maurice, you goose!... Maurice, what will Mr. Houghton say?"
"Hell say, 'Bless you, my children!' Nelly, what was the matter with the dinner?"
"Matter? Why, it was perfect! It was"—she made a dash for some of his own words—"simply corking! Though perhaps Rose was a little too young for it. Didn't you enjoy it?" she demanded, astonished.
He said that if she enjoyed it, that was all he cared about! He didn't tell her—perhaps he didn't know it himself—that his own lack of enjoyment was due to his inarticulate consciousness that he had not belonged anywhere at that dinner table. He was too old—and he was too young. The ladies talked down to him, and Brown and Hastings were polite to him. "Damn 'em, polite! Well," he thought, "'course, they know that a man in my position isn't in their class. But—" After a while he found himself thinking: "Those hags Eleanor raked in had no manners. Talked to me about my 'exams'! I'm glad I snubbed the old one, I don't think Rose was too young," he said, aloud. "Oh, Star, you are wonderful!"
And she, letting her hair fall cloudlike over her shoulders, silently held out her arms to him. Instantly his third bad moment vanished.
But a fourth was on its way; even as he kissed that white shoulder, he was thinking of the letter which must certainly come from Mr. Houghton in a day or two. "What will he get off?" he asked himself; "probably old Brad and Mrs. Newbolt have fed oats to him, so he'll kick—but what do I care? Not a hoot!" Thus encouraging himself, he encouraged Eleanor:
"Don't worry! Uncle Henry'll write and beg me to bring you up to Green Hill."
The fifty-four minutes of married life had stretched into eight days, and Maurice had chewed the educating nails of worry pretty thoroughly before that "begging" letter from Henry Houghton arrived. There was an inclosure in it from Mrs. Houghton, and the young man, down in the dark lobby of the hotel, with his heart in his mouth, read what both old friends had to say—then rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, to make his triumphant announcement to his wife:
"What did I tell you? Uncle Henry's white!" He gave her a hug; then, plugging his pipe full of tobacco, handed her the letters, and sat down to watch the effect of them upon her; there was no more "worry" for Maurice! But Eleanor, standing by the window silhouetted against the yellow twilight, caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she read: