"If I didn't happen to know she was a fool," Henry Houghton said to his Mary, washing his hands before going down to supper, "I should think she was quite a nice woman—she's so good looking."
"Henry! At your time of life, are you deciding a woman's 'niceness' by her looks?"
"But tell her she mustn't bore him," he said, ignoring the rebuke. "Tell her that when it comes to wives, every husband on earth is Mr. F.'s aunt—he 'hates a fool'!"
"Why not tell her yourself?" she said: then she sighed; "why did she do it?"
"She did it," he instructed her, "because the flattery of a boy's lovemaking went to her head. I have an idea that she was hungry for happiness—so it was champagne on an empty stomach. Think of the starvation dullness of living with that Newbolt female, who drops her g's all over the floor! Edith likes her," he added.
"Oh, Edith!" said Edith's mother, with a shrug; "well; if you can explain Eleanor, perhaps you can explain Maurice?"
"That's easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man (we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on. Then, there's her music—and her pathos. For she is pathetic, Kit?"
But Mary Houghton shook her head: "It is Maurice who is pathetic—my poor Maurice!..."
When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns, and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton's gay and fragrant garden, they found Edith there before them—sitting on the top step, her arms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride. Edith had nothing to say; it was enough to look at the "bridal couple," as the kitchen had named them. When her father and mother appeared, she did manage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to say to Maurice:
"Oh, isn't she lovely! Oh, Maurice, let's go out behind the barn after supper and talk! Maurice, did she bring her harp? I want to see her play on it! I saw her wedding ring," she ended, in an ecstatic whisper.