"It'll take three mornings to do it," Edith said, importantly; and Maurice said:
"It will, because you keep putting the wrong end up! I wish Eleanor was well enough to do it," he said—and then burst into self-derisive chuckles: "Imagine Eleanor straddling that ridgepole! It would scare her stiff!"
It was after this talk that Maurice "backed out" on the job—but Edith never knew why. She saw no connection between the unfinished roof, and the fact that that same afternoon, sitting on the floor in the Bride's room, she had, in her anxiety to be entertaining, repeated Maurice's remark about the ridgepole. Eleanor, who had had an empty morning, listening to the distant tapping of hammers, had drooped a weary lip.
"I should hate it. Horrid, dirty work!"
"Oh no! It's nice, clean work," Edith corrected her.
"But you wouldn't like it, of course," she said, with satisfaction; "you'd be scared! You're scared of everything, Maurice says. You were scared to death, up on the mountain."
Eleanor was silent.
"He thinks it's lovely for you to be scared; it's funny about Maurice," said Edith, thoughtfully; "he doesn't like it when I'm scared—not that I ever am, now, but I used to be when I was a child."
The color flickered on Eleanor's cheeks: "Edith, I'll rest now," she said; her voice broke.
Edith looked at her, open-mouthed. "Why, Eleanor!" she said; "what's the matter? Are you mad at anything? Have you a stomachache? I'll run for mother!"