"There's nothing the matter. But—but I wish you'd tell Maurice to come and speak to me."
Edith tore downstairs, and out of the front door: "Maurice! Where are you?"—then, catching sight of him, reading and smoking in a hammock slung between two of the big columns on the east porch, she rushed at him, and pulled him to his astonished feet. "Eleanor wants you! Something's the matter, and—"
Before she could finish, Maurice was tearing upstairs, two steps at a time....
And so it was that Edith, sulkily, worked on the roof by herself.
Yet Maurice had not entirely "backed out." ... The very next morning, before Edith was awake, he had gone out to the henhouse, and, alone, done more than his share of the shingling.
"But, Maurice, why didn't you wake me?" Edith protested, when she discovered what he had done. "I'd have gone out, too!"
"I liked doing it by myself," Maurice evaded.
And for five minutes Edith was sulky again. "He puts on airs, 'cause he's married! Well, I don't care. He can shingle the whole roof by himself if he wants to! I don't like married men, anyhow."
The married man had, indeed, wanted to be by himself—to put the nails in his mouth, and to sit on the cold, slippery shingles in the gray September morning, and to tap-tap-tap—and think, and think.
But he didn't like his thoughts very well....