oric--which was appropriate enough, even though his freshman year
had been halted by those examinations, which had so "jarred" his
guardian. "I'll be twenty in September," he said. Evidently the thought
of his increasing years gave him pleasure. That Eleanor's years were
also increasing did not occur to him; and no wonder, for, compared to
people like Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, Eleanor was young enough!--only
thirty-nine. It was back in the 'nineties that she had met her husband's
guardian, who, in those days, had been the owner of a cotton mill in
Mercer, but who now, instead of making money, cultivated potatoes (and
tried to paint). Eleanor knew the Houghtons when they were Mercer mill
folk, and, as she said, this charming youngster--living then in
Philadelphia--had been "a little boy"; now, here he was, her husband for
"fifty-four minutes." And she was almost forty, and he was nineteen.
That Henry Houghton, up on his mountain farm, pottering about in his
big, dusty studio, and delving among his potatoes, would whistle, was to
be expected.

"But who cares?" Maurice said. "It isn't his funeral."

"He'll think it's yours," she retorted, with a little laugh. She was not
much given to laughter. Her life had been singularly monotonous and,
having seen very little of the world, she had that self-distrust which
is afraid to laugh unless other people are laughing, too. She taught
singing at Fern Hill, a private school in Mercer's suburbs. She did not
care for the older pupils, but she was devoted to the very little girls.
She played wonderfully on the piano, and suffered from indigestion; her
face was at times almost beautiful; she had a round, full chin, and a
lovely red lower lip; her forehead was very white, with soft, dark hair
rippling away from it. Certainly, she had moments of beauty. She talked
very little; perhaps because she hadn't the chance to talk--living, as
she did, with an aunt who monopolized the conversation. She had no close
friends;--her shyness was so often mistaken for hauteur, that she did
not inspire friendship in women of her own age, and Mrs. Newbolt's
elderly acquaintances were merely condescending to her, and gave her
good advice; so it was a negative sort of life. Indeed, her sky terrier,
Bingo, and her laundress, Mrs. O'Brien, to whose crippled baby grandson
she was endlessly kind, knew her better than any of the people among
whom she lived. When Maurice Curtis, cramming in Mercer because Destiny
ha