then, the murmur of Edith's honest little
voice, or Maurice's chuckle. They were talking about her, she knew, and
the happy color burned in her cheeks. When he came in for his second
visit, late that afternoon, she asked him, archly, what he and Edith had
been talking about so long in his room?

"I believe you were telling her what a goose I am about thunderstorms,"
she said.

"I was not!" he declared--and her eyes shone. But when she urged--

"Well, what _were_ you talking about?" he couldn't remember anything but
a silly story of Edith's hens. He repeated it, and Eleanor sighed; how
could he be interested in anything so childish!

As it happened, he was not; he had scarcely listened to Edith. The only
thing that interested Maurice now, was what Eleanor had done for him!
Thinking of it, he brooded over her, silently, his cheek against hers,
then Mrs. Houghton came in and banished him, saying that Eleanor must go
to sleep; "and you and Edith must keep quiet!" she said.

He was so contrite that, tiptoeing to his own room, he told poor
faithful Edith her voice was too loud: "You disturb Eleanor. So dry up,
Skeezics!"

As he grew stronger, and was able to go downstairs, Edith felt freer to
talk to him--for down on the porch, or out in the garden, her eager
young voice would not reach those languid ears. Then, suddenly, all her
chances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered,
crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling
the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way
that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end.

The shingling, begun joyously by the big boy and the little girl on
Monday, promised several delightfully busy mornings.... Of course the
setting out for Mercer had been postponed; there was no possibility of
moving Eleanor for the present; so Maurice's "business career," as he
called it, with grinning pomposity, had to be delayed--Eleanor turned
white at the mere suggestion of convalascing at Green Hill without him!
Consequently Maurice, when not worshiping his wife, had nothing to do,
and Edith had seized the opportunity to make him useful.... "We'll
shingle my henhouse," she had announced. Maurice liked the scheme as
much as she did. The September air, the smell of the fresh shingles, the
sitting with one leg doubled under you, and the other outstretched on
the hot slope of the roof, the tap-tapping of the hammers, the bossing
of Edith