should have to get another house," she
thought.) "Oh, do stop whistling," she said; "it goes through me!"

"Poor Nelly!" he said, kindly, and stopped.

The astonishing thing about the "boarding-house marriage," is that it
ever survives the strain of the woman's idleness and the man's
discomfort! But it does, occasionally. Even this marriage survived Miss
Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough
because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say
that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability
were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in
everything and everybody--especially everybody!--and his endless good
nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him,
which Eleanor entirely understood; but he liked everyone,--which she
didn't understand.

The note of this mutual liking was struck the very first night when
Maurice went down into the dingy basement dining room; he and Eleanor
made rather a sensation as they entered: Eleanor, handsome and silent,
produced the impression of cold reserve; Maurice, amiable and talkative,
gave a little shock of interest and pleasure to the fifteen or twenty
people eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not very
fresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable to
an elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a pretty
high-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at the
end of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too,
though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left the
room there was a murmur of pleasure:

"A real addition to our family," said Miss Ladd.

The bond salesman said, "I wonder if he'll go to the ball game with me
on Saturday? I'll get the tickets."

The school-teacher said, "He's awfully good looking."

The widow's comment was only, "Nice boy."

Upstairs in their own room, Maurice said: "What pleasant people! Nelly,
let's get some fun out of this; don't dash up here the minute you
swallow your food!"

She wondered, silently, how he could call them "pleasant"! To her they
were all rather common, pushing persons, who wanted to talk to Maurice.
But as her one desire was to do what he liked, she really did try to
help him "get some fun out of them." Every night at dinner she smiled
laboriously when he teased the teacher, and she listened to the elderly