Johnny saw nothing amusing in such foolishness; he said that Maurice was
old enough to be her father! As for himself, he felt, he said, that
marriage was a mistake. "Women hamper a man dreadfully. Still--I may
marry," Johnny conceded; "but it will be somebody very young, so I can
train her mind. I want a woman (if I decide to marry) to be just the
kind I want. Otherwise, you get hung up with Eleanors."

Edith lifted her chin. "Well, I like that! Why shouldn't she train your
mind?"

"Because," Johnny said, firmly, "the man's mind is the stronger."

Edith screamed with laughter, and threw a handful of snow in his neck.
"B-r-r-r!" she said; "it's getting cold! I'll knock the spots out of you
on belly bumps!" She got on her feet, shook the snow from the edge of
her skirt, flung herself face down on her sled, and shot like a blue
comet over the icy slope. Johnny sped after her, his big sled taking
flying leaps over the kiss-me-quicks. They reached the bottom of the
hill almost together, and Johnny, looking at her standing there,
breathless and rosy, with shining eyes which were as impersonal as
stars, said to himself, with emotion:

"She's got sense--for a girl." His heart was pounding in his broad
chest, but he couldn't think of a thing to say. He was still dumb when
she said good-by to him at Maurice's door.

"Why don't you come to dinner next Saturday?" she said, carelessly;
"Maurice will be away all week on business; but he'll be back Saturday."

Johnny mumbled something to the effect that he could survive, even if
Maurice wasn't back.

"I couldn't," Edith said. "I should simply die, in this house, if it
wasn't for Maurice!"

As, whistling, she ran upstairs, Edith thought to herself that Johnny
was a _lamb_! "But, compared to Maurice, he's awfully uninteresting."
Edith, openly and audibly, compared every male creature to Maurice, and
none of them ever measured up to him! His very moodiness had its charm;
when he sat down at the piano after dinner and scowled over some new
music, or when he lounged in his big chair and smoked, his face absorbed
to the point of sternness, Edith, loving him "next to father and
mother," watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes
he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled
into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this
or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about
music"; sometimes he would pul