ffee cups on uncertain knees, and
waving off wasps, and upsetting glasses of water. Maurice talked about
the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny
Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith.

Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith--and
listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he
took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was
jealous.

"I don't call it 'jealous,'" Eleanor said, "to be fond of a person."

"You can't _really_ be fond of anybody, and be jealous," Edith
announced; "or if you are, it is just Bingoism."

This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the
inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, "'Love forgets self,
and jealousy remembers self.'"

Maurice grinned and said nothing--it was enough for him to see Eleanor
hit, _hard_! But Johnny protested:

"If your girl monkeys round with another fellow," he said, "you have a
right to be jealous."

"Of course," said Eleanor.

"No, sir!" said Edith. "You have a right to be _unhappy._ If the other
fellow's nicer than you--I mean if he has something that attracts her
that you haven't, of course you'd be unhappy! (though you could get busy
and _be_ nice yourself.) Or, if he's not as nice as you, you'd be
unhappy, because you'd be so awfully disappointed in her. But there's no
jealousy about _that_ kind of thing! Jealousy is hogging all the love
for yourself. Like Bingo! And _I_ call it plain garden selfishness--and
no sense, either, because you don't gain anything by it. Do you think
you do, Maurice? ... For Heaven's sake, hand me the sandwiches!"

Maurice didn't express his thoughts; he just roared with laughter.
Eleanor reddened; Johnny, handing the sandwiches, said that, though
Edith generally could reason pretty well--for a woman--in this
particular matter she was 'way off.

"You are long on logic, Edith," Maurice agreed; "but short on human
nature; (she hasn't an idea how the shoe fits!)."

"The reason I'm so up on jealousy," Edith explained, complacently, "is
because yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of
quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the
words!): '_Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet
jealousy_'--oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know--'_yet jealousy
extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames_.'"

"Who said that?" Maurice said.

Edith said she'd f