use he has slighted himself!
Jealousy has no such noble elements; it is the unhappiness that Bingo
knows--an ignoble agony! ... But Eleanor, like many pitiful wives, did
not know this. Sitting there on the bank of the river, without
aspiration for herself or regret for Maurice, she knew only the anguish
of being neglected. "He wouldn't have left me six years ago," she said;
"He doesn't even ask me if I want to wade! I don't; but he didn't _ask_
me. He just went off with her!"

Suddenly, her fingers trembling, she began to take off her shoes and
stockings. She _would_ do what Edith did! ... It was a tremor of
aspiration!--an effort to develop in herself a quality he liked in
Edith. She went, barefooted, with wincing cautiousness, and with Bingo
stepping gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then,
haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while
the little dog looked up at her anxiously, she dipped a white, uncertain
foot into the water--and as she hesitated to essay the yielding mud, and
the slimy things under the stones, she heard the returning splash of
wading feet. A minute later the three youngsters appeared, Edith's
skirts now very well above the danger line of wetness, and the two men
offering eager guiding hands, which were entirely disdained! Then as,
from under the leaning trees, they rounded the bend, there came an
astonished chorus:

_"Why, look at Eleanor!"_

"Your skirt's in the water," Edith warned her; "hitch it up, and 'come
on in--the water's fine!'"

She shook her head, and turned to climb up the bank.

"'The King of France,'" Edith quoted, satirically, "'marched _down_ a
hill, and then marched up again!'"

Eleanor was silent. When the three began to put on their shoes and
stockings, Eleanor, putting on her own, her skirt wet and drabbled about
her ankles, heard Maurice and Johnny offering to tie Edith's
shoestrings--a task which Edith, with condescending giggles, permitted.
Both of the boys--for Maurice seemed suddenly as much of a boy as
Johnny!--went on their knees to tie, and re-tie, the brown ribbons,
Maurice with gleeful and ridiculous deference.

"Want me to tie your shoestrings for you, Nelly?" he said over his
shoulder.

"I am capable of tying my own, thank you," she said, so icily that the
three playfellows looked at one another and Maurice, reddening sharply,
said:

"Give us a song, Nelly!" But she sitting with clenched hands and tensely
silent,