you?"

"Johnny? No! He's not up to it!" They both grinned, and Maurice sat down
on a wayside log to put a knot in a broken shoestring. Edith sat down,
too, trying to keep her hat on, and cursing (she said) the unreliability
of her hair. The shoestring mended, Maurice batted a tall fern with his
racket.

"Eleanor's sort of forlorn, Maurice?" Edith said. "Generally is." He
slashed at the fern, and she heard him sigh. "That time she dragged me
down the mountain took it out of her."

Edith nodded; then she said, with her straight look: "You're a perfect
lamb, Maurice! You are awfully"--she wanted to say "patient," but there
was an implication in that; so she said, lamely--"nice to Eleanor."

"The Lord knows I ought to be!" he said, cynically.

"Yes; she just about killed herself to save you," Edith agreed.

"Oh, not because of that!"

The misery in his voice startled her; she said, quickly, "How do you
mean, Maurice? I don't understand."

"I ought to be 'nice' to her."

"But you are! You are!"

"I'm not."

"Maurice, I'm awfully fond of Eleanor; you won't think I'm finding
fault, or anything? But sometimes, when she doesn't feel very well,
she--you--I mean, you really _are_ a lamb, Maurice!"

Edith was twenty that summer--a strong, gay creature; but her old,
ridiculous, incorrigible candor (and that honest kiss in the darkness!)
made her still a child to Maurice.... Yet Johnny Bennett was going to
marry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted the
fern; then he said:

"I've been infernally mean to Eleanor. It's little enough to be 'nice,'
as you call it, now."

She flew to his defense. "Talk sense! You never did a mean thing in your
life."

His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the next
minute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor--or anybody," she ended,
hastily.

He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding--though he knew, he
thought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even if
she had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted the
ugly truth:

"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I--I
haven't played the game with her."

"It's up to her to forgive that!"

"She doesn't know it."

"Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?"

Her dismay was like a stab. "Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time
ago--but it would upset her to know that I'd--well, failed her in any
way." His face was so wrung