_with you_! I don't want anyone but you, in the
world," she said, softly.

He thrilled at the wonder of that: she would be contented, _with
him_,--on a desert island! Oh, if he could only always be enough for
her! He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he _would_
always be enough for her. Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up
two or three fellows.

Then Eleanor's apprehension spoke: "What _will_ Mr. Houghton say?"

"Oh, he's all right," Maurice said, resolutely hiding his own
apprehension. He could hide it, but he could not forget it. Even while
arranging for his dinner party, and plunging into the expense of a
private dining room, he was thinking, of his guardian; "Will he kick?"
Aloud he said, "I've asked three fellows, and you ask three girls."

"I don't know many girls," she said, anxiously.

"How about that girl you spoke to on the street yesterday? (If Uncle
Henry could only see her, he'd be crazy about her!)"

"Rose Ellis? Well, yes; but she's rather young."

"Oh, that's all right," Maurice assured her. "(I wish I hadn't told him
she is older than I am. Trouble with me is, I always plunk out the
truth!) The fellows like 'em young," he said. Then he told her who the
fellows were: "I don't know 'em very well; they're just boys; not in
college. Younger than I am, except Tom Morton. Mort's twenty, and the
brainiest man I know. And Hastings has a bag of jokes--well, not just
for ladies," said Maurice, grinning, "and you'll like Dave Brown. You
rake in three girls. We'll have a stunning spread, and then go to the
theater." He caught her in his arms and romped around the room with her,
then dropped her into a chair, and watched her wiping away tears of
helpless laughter.

"Yes--I'll rake in the girls!" she gasped.

She wasn't very successful in her invitations. "I asked Rose, but I
had to ask her mother, too," she said; "and one of the teachers at the
Medfield school."

Maurice looked doubtful. Rose was all right; but the other two? "Aren't
they somewhat faded flowers?"

"They're about my age," Eleanor teased him. As for Maurice, he thought
that it didn't really matter about the ladies, faded or not; they were
Eleanor's end of the shindy. "Spring chickens are Mort's meat," he
said...

The three rather recent acquaintances who were Maurice's end of the
shindy, had all gaped, and then howled, when told that the dinner was
to celebrate his marriage. "I got spliced kind of in a hurry,"