he
explained; "so I couldn't have any bachelor blow-out; but my--my--my
wife, Mrs. Curtis, I mean--and I, thought we'd have a spree, to show
I am an old married man."

The fellows, after the first amazement, fell on him with all kinds of
ragging: Who was she? Was she out of baby clothes? Would she come in a
perambulator?

"Shut up!" said the bridegroom, hilariously. He went home to Eleanor
tingling with pride. "I want you to be perfectly stunning, Star! Of
course you always are; but rig up in your best duds! I'm going to make
those fellows cross-eyed with envy. I wonder if you could sing, just
once, after dinner? I want them to hear you! (Mr. Houghton will love her
voice!)"

Eleanor--who had stopped counting the minutes of married life now, for,
this being the sixth day of bliss, the arithmetic was too much for
her--was as excited about the dinner as he was. Yet, like him, under the
excitement, was a little tremor: "They will be angry because--because we
eloped!" Any other reason for anger she would not formulate. Sometimes
her anxiety was audible: "Do you suppose Auntie has written to Mr.
Houghton?" And again: "What _will_ he say?" Maurice always replied, with
exuberant indifference, that he didn't know, and he didn't care!

"_I_ care, if he is horrid to you!" Eleanor said "He'll probably say it
was wicked to elope?"

Mr. Houghton continued to say nothing; and the "care" Maurice denied,
dogged all his busy interest in his dinner--for which he had made the
plans, as Eleanor, until the term ended, was obliged to go out to
Medfield to give her music lessons; besides, "planning" was not her
forte! But in the thrill of excitement about the dinner and in the
mounting adventure of being happy, she was able to forget her fear that
Mr. Houghton might be "horrid" to Maurice. If the Houghtons didn't like
an elopement, it would mean that they had no romance in them! She was
absorbed in her ardent innocent purpose of "impressing" Maurice's
friends, not from vanity, but because she wanted to please him. As she
dressed that evening, all her self-distrust vanished, and she smiled at
herself in the mirror for sheer delight, for his sake, in her dark,
shining eyes, and the red loveliness of her full lip. In this wholly new
experience of feeling, not only happy, but important,--she forgot Mrs.
Newbolt, sailing angrily for Europe that very day, and was not even
anxious about the Houghtons! After all, what difference did it make what