in when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for some
carelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when she
said he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that. Looking at the
careless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in the
beauty of it!

But Edith's plan for barn conversation with Maurice fell through,
because after supper, with an air of complete self-justification, he
said to his hosts, "_Now_ you must hear Eleanor sing!"

At which she protested, "Oh, Maurice, no!"

The Houghtons, however, were polite; so they all went into the studio,
and, standing in the twilight, with Maurice playing her accompaniment,
she sang, very simply, and with quite poignant beauty, the song of
"Golden Numbers," with its serene refrain:

"_O sweet, O sweet content!_"

"Lovely, my dear," Mrs. Houghton said, and Maurice was radiant.

"Is Mr. F. your father?" Edith said, timidly; and while Eleanor was
giving her maiden name, Edith's terrified father said, in a ferocious
aside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife she
really must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is as
ignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read
_Little Dorrit_. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter of
yours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?--the woman's voice."

"Don't call her 'the woman'!"

"Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?"

"I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly
_good_. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark of
humor in her."

"'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But _he_ has
humor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is
not to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will hold
him?"

"Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing.

"'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the sting
out of his gibe by saying, very simply:

"Yes, I try to."

"He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he
came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were
fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question
in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew
I didn't like it--his giving up college and flying off the handle, and
getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said,
'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;--she was going to drag Eleanor
abroad, and I had