So Maurice immediately told half of the truth,--this being easier for him than an out-and-out lie. He had been detained because he had to go and see a house in Medfield. "Awfully sorry, Mrs. Houghton!" Eleanor said she should have thought he needn't have stayed long enough to be late at the station! Well, he hadn't stayed long; but the--"the tenant was afraid her baby had measles and she had asked him to go and get a doctor, and--" "Of course!" Mrs. Houghton said; "don't give it a thought, Maurice. John Bennett met us--you knew he was at the Polytechnical?--and brought us here. But, anyhow, Edith and I were quite capable of looking out for ourselves; weren't we, Edith?" Edith, almost sixteen now, long-legged, silent, and friendly, said, "Yes, mother" and helped herself so liberally to butter that her hostess thought to herself, _"Gracious!"_ However, assured that Maurice had not been run over, Eleanor was really indifferent to Edith's appetite, for the sum Mrs. Houghton had offered for the girl's board was generous. So, proud of the new house, and pleased with sitting at the head of her own table, and hoping that Maurice would like the pudding, which, with infinite fussing, she had made with her own hands, she felt both happy and hospitable. She told Edith to take some more butter (which she did!); and tell Johnny to come to dinner some night, "and we'll have some music," she added, kindly. "Johnny doesn't like music," said Edith; "well, I don't, either. But I guess he'll come. He likes food." Edith effaced herself a good deal in the few days that, her mother stayed on in Mercer to launch her at Fern Hill; effaced herself, indeed, so much that Maurice, full of preoccupations of his own, was hardly aware of her presence!... He had had a scared note from Lily: Doctor Nelson says he's _awful_ sick, and I've got to have a nurse. I don't like to, because I can't bear to have anybody do for him but me, and she charges so much. Makes me tired to see her all fussed up in white dresses--I suppose it's her laundry I'm paying for! That little girl he caught it from ought to be sent to a Reformatory. I'm afraid my new mealer'll go, if she thinks there's anything catching in the house. I hate to ask you-- The scented, lavender-colored envelope was on Maurice's desk at the office the morning after Mrs. Houghton and Edith arrived. When he had read it, and torn it into minute scraps, Maurice had something else to think of than Edith! He knew Lily wouldn't want to leave "her" baby to go out and cash a money order, and checks were dangerous; so he must take that trip to Medfield again. "Well," said Maurice--pulled and jerked out to Maple Street on the leash of an ineradicable sense of decency--"the devil is getting his money's worth out of _me_!"