Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt--who had come home for a fortnight--what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed a little in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "for a whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said, uneasily. "Well," said Mrs. Newbolt, with what was, for her, astonishing brevity, "why shouldn't he? Don't forget what my dear father said about cats: _'Open the door!'_ Tell Maurice you _want_ him to go off with the Mortons!" Of course Eleanor told him nothing of the sort. But she was obliged, at Green Hill, to watch him "going off" with Edith. "I should think," she said once, "that Mrs. Houghton wouldn't want her to be wandering about with you, alone." "Perhaps Mrs. Houghton doesn't consider me a desperate character," he said, dryly; "and, besides, Johnny Bennett chaperones us!" Sometimes not even John's presence satisfied Eleanor, and she chaperoned her husband herself. She did it very openly one day toward the end of Maurice's little vacation. Henry Houghton had said, "Look here; you boys" (of course Johnny was hanging around) "must earn your salt! We've got to get the second mowing in before night. I'll present you both with a pitchfork." To which Maurice replied, "Bully!" "Me, too!" said Edith. And John said, "I'll be glad to be of any assistance, sir." ("How their answers sum those youngsters up!" Mr. Houghton told his Mary.) Eleanor, dogging Maurice to a deserted spot on the porch, said, uneasily, "Don't do it, darling; it's too hot for you." But he only laughed, and started off with the other two to work all morning in the splendid heat and dazzle of the field. "Skeezics, don't be so strenuous!" he commanded, once; and Johnny was really nervous: "It's too hot for you, Buster." "Too hot for your grandmother!" Edith said--bare-armed, open-throated, her creamy neck reddening with sunburn. Toward noon, Maurice's chaperon, toiling out across the hot stubble to watch him, called from under an umbrella, "Edith! You'll get freckled." "When I begin to worry about my complexion, I'll let you know," Edith retorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!" "_How_ she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is looking at her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight on her right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hat tumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around her forehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would want to look at Eleanor--a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes were blinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. She turned silently and went away. "He likes to be with her--but he doesn't say so. Oh, if he would only be frank!" Her eyes blurred, but she would not let the tears come, so they fell backward into her heart--which brimmed with them, to overflow, after a while, in bitter words.