"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," 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?"