"They _have_ to say things, I suppose," Edith reflected, patiently: "but after supper, Maurice and I will talk." So she bore with her father and mother, who certainly tried to be conversational. The Bride, Edith noticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extent of being married, hadn't much to say--but once he winked at Edith and again tried to pull her hair,--so she knew that he, also, was patient. She was too absorbed to return the wink. She just stared at Eleanor. She only dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly: "I--I'm going to go to your school, when I'm sixteen." It was as if she looked forward to a pilgrimage to a shrine! It was impossible not to see the worship in her face; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss. But, like herself, the Bride had nothing to say. Eleanor just sat in sweet, empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover's ears, and answering Mrs. Houghton's maternal questions about his winter underclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and the occasional broad grin 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: