"Because you don't interest him. Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy, urge him to go out and have a good time, _without you_!" Then she added some poignantly true remarks: "My dear father used to say, 'Just as many men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds, as because other women have pretty faces.' Well, I'm afraid poor dear mother's mind was plain; that's why I always made an effort to talk to your uncle, and be entertainin'. And I'll tell you another thing--for if I have a virtue it's candor--if you let him see you're jealous, he'll make it worth your while! You've got a rip in the back seam of your waist. No man ever keeps on lovin' a jealous woman; he just pretends to, to keep the peace." Of course this was as unintelligible to Eleanor as it is to all women of her type of mind. So, instead of considering Maurice's enjoyment of society, she committed the absurdity of urging him to enjoy what she enjoyed--a solitude of two. To herself she explained his desire to see other people, by saying it was because they had no children. "When we have a child, he won't want to be with those boys and girls! Oh, why don't we have a baby?" Her longing for children was like physical hunger. But only Mrs. O'Brien understood it. When Eleanor went, in her faithful way, two or three times a week, to sing to little sickly Don (and pet the boarding and rather pining Bingo), Mrs. O'Brien, listening to the little songs, pretty and silly, would draw a puckery hand over her eyes: "She'd ought to have a dozen of her own! If that boy don't treat her good, I'll iron off every button he's got!" When Eleanor (hoping for a baby) worried lest Maurice's hopes, too, were disappointed, her gentleness to him was passionate and beseeching; but sometimes, watching his attention to other people, the gentleness grew rigid in an accusation that, because they hadn't a child, he was "getting tired of her"! Whenever she said this foolish thing, there would come, afterward, a rain of repentant tears. But repentance cannot always change the result of foolish words--and the result is so often out of proportion to the words! As Maurice had said that day in their meadow, of Professor Bradley and the banana skin--a very little thing "can throw the switches," in human life! It was the "little thing" of a lead pencil, in keeping the accounts of their endless games of solitaire, that threw the switches now, for Maurice Curtis.... He happened to produce a very soft pencil, which he had borrowed, he said, "from a darned pretty woman he was showing a house to," and had forgotten to return to her. Eleanor said it seemed to her bad taste to talk of a strange woman that way: "If she's a lady she wouldn't want a man she didn't know to speak so--so lightly of her." "I have yet to meet one of your sex who objects to being called pretty," Maurice said, dryly.