t go with them," she added--a little
uncertainly he noticed.

"And--oh it's just being silly and tired I suppose, but all of them
together--"

"I know," said Oliver and hoped his voice had sounded appropriately
bitter. "No reflections on you or Peter, El, you both understand and
you've both been too nice for words--but some of the others sometimes--"

"Oh I'm _sorry_," said Elinor contritely, and Oliver felt somewhat as if
he were swindling her out of sympathy she probably needed for herself by
deliberately calling attention to his own cut finger. But it had to
be done--there wasn't any sense in both of them, he and Ted, walking
crippled when one of them might be able to doctor the other up by just
giving up a little pride. He went on.

"So I thought--I'd just stay around here with a book or something--get
some tea from your mother, later, if she were here--"

"Why, I can do that much for you, Ollie, anyway. Let's have it now."

"But look here, if you were going to do anything--" knowing that after
that she could hardly say so, even if she were.

"Oh no. And besides, with both of us here and both of us blue it would
be silly if we went and were melancholy at each other from opposite
sides of the house." She tried to be enthusiastic. "And there's
strawberry jam and muffins somewhere--the kind that Peter makes himself
such a pig about--"

"Well, Elinor, you certainly are a friend--"

A little later, in a quiet corner of the porch with the tea-steam
floating pleasantly from the silver nose of its pot and a decorous
scarlet and yellow still-life of muffins and jam between them, Oliver
felt that so far things had slid along as well as could be expected.
Elinor's manners in the first place and her genuine liking for him
in the second had come to his help as he knew they would--she was too
concerned now with trying to comfort him in small unobtrusive ways to be
on her guard herself about her own troubles. All he had to do, he knew,
was to sit there and look ostentatiously brokenhearted to have the
conversation move in just the directions he wished and that, though it
made him feel shameless was not exactly difficult--all he required was
a single thought of the last three weeks to make his acting sour
perfection itself. "Greater love hath no man than this," he thought
with a grotesque humor--he wondered if any of the celebrated story-book
patterns of friendship from Damon and Jonathan on would have found
things quite