nings of solitaire and music were awfully nice, but--

"Brown and Hastings are in college," he told his wife; "and Mort's on a
job at his father's mills. I miss 'em like the devil."

"_I_ don't want anyone but you," she said, and the tears started to her
eyes; he asked her what she was crying about, and she said, "Oh,
nothing." But of course he knew what it was, and he had to remind
himself that "she had nervous prostration"; otherwise that terrible,
hidden word "silly" would have been on his lips.

Eleanor, too, had a hidden word; it was the word "boy." It was Mrs.
Newbolt who thrust it at her, in those first days of settling down into
the new house. She had come in, waddling ponderously on her weak ankles,
to see, she said, how the young people were getting along: "At least,
_one_ of you is young!" Mrs. Newbolt said, jocosely. She was still
puffing from a climb upstairs, to find Eleanor, dusty and disheveled, in
a little room in the top of the house. She was sitting on the floor in
front of a trunk, with Bingo fast asleep on her skirt.

"What's this room to be?" said Mrs. Newbolt; then looked at the wall
paper, gay with prancing lambs and waddling ducks, and Noah's Ark trees.
"What! a _nursery_?" said Mrs. Newbolt; "do you mean--?"

"No," Eleanor said, reddening; "oh no! I only thought that if--"

"You are forehanded," said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost a
minute. The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes
(which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her. She blinked and
swallowed, then said, crossly: "You're thinner! For heaven's sake don't
lose your figger! My dear grandmother used to say--I can see her now,
skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim and
lickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'd
rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my dear
grandfather--your great-grandfather--wore knee breeches; he said--well,
I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If a
gal loses one, she--' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are so
refined! _He_ wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolate
drop for Bingo. Have you a cook?"

Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said,
"Yes; but she doesn't know how to do things."

Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands. "Get somebody who can do
things! Come here, little Bingo! Eleanor, if you don't feed that b