y--think of Edith again!
Jacky, Eleanor thought, viciously, "would slam the door in Edith's
face!"

Perhaps, if Maurice had been at home, instead of being obliged to
prolong that western business trip, the sanity of his presence would
have swept the straws and dead leaves away and left Eleanor's mind
bleak, of course, with disappointment about Jacky and dread of
Edith--but sound. As it was, alone in her melancholy, uncomfortable
house, tiny innumerable "reasons" for considering the one way by which
Maurice could get Jacky, heaped and heaped above common sense: ten years
ago Mrs. Newbolt said that if Eleanor had not "caught" Maurice when he
was young, he would have taken Edith; that was a straw. Two years ago a
woman in the street car offered her a seat, because she looked as old as
_her_ mother. Another straw! Lily supposed she was Maurice's mother! A
straw.... Edith admitted--had impudently flung into Eleanor's face!--the
confession that she was "in love with him!"--and Edith was to be in town
for three months. Oh, what a sheaf of straws! Edith would see him
constantly. She would "look at him"! Could Maurice stand that? Wouldn't
what little love he felt for his old wife go down under the wicked
assault of those "looks"?--unless he had Jacky! Jacky would "slam the
door."

Eleanor said things like this many times a day. Straws! Straws! And they
showed the way the wind was blowing. Sometimes, in the suffocating dust
of fear that the wind raised she even forgot her purpose of making
Maurice happy, in a violent urge to make it impossible for Edith
Houghton to triumph over her. But the other thought--the crazy, nobler
thought!--was, on the whole, dominant: "Maurice would be happy if he had
a child. I couldn't give him a child of my own, but I can give him
Jacky." Yet once in a while she balanced the advantages and
disadvantages of the one way in which Jacky could be given: _Lily_?
Could Maurice endure Lily? She thought of that parlor, of Lily's
vulgarity, of the raucous note in her voice when those flashes of anger
pierced like claws through the furry softness of her good nature; she
thought of the reek of scent on the handkerchief. Could he endure Lily?
Yet she was efficient; she would make him comfortable. "I never made
him comfortable," she thought. "And he doesn't love her; so I wouldn't
so terribly mind her being here--any more than I'd mind a housekeeper.
But I wouldn't want her to call him 'Maurice.' I think I'll pu