as all he cared about! He didn't
tell her--perhaps he didn't know it himself--that his own lack of
enjoyment was due to his inarticulate consciousness that he had not
belonged anywhere at that dinner table. He was too old--and he was too
young. The ladies talked down to him, and Brown and Hastings were polite
to him. "Damn 'em, _polite_! Well," he thought, "'course, they know that
a man in my position isn't in their class. But--" After a while he found
himself thinking: "Those hags Eleanor raked in had no manners. Talked to
me about my 'exams'! I'm glad I snubbed the old one, I don't think
Rose was too young," he said, aloud. "Oh, Star, you are wonderful!"

And she, letting her hair fall cloudlike over her shoulders, silently
held out her arms to him. Instantly his third bad moment vanished.

But a fourth was on its way; even as he kissed that white shoulder, he
was thinking of the letter which must certainly come from Mr. Houghton
in a day or two. "What will _he_ get off?" he asked himself; "probably
old Brad and Mrs. Newbolt have fed oats to him, so he'll kick--but what
do I care? Not a hoot!" Thus encouraging himself, he encouraged Eleanor:

"Don't worry! Uncle Henry'll write and _beg_ me to bring you up to Green
Hill."

The fifty-four minutes of married life had stretched into eight days,
and Maurice had chewed the educating nails of worry pretty thoroughly
before that "begging" letter from Henry Houghton arrived. There was an
inclosure in it from Mrs. Houghton, and the young man, down in the dark
lobby of the hotel, with his heart in his mouth, read what both old
friends had to say--then rushed upstairs, two steps at a time, to make
his triumphant announcement to his wife:

"What did I tell you? Uncle Henry's _white_!" He gave her a hug; then,
plugging his pipe full of tobacco, handed her the letters, and sat down
to watch the effect of them upon her; there was no more "worry" for
Maurice! But Eleanor, standing by the window silhouetted against the
yellow twilight, caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she
read:

"Of course," Mr. Houghton wrote--(it had taken him the week he had
threatened to "concoct" his letter, which he asked his wife if he might
not sign "Mr. F.'s aunt." "I bet she doesn't know her Dickens; it won't
convey anything to her," he begged; "I'll cut out two cigars a day if
you'll let me do it?" She would not let him, so the letter was perfectly
decorous.)--"Of course it was not the pr