ich showed how much
he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice,
swinging round from the piano, said, with a rather rigid face:

"Would you mind just waiting a minute and letting me tell you something
about myself, Uncle Henry?"

"Of course not!" Mr. Houghton said, with great assumption of
cheerfulness. He went back to the sofa--furtively achieving a cigar as
he did so--and saying to himself, "Well, at least it will give me a
chance to let him see how I feel about his ever marrying again."

Edith was standing by the piano, one hand resting on the keyboard and
drumming occasionally in disconnected octaves. ("If it's business," she
thought, "I'll leave them alone; but if they are going to 'advise' him,
I'll stay--and fight.")

Maurice came and sat on the edge of the big table, his hands in his
pockets, and one foot swinging nervously. "I hope you dear people don't
think I'm an ungrateful cuss, not to have come to Green Hill this
summer; but the fact is, I've been awfully up against it, trying to make
up my mind about something."

Henry Houghton looked at the fire end of his cigar with frowning
intentness and said yes, he supposed so. "Weston's offer seems to me
fair," he said (this referred to a partnership possibility, on which
Maurice had consulted him by letter); but his remark, now, was so
obviously a running to cover that, in spite of himself, Maurice grinned.
"Weston's a very square fellow," said Henry Houghton.

"If you are going to talk 'offers,'" said Edith, "do you want me to
clear out?"

"It isn't business," Maurice said, quietly; "it's my ... little son. No;
don't clear out, Edith. I'd rather talk to your mother and Uncle Henry
before you."

"All right," said Edith, and struck some soft chords; but her young
mouth was hard.

"Of course," Maurice said, "as things are now--I mean poor Eleanor
gone--I have thought a good deal of what I ought to do for Jacky. It was
Nelly's wish that I should do the straight thing for him. There wasn't
any question, I think, of the 'straight thing' for Lily--"

"Of course not!" Mary Houghton agreed. And her husband said, "Any such
idea would be nonsense, Maurice."

"And I myself don't count," Maurice went on.

Again Mrs. Houghton agreed--very gravely: "Compared to the child, dear
Maurice, you don't."

"You _do_!" Edith said; but nobody heard her.

"So at first," Maurice said, "I kept thinking of how Eleanor had wanted
me to have him--le