“And be docked?  Can’t afford it!” he said; “but I’ll get one week-end in with you,” he promised her, looking forward with real satisfaction to the solitude of his own house.  So Eleanor, saying she couldn’t understand why he was so awfully economical now that he had his own money!—­came alone,—­full of remorse at deserting him, and worry because of his loneliness, and leaving a pining Bingo behind her.  But, to her silent annoyance, as soon as she arrived at Green Hill she encountered a new and tiresome attentiveness from Edith!  Edith was inescapably polite.  She did not urge upon Eleanor any of those strenuous amusements to which she and Johnny were devoted; she merely gave up the amusements, and, as Johnny expressed it, “stuck to Eleanor”!  Eleanor couldn’t understand it, and when Maurice at last arrived, Johnny’s perplexity became audible: 

“Perhaps,” he told Edith, satirically, “you may be able, now, to tear yourself away from Eleanor, and go fishing with me?  You fish pretty well—­for a woman.  Maurice can lug her round.”

“I will, if Maurice will go, too,” Edith said.

“What do you drag him in for?”—­John paused; understanding dawned upon him:  “She doesn’t want to be by herself with me!” His tanned face slowly reddened, and those brown eyes of his behind the big spectacles grew keen.  He didn’t speak for quite a long time; then he said, very low, “I’ll be here to-morrow morning at four-thirty.  Be ready.  I’ll dig bait.”

“All right,” said Edith; after which, for the first time in her life, she played a shabby trick on Johnny Bennett; as soon as he had gone home, she invited Eleanor (who promptly declined), and Maurice (who as promptly accepted), to go fishing, too!  Then, having got what she wanted, she reproached herself:  “Johnny’ll be mad as fury.  But when he gets to saying things to me he makes me feel funny in the back of my neck.  Besides, I want Maurice.”

The fishermen were to assemble in the grayness of the August dawn; and Johnny was, as usual, prepared to throw a handful of gravel at Edith’s window to hurry her downstairs.  But when he loomed up in the mist, who should be on the porch, fooling with a rod, but Maurice!

“What’s he butting in for?” Johnny thought, looking so cross that Edith, coming out with the luncheon basket, was really remorseful.  “Hullo, Johnny,” she said. ("I never played it on him before,” she was thinking.) But at that moment her remorse was lost in alarm, for standing in the doorway was Eleanor, her hair caught up in a hurried twist, a wrapper over her shoulders, her bare feet thrust into pink bedroom slippers. (Forty-six looks fifty-six at 4.30 A.M.)

“Darling,” Eleanor said, “I believe I’d like to go up to the cabin to-day.  Do let’s do it—­just you and I!”

The three young people all spoke at once: 

Johnny said:  “Good scheme!  We’ll excuse Maurice.”

Edith said, “Oh, Eleanor, Maurice loves fishing!”