And Maurice said:  “I sort of think I’d like to catch a sucker or two in this pool Johnny is always cracking up.  I bet he’s in for a big jolt about his trout!  You come, too?”

“I’d get so awfully tired.  And I—­I thought we could have a day together up on the mountain,” she ended, wistfully.

There was a dead silence.  Johnny was thinking:  “Gosh!  I hope she gets him.”  And Edith was thinking, “I’d like to choke her!” Maurice’s thoughts could not be spoken; he merely said, “All right; if you want to.”

“I don’t believe I’ll go fishing, either,” Edith said.

Eleanor, on the threshold, turned quickly:  “Please don’t stay at home on my account!”

But Maurice settled it.  “I’ll not go,” he said, patiently; “but you must, Edith.”  He threw down his rod and went into the house; Eleanor, in her flopping pink slippers, hurried after him....

“I did so want to have you to myself,” she said; “you don’t mind not going fishing with those children, do you?”

He said, listlessly:  “Oh no.  But don’t let’s attempt the cabin stunt.”  Then he stood at the window and watched Johnny and Edith, with fishing rods and lunch basket, disappear down the road into the fog.  He was too bored to be irritated; he only counted the hours until he could get back to Mercer, and the office, and the table under the silver poplar.  “I’ll get hold of the Mortons, and Hannah can give us some sort of grub, and then we’ll go to a show,” he thought.  “I can stick it out here for thirty-six hours more.”

He stuck it out that morning by sitting in Mr. Houghton’s studio, one leg across the arm of his chair, reading and smoking.  Once Eleanor came in and asked him if he was all right.  He said, briefly, “Yes.”

But she was uneasy:  “Maurice, I’ll play tennis with you?”

This at least made him chuckle. “You? How long since?  My dear, you couldn’t play a set to save your life!”

After that she let him alone for a while.  Early in the afternoon the need to make up to him for what she had done grew intolerable:  “Darling, let’s play solitaire?”

“I’m going to write letters.”

She left him to his letters for an hour, then came again:  “Let’s walk!”

“Well, if you want to,” Maurice said, and yawned.  So they trudged off.  Eleanor, walking very close to her husband, was thinking, heavily, how far they were apart; but she did her best to amuse him by anxious ponderings of household expenses.  He, sheering off to the other side of the road to escape her intimate and jostling shoulder, was thinking of the expenses of another household, and making no effort whatever to amuse her.  His silence confessed an irritation which she felt but could not understand; so by and by she fell silent, too, though the helpless tears stood in her eyes.  Then, apparently, he put his annoyance, whatever it was, behind him.

“Nelly,” he said, “let’s go down by the West Branch and meet Edith and Johnny?  They’ll be coming home that way, ‘laden with trout,’ I suppose,” he ended, sarcastically.