“Can’t afford it,” Maurice said.

But Eleanor was puzzled.  There had been a hurried note in Maurice’s voice when he asked Edith about her bicycle—­an imperative changing of the subject!  She looked at him wonderingly.  Why should he change the subject?  Was he annoyed at Edith’s bad taste in referring to the creature?  But Edith’s taste was always bad, and Maurice was not generally so sensitive to it; not as sensitive as he ought to be!  Or as he had been in those old days when he had said that Eleanor was too lovely to know the wickedness of the world, and he “didn’t want her to”!  She was really perplexed; and when Edith rushed off to make the cakes, and Maurice went indoors, she sat there in the garden, looking absently out through the rusty bars of the iron gate at the distant glimmer of the river, and wondered:  “Why?”

She was still wondering even when the Mortons arrived, bringing with them—­of all people!—­Doctor Nelson. ("Gosh!" said Maurice.) “We’re celebrating his appointment at the hospital; he’s the new superintendent!” Mrs. Morton explained.

Eleanor said, mechanically, “So glad to see you, Doctor Nelson!” But she was saying to herself, “Why was Maurice provoked when Edith spoke of Mrs. Dale?” When some more noisy and very young people arrived, she was too abstracted to talk to them.  She was so silent that most of them forgot her; until Mrs. Morton, suddenly remembering her existence, tried to be conversational: 

“I suppose Mr. Curtis told you of our wild adventure on the river in August, when we got beached and spent the afternoon on a mud flat?”

“No,” Eleanor said, vaguely.  But afterward, when the guests had gone, she said to Maurice, “Why didn’t you tell me about your adventure with the Mortons?”

“He told me,” Edith said, complacently.

“I forgot, I suppose,” Maurice said, carelessly, and lounged off into the house to sit down at the piano—­where lie immediately “forgot” not only the adventure on the river—­but even his dismay at seeing Doctor Nelson!—­who by this time was, of course, quite certain that it was a “rum world.”

That winter—­although he was not conscious of it—­Maurice’s “forgetfulness” in regard to his wife became more and more marked, so it was a year of darkening loneliness for Eleanor.  She was at last on that “desert island”—­which had once seemed so desirable to her;—­she had nothing to interest her except her music (and the quality of her voice was changing, pathetically); furthermore, Maurice rarely asked her to sing, so the passion had gone out of what voice she had!  She didn’t care for books; she didn’t know how to sew; and, except for Mrs. Newbolt, there was no one she wanted to see.  Often, in her empty evenings, while Edith was in her own room studying, she sat by the fire and cried, and broke her heart upon her desire for a child—­“then he would be happy, and stay at home!”

It was a dull house; so dull that Edith made up her mind to get out of it for her next winter at Fern Hill.  When she went home for the Easter vacation, she expressed decided opinions:  “Father, once, ages ago”—­she was sitting on her father’s knee, and tormenting him by trying to take his cigar away from him—­“you got off something about the dinner of herbs and Eleanor’s stalled ox—­”