was anxious only as to the effect of the inevitable reproaches upon Eleanor.  Their five horrid minutes of waiting in the parlor for Mrs. Newbolt’s ponderous step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo’s dashing, with ear-piercing barks, into the room:  Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of bookcases full of expensively bound and unread classics.

“How have you stood it?” he said to his wife; adding, under his breath, “If she’s nasty to you, I’ll wring her neck!”

She was very nasty.  “I’m not a party to it,” Mrs. Newbolt said; she sat, panting, on a deeply cushioned sofa, and her wheezy voice came through quivering double chins; her protruding pale eyes snapped with anger.  “I shall tell you exactly what I think of you, Eleanor, for, as my dear mother used to say, if I have a virtue it is candor; I think you are a puffect fool.  As for Mr. Curtis, I no more thought of protectin’ him than I would think of protectin’ a baby in a perambulator from its nursemaid!  Bingo was sick at his stomach this mornin’.  You’ve ruined the boy’s life.”  Eleanor cringed, but Maurice was quite steady: 

“We will not discuss it, if you please.  I will merely say that I dragged Eleanor into it; I made her marry me.  She refused me repeatedly.  Come, Eleanor.”

He rose, but Mrs. Newbolt, getting heavily on to her small feet, and talking all the time, walked over to the doorway and blocked their retreat.  “You needn’t think I’ll do anything for you!” she said to her niece; “I shall write to Mr. Houghton and tell him so.  I shall tell him he isn’t any more disgusted with this business than I am.  And you can take Bingo with you!”

“I came to get him,” Eleanor said, faintly.

“Come, Eleanor,” Maurice said; and Mrs. Newbolt, puffing and talking, had to make way for them.  As they went out of the door she called, angrily: 

“Here!  Stop!  I want to give Bingo a chocolate drop!”

They didn’t stop.  In the street on the way to Bingo’s new home, Eleanor, holding her little dog in her arms, was blind with tears, but Maurice effervesced into extravagant ridicule.  His opinion of Mrs. Newbolt, her parlor, her ponderosity, and her missing g’s, exhausted his vocabulary of opprobrious adjectives; but Eleanor was silent, just putting up a furtive handkerchief to wipe her eyes.  It was dark, and he drew her hand through his arm and patted it.

“Don’t worry, Star.  Uncle Henry is white!  She can write to him all she wants to!  I’m betting that we’ll get an invitation to come right up to Green Hill.”

She said nothing, but he knew she was trembling.  As they entered Mrs. O’Brien’s alley, they paused where it was dark enough, halfway between gaslights, for a man to put his arm around his wife’s waist and kiss her. (Bingo growled.)