“Oh, that’s all right,” Maurice assured her. “(I wish I hadn’t told him she is older than I am.  Trouble with me is, I always plunk out the truth!) The fellows like ’em young,” he said.  Then he told her who the fellows were:  “I don’t know ’em very well; they’re just boys; not in college.  Younger than I am, except Tom Morton.  Mort’s twenty, and the brainiest man I know.  And Hastings has a bag of jokes—­well, not just for ladies,” said Maurice, grinning, “and you’ll like Dave Brown.  You rake in three girls.  We’ll have a stunning spread, and then go to the theater.”  He caught her in his arms and romped around the room with her, then dropped her into a chair, and watched her wiping away tears of helpless laughter.

“Yes—­I’ll rake in the girls!” she gasped.

She wasn’t very successful in her invitations.  “I asked Rose, but I had to ask her mother, too,” she said; “and one of the teachers at the Medfield school.”

Maurice looked doubtful.  Rose was all right; but the other two?  “Aren’t they somewhat faded flowers?”

“They’re about my age,” Eleanor teased him.  As for Maurice, he thought that it didn’t really matter about the ladies, faded or not; they were Eleanor’s end of the shindy.  “Spring chickens are Mort’s meat,” he said...

The three rather recent acquaintances who were Maurice’s end of the shindy, had all gaped, and then howled, when told that the dinner was to celebrate his marriage.  “I got spliced kind of in a hurry,” he explained; “so I couldn’t have any bachelor blow-out; but my—­my—­my wife, Mrs. Curtis, I mean—­and I, thought we’d have a spree, to show I am an old married man.”

The fellows, after the first amazement, fell on him with all kinds of ragging:  Who was she?  Was she out of baby clothes?  Would she come in a perambulator?

“Shut up!” said the bridegroom, hilariously.  He went home to Eleanor tingling with pride.  “I want you to be perfectly stunning, Star!  Of course you always are; but rig up in your best duds!  I’m going to make those fellows cross-eyed with envy.  I wonder if you could sing, just once, after dinner?  I want them to hear you! (Mr. Houghton will love her voice!)”

Eleanor—­who had stopped counting the minutes of married life now, for, this being the sixth day of bliss, the arithmetic was too much for her—­was as excited about the dinner as he was.  Yet, like him, under the excitement, was a little tremor:  “They will be angry because—­because we eloped!” Any other reason for anger she would not formulate.  Sometimes her anxiety was audible:  “Do you suppose Auntie has written to Mr. Houghton?” And again:  “What will he say?” Maurice always replied, with exuberant indifference, that he didn’t know, and he didn’t care!

“I care, if he is horrid to you!” Eleanor said “He’ll probably say it was wicked to elope?”