“That’s easy; anything in petticoats will answer as a peg for a man (we are the idealizing sex) to hang his heart on.  Then, there’s her music—­and her pathos.  For she is pathetic, Kit?”

But Mary Houghton shook her head:  “It is Maurice who is pathetic—­my poor Maurice!...”

When they went down to the east porch, with its great white columns, and its broad steps leading into Mrs. Houghton’s gay and fragrant garden, they found Edith there before them—­sitting on the top step, her arms around her knees, her worshiping eyes fixed on the Bride.  Edith had nothing to say; it was enough to look at the “bridal couple,” as the kitchen had named them.  When her father and mother appeared, she did manage, in the momentary bustle of rising and offering chairs, to say to Maurice: 

“Oh, isn’t she lovely!  Oh, Maurice, let’s go out behind the barn after supper and talk!  Maurice, did she bring her harp?  I want to see her play on it!  I saw her wedding ring,” she ended, in an ecstatic whisper.

“She doesn’t play on the harp; she plays on the piano.  Did you twig her hair?” Maurice whispered back; “it’s like black down!”

Edith was speechless with adoration; she wished, passionately, that Maurice would put his coat down for the Bride to step on, like Sir Walter Raleigh! “for she is a Queen!” Edith thought:  then Maurice pulled one of her pigtails and she kicked him—­and after that she was forgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hot day, and that the strawberries needed rain—­but Eleanor hoped there wouldn’t be a thunderstorm.

“They have to say things, I suppose,” Edith reflected, patiently:  “but after supper, Maurice and I will talk.”  So she bore with her father and mother, who certainly tried to be conversational.  The Bride, Edith noticed, was rather silent, and Maurice, though grown up to the extent of being married, hadn’t much to say—­but once he winked at Edith and again tried to pull her hair,—­so she knew that he, also, was patient.  She was too absorbed to return the wink.  She just stared at Eleanor.  She only dared to speak to her once; then, breathlessly:  “I—­I’m going to go to your school, when I’m sixteen.”  It was as if she looked forward to a pilgrimage to a shrine!  It was impossible not to see the worship in her face; Eleanor saw her smile made Edith almost choke with bliss.  But, like herself, the Bride had nothing to say.  Eleanor just sat in sweet, empty silence, and watched Maurice, twisting old Rover’s ears, and answering Mrs. Houghton’s maternal questions about his winter underclothing and moths; she caught that wink at Edith, and the occasional broad grin when Mrs. Houghton scolded him for some carelessness, and the ridiculous gesture of tearing his hair when she said he was a scamp to have forgotten this or that.  Looking at the careless youth of him, she laughed to herself for sheer joy in the beauty of it!