“No,” Eleanor said, reddening; “oh no!  I only thought that if—­”

“You are forehanded,” said Mrs. Newbolt, and was silent for almost a minute.  The vision of Eleanor choosing a nursery paper, for little eyes (which might never be born!) to look upon, touched her.  She blinked and swallowed, then said, crossly:  “You’re thinner!  For heaven’s sake don’t lose your figger!  My dear grandmother used to say—­I can see her now, skimmin’ milk pans, and then runnin’ her finger round the rim and lickin’ it.  She was a Dennison.  I’ve heard her say to her daughters, I’d rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger’; and my dear grandfather—­your great-grandfather—­wore knee breeches; he said—­well, I suppose you’d be shocked if I told you what he said?  He said, ’If a gal loses one, she—­’ No; I guess I won’t tell you.  Old maids are so refined! He wasn’t an old maid, I can tell you!  I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo.  Have you a cook?”

Eleanor, gasping with the effort to keep up with the torrent, said, “Yes; but she doesn’t know how to do things.”

Mrs. Newbolt raised pudgy and protesting hands.  “Get somebody who can do things!  Come here, little Bingo!  Eleanor, if you don’t feed that boy, you’ll lose him.  I remember puffectly well hearin’ my dear father say, ‘If you want to catch a man’s heart, set a trap in his stomach.’  Bingo!  Bingo!” (The little dog, standing on his hind legs, superciliously accepted a chocolate drop—­then ran back to Eleanor.) “Maurice will be a man one of these days, and a man can’t live on love; he wants ’wittles and drink.’  When I married your uncle Thomas, my dear father said, ’Feed him—­and amuse him.’  So I made up my mind on my weddin’ day to have good food and be entertainin’.  And I must say I did it!  I fed your dear uncle, and I talked to him, until he died.”  She paused, and looked at the paper on the wall.  “I hope the Lord will send you children; it will help you hold the boy—­and perhaps you’ll be more efficient!  You’ll have to be, or they’ll die.  Get a cook.”  Then, talking all the way downstairs, she trundled off, in angry, honest, forgiving anxiety for her niece’s welfare.

Eleanor, planning for the little sunny room, felt bruised by that bludgeon word—­which, as it happened, was not accurate, for Maurice, by this time, had gained a maturity of thought and patience that put him practically out of boyhood.  When Eleanor repeated her caller’s remarks to him, she left that one word out; “Auntie implied,” she said, “that you wouldn’t love me, if you didn’t have fancy cooking.”

“She’s a peach on cooking herself,” declared Maurice; “but, as far as my taste goes, I don’t give a hoot for nightingales’ tongues on toast.”