"She monopolized the conversation to-night," Eleanor said; "Maurice, it is very improper for her to keep talking all the time about that horrid woman!"
The sharpness of his agreement made her look at him in surprise. "She _mustn't_ talk about Mrs. Dale!" he said, angrily.
"I don't know. I think so; didn't Edith call her that? Well, anyway, she mustn't keep talking about her!"
His irritation was so marked, that Eleanor's heart warmed; but she said, wearily, "I'll be glad myself when she graduates."
Edith, reflecting upon her first dinner party, wished Johnny had seen her, all dressed up. Then she pondered the possibilities of her allowance: If she was "going out," oughtn't she to have a real evening dress? But this daring thought faded very soon, for there didn't seem to be any dinner parties ahead. Mrs. Newbolt's supper table was, as Maurice said, sarcastically, the extent of the "Curtises' social whirl"--a fact which did not trouble him in the least! He had his own social whirl. He had made a man-circle for himself; some of the fellows in the office were his sort, he told Edith, and it was evident that their bachelor habits appealed to him, for he dined out frequently; and when he did, he was careful not to tell Eleanor where he was going, because once or twice, when he had told her, she had called up the club or house on the telephone about midnight to inquire if "Mr. Curtis had started home?" ... "I was worried about you, it was so late," she defended herself against his irritated mortification. He used to report these stag parties to Edith, telling her some of the stories he had heard; it didn't occur to him to tell any stories to Eleanor, because, as Henry Houghton had once said, Maurice and his wife didn't "have the same taste in jokes." When Edith chuckled over this or that witticism (or frowned at any opinion contrary to Maurice's opinion!) Eleanor sat in unsmiling silence. It was about this time Maurice fell into the way of saying "we" to Edith: "We" will have tea in the garden; "we" will put in a lot of bulbs on each side of the brick path; "we" will go down to the square and hear the election returns. Occasionally he remembered to say, "Why don't you come along, Eleanor?"