aside, "Mary! Kill that child!" Late that night he told his wife she
really must do something about Edith: "Fortunately, Eleanor is as
ignorant of Dickens as of 'most everything else. I bet she never read
_Little Dorrit_. But, for God's sake, muzzle that daughter of
yours! ... Mary, you see how he was caught?--the woman's voice."

"Don't call her 'the woman'!"

"Well, vampire. Kit, what do you make of her?"

"I wish I knew what to make of her! I feel sure she is really and truly
_good_. But, oh, Henry, she's so mortal dull! She hasn't a spark of
humor in her."

"'Course not. If she had, she wouldn't have married him. But _he_ has
humor! Better warn her that a short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is
not to have the same taste in jokes! Mary, maybe, her music will hold
him?"

"Maybe," said Mary Houghton, sighing.

"'Consider the stars,'" he quoted, sarcastically; but she took the sting
out of his gibe by saying, very simply:

"Yes, I try to."

"He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he
came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were
fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question
in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew