But Maurice only agreed, as earnestly: "No! Imagine Eleanor washing
dishes! But I don't want you to stay all night, Buster," he told her,
candidly; then he paused in his work, flung up his arms with a great
breath of joyousness. "Great Scott!" he said. "I don't see why gypsies
_ever_ die!"

Edith felt an answering throb of ecstasy. "Oh, Maurice, I wish you and
I were gypsies!" she said. She did not in the least resent his candor
as to her presence during the week of camping; though just before they
started her feelings really were a little hurt: it happened that in
trying to help Eleanor pack, she was close enough to her to notice a
thread on her hair; instantly, she put out a friendly and officious
thumb and finger to remove it--at which Eleanor winced, and said,
"_Ouch!_"

"I thought it was a white thread," Edith explained, abashed.

Eleanor said, sharply, "Please don't touch my hair!" which conveyed
nothing to Edith except that the Bride--who instantly ran up to her
room--"was mad." When she came back (the "thread" having disappeared)
Edith was full of apologies.

"Awfully sorry I mussed your hair," she said.

She went up the mountain with them, walking on the hard grades, and
trying to placate Eleanor by keeping a hand on Lion's bridle, so that
she might feel sure he wouldn't run away. When at last, rather blown and
perspiring, they reached the camp, Eleanor got out of the wagon and said
she wanted to "help"; but Edith, still contrite about the "thread,"
said: "Not I'm not going to have you hurt your lovely hands!" In the