such a thing!"

"I was frightened about you. It was so late. I was afraid something had
happened. I came to look for you."

Edith and Johnny looked on aghast; then Edith called out: "Why, Eleanor!
I wouldn't let anything happen to Maurice!"

Maurice, kneeling beside his wife, had put his arms around her and was
soothing her with all sorts of gentlenesses: "Dear, you mustn't worry
so! Nelly, don't cry; why, darling, we were having such a good time, we
never noticed that it was getting late ..."

"You forgot me," Eleanor said; "as long as you had Edith, you never
thought how I might worry!" She hid her face in her hands.

Maurice came back to the wagon; "Edith," he said, in a low voice, "would
you and Johnny mind getting out and walking? I'll bring Eleanor along
later. I'm sorry, but she's--she's tired."

Edith said in a whisper, "'Course not!" Then, without a look behind her
at the crying woman on the log, and the patient, mortified boy bending
over her, she, and the disgusted and more deliberate Johnny, ran down
the road into the twilight. Edith was utterly bewildered. With her
inarticulate consciousness of the impropriety of emotion, naked, _in
public_! was the shyness of a child in meeting a stranger--for that
crying woman was practically a stranger. She wasn't the Bride--silent
and lovely! At Johnny's gate she said, briefly, "'Night!" and went on,
running--running in the dusk. When she reached the house, and found her
father and mother on the east porch, she was breathless, which accounted