break the news gently to his
parents, their nerves could not have been more intimately wrought upon by
his hazardous behavior. Still, as they had their tickets for New York,
and he was going out on a merely local train,--to Brookline, I believe,
they could not, even in their anxiety, repress a feeling of contempt for
his unambitious destination.

They were already as completely cut off from local associations and
sympathies as if they were a thousand miles and many months away from
Boston. They enjoyed the lonely flaring of the gas-jets as a gust of wind
drew through the station; they shared the gloom and isolation of a man
who took a seat in the darkest corner of the room, and sat there with
folded arms, the genius of absence. In the patronizing spirit of
travellers in a foreign country they noted and approved the vases of
cut-flowers in the booth of the lady who checked packages, and the pots
of ivy in her windows. "These poor Bostonians," they said; "have some
love of the beautiful in their rugged natures."

But after all was said and thought, it was only eight o'clock, and they
still had an hour to wait.

Basil grew restless, and Isabel said, with a subtile interpretation of
his uneasiness, "I don't want anything to eat, Basil, but I think I know
the weaknesses of men; and you had better go and pass the next half-hour
over a plate of something indigestible."

This was said 'con stizza', the least little suggestion of it; but Basil
rose with shameful alacrity. "Darling, if it's your wish--"

"It's my fate, Basil," said Isabel.

"I'll go," he exclaimed, "because it isn't bridal, and will help us to
pass for old married people."

"No, no, Basil, be honest; fibbing isn't your forte: I wonder you went
into the insurance business; you ought to have been a lawyer. Go because
you like eating, and are hungry, perhaps, or think you may be so before
we get to New York.

"I shall amuse myself well enough here!"

I suppose it is always a little shocking and grievous to a wife when she
recognizes a rival in butchers'-meat and the vegetables of the season.
With her slender relishes for pastry and confectionery and her dainty
habits of lunching, she cannot reconcile with the idea (of) her husband's
capacity for breakfasting, dining, supping, and hot meals at all hours of
the day and night--as they write it on the sign-boards of barbaric
eating-houses. But isabel would have only herself to blame if she had not
perceived