was well sprinkled with gray. Isabel was thirty-nine, and
the parting of her hair had thinned and retreated; but she managed to
give it an effect of youthful abundance by combing it low down upon her
forehead, and roughing it there with a wet brush. By gaslight she was
still very pretty; she believed that she looked more interesting, and she
thought Basil's gray moustache distinguished. He had grown stouter; he
filled his double-breasted frock coat compactly, and from time to time he
had the buttons set forward; his hands were rounded up on the backs, and
he no longer wore his old number of gloves by two sizes; no amount of
powder or manipulation from the young lady in the shop would induce them
to go on. But this did not matter much now, for he seldom wore gloves at
all. He was glad that the fashion suffered him to spare in that
direction, for he was obliged to look somewhat carefully after the
out-goes. The insurance business was not what it had been, and though
Basil had comfortably established himself in it, he had not made money.
He sometimes thought that he might have done quite as well if he had gone
into literature; but it was now too late. They had not a very large
family: they had a boy of eleven, who took after his father, and a girl
of nine, who took after the boy; but with the American feeling that their
children must have the best of everything, they made it an expensive
family, and they spent nearly all Basil earned.

The narrowness of their means, as well as their household cares, had kept
them from taking many long journeys. They passed their winters in Boston,
and their summers on the South Shore, cheaper than the North Shore, and
near enough for Basil to go up and down every day for business; but they
promised themselves that some day they would revisit certain points on
their wedding journey, and perhaps somewhere find their lost second-youth
on the track. It was not that they cared to be young, but they wished the
children to see them as they used to be when they thought themselves very
old; and one lovely afternoon in June they started for Niagara.

It had been very hot for several days, but that morning the east wind
came in, and crisped the air till it seemed to rustle like tinsel, and
the sky was as sincerely and solidly blue as if it had been chromoed.
They felt that they were really looking up into the roof of the world,
when they glanced at it; but when an old gentleman hastily kissed a young