a busy
railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would have said, 'Oh!' and
they would both have laughed. From that echoing desert the silly words
rose up in widening circles towards the sky, and that night she cried
herself to sleep. Bustle them, my dear boy, bustle them. We all like
each other better the less we think about one another, and the honeymoon
is an exceptionally critical time. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her."

My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of England in
eighteen hundred and--well, never mind the exact date, let us say a
few years ago. I was a shy young man at that time. Many complain of my
reserve to this day, but then some girls expect too much from a man. We
all have our shortcomings. Even then, however, I was not so shy as she.
We had to travel from Lyndhurst in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward
bit of cross-country work in those days.

"It's so fortunate you are going too," said her aunt to me on the
Tuesday; "Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be able to
look after her, and I shan't be anxious."

I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought it. On
the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked two places
for Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not a suspicion of
trouble.

The booking-clerk was an elderly man. He said--

"I've got the box seat, and the end place on the back bench."

I said--

"Oh, can't I have two together?"

He was a kindly-looking old fellow. He winked at me. I wondered all the
way home why he had winked at me. He said--

"I'll manage it somehow."

I said--

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure."

He laid his hand on my shoulder. He struck me as familiar, but
well-intentioned. He said--

"We have all of us been there."

I thought he was alluding to the Isle of Wight. I said--

"And this is the best time of the year for it, so I'm told." It was
early summer time.

He said--"It's all right in summer, and it's good enough in
winter--WHILE IT LASTS. You make the most of it, young 'un;" and he
slapped me on the back and laughed.

He would have irritated me in another minute. I paid for the seats and
left him.

At half-past eight the next morning Minnie and I started for the
coach-office. I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be impertinent,
but because I have forgotten her surname. It must be ten years since
I last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, with those br