ing day, a present
came from the aunts--an old box for handkerchiefs. The cover was inlaid
with sea-shells and there was a little looking-glass inside.

Very soon it was all over and then to her own intense surprise she was
alone in the train with Paul. What had she expected? She did not
know--but somehow not this.

They were in a first-class carriage. Paul was doing the thing nobly. He
sat close to her, his broad knee against her dress. How broad his knee
was, a great expanse of black shining cloth. He took her hand and
rested it on the expanse, and, at the touch of the stuff and the throb
of the warm flesh beneath it, she shivered a little and would wish to
have drawn her hand away. He seemed so much larger than she had
expected; from his knee to his high shining white collar was an immense
distance and midway there was a thick gold watch-chain rising and
falling as he breathed. He smelt very faintly of tooth-powder.

But on the whole she was comfortable; only the thin gold ring round her
finger felt strange. Deep in a little pocket inside her blouse was the
ring with the three little pearls.

"I do hope, Maggie darling," he said, "you don't think it strange our
not going somewhere else for our honeymoon. My lads will be expecting
me back--I was kept longer in London than I should have been--by you,
you little witch. My witch now--"

He put his arm round her waist and urged her head towards his coat. But
her hat, her beautiful hat that had cost so much more than she had ever
spent on a hat before, was in the way. It struck into his chin. They
were both uncomfortable and then, thank heaven, the train slowed down;
they were at a station and some one got into their carriage, a stout
man, all newspaper and creases to his trousers. That, in the
circumstances, was a great relief and soon Maggie dozed, seeing the
telegraph wires and the trees like waving hands through a mist of sleep.

As she fell asleep she realised that this was only the second time in
all her life that she had been in a train. Some one bawled in her car
"Skeaton! Skeaton!" and she looked up to find a goat-faced porter
gazing at her through the window. She was on a storm-driven platform,
her husband's arm was through hers, she was being helped into an old
faded cab. Now they were driving down a hill, under a railway-arch,
along a road with villas and trees, trees and villas, and then villas
alone. What a wind! The bare branches were in a frenzy, and