na and I had not
intended to get married so soon. We were to have been married in the
spring, but that January I received an assignment for a trip through
the South, and I knew it would keep me away until after our wedding
date. I didn't want to postpone the wedding, so I decided, if I could
get Mina's consent, to make my trip our honeymoon. She was at her
parents' home in Canada, and there was no time to lose, and I
telegraphed asking her to come on at once and get married. She was a
brick and consented, and then I was in such a nervous state of
anticipation I was afraid the folks where I was stopping would discover
something was up, so the day before I expected Mina to arrive I ran
over to Jersey to spend the night with my old friend Dr. Shepard, the
minister.

"Well, Mina's train was due at the Grand Central Station early in the
morning, and I had to catch a train from Jersey a little after five
o'clock to meet her. I was afraid I'd oversleep, and I kept awake
nearly all night. Long before the train was due I was down at the
station and took a seat in the waiting room. And what do you suppose I
did?"

"What?" said I.

"Why," said Hubbard, with a cheerful grin, "I fell to thinking so hard
about what was going to happen that I sat there in the station and let
the train I was so afraid to lose come and go without ever hearing it."

Under the sleet-covered tarpaulin, there in the interior of Labrador,
Hubbard and I laughed heartily.

"And was the bride-elect kept waiting?" I asked.

"No," said Hubbard; "I hustled over a couple of miles to another line
and got a train there, and as Mina fortunately didn't arrive as early
as expected, I was in time."

The fire had died down and the darkness was beginning to close in upon
us. I arose to renew the fire, and when the logs had begun to blaze
again, and I had resumed my seat, I saw that the drawn and haggard look
had returned to Hubbard's face, and that he was staring wistfully out
over the fire into the impenetrable gloom.

"What is it, b'y?" I said.

"That was a great trip, Wallace--that southern trip. I want to visit
some of the places again with Mina and live over our honeymoon. And,"
he went on--"yes, I want some more of the good southern cooking. You
ought to eat their cornbread, Wallace!--there's nothing like it
anywhere else in the world. They cook corn meal in a dozen ways, from
corn pone to really delicate dishes. And they know how to cook
chi