nly proposed some kind of eggs,--fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled
eggs, boiled eggs, or omelette.

"O, you're sure, dearest, that this isn't a vision of fairy-land, which
will vanish presently, and leave us empty and forlorn?" plaintively
murmured Isabel, as the menial train reappeared, bearing the supper they
had ordered and set it smoking down.

Suddenly a look of apprehension dawned upon her face, and she let fall
her knife and fork. "You don't think, Basil," she faltered, "that they
could have found out we're a bridal party, and that they're serving us
so magnificently because--because--O, I shall be miserable every moment
we're here!" she concluded desperately.

She looked, indeed, extremely wretched for a woman with so much broiled
white-fish on her plate, and such a banquet array about her; and her
husband made haste to reassure her. "You're still demoralized, Isabel,
by our sufferings at the Albany depot, and you exaggerate the blessings
we enjoy, though I should be sorry to undervalue them. I suspect it's
the custom to use people well at this hotel; or if we are singled
out for uncommon favor, I think: I can explain the cause. It has been
discovered by the register that we are from Boston, and we are merely
meeting the reverence, affection, and homage which the name everywhere
commands!

"It 's our fortune to represent for the time being the intellectual and
moral virtue of Boston. This supper is not a tribute to you as a bride,
but as a Bostonian."

It was a cheap kind of raillery, to be sure, but it served. It kindled
the local pride of Isabel to self-defense, and in the distraction of the
effort she forgot her fears; she returned with renewed appetite to the
supper, and in its excellence they both let fall their dispute,--which
ended, of course, in Basil's abject confession that Boston was the
best place in the world, and nothing but banishment could make him live
elsewhere,--and gave themselves up, as usual, to the delight of being
just what and where they were. At last, the natural course brought
them to the strawberries, and when the fifth waiter approached from the
corner of the table at which he stood, to place the vase near them, he
did not retire at once, but presently asked if they were from the West.

Isabel smiled, and Basil answered that they were from the East.

He faltered at this, as if doubtful of the result if he went further,
but took heart, then, and asked, "Don't you think this i