ave gone on a honeymoon preparatory to living happily ever
after?--and that is what befell my tale in Noonoon.

I listen no more to the splendid music of the locomotives as they roar
across the queer old bridge, nor watch the red light flashing from
their coaling doors as they climb the Blue Mountain ascent and fire as
they go. Their far-carrying rumble has been succeeded by the more
thunderous voice of the sea on the rock-walled coast of my native
land.

Four months have elapsed since the wedding in Noonoon, yet Ernest is
still content to let his athletic ambitions remain in abeyance while
he squanders his time in the sweet dalliance of love. Squander, I say;
but on reviewing the expired years, how sanely sweet the youthful
hours we dallied shine from amid the years we toiled, fumed, cursed,
sweated, and strove to step past our brother in the bootless race for
pleasure, opulence, or popularity!

Being able to indulge in the insignia of wealth, even without being
the good fellow he is, Ernest finds it is of little significance that
his hair is "what fond mothers term auburn," while Dawn's triumphs
were assured from the outset. As mistress of a fine town mansion,
with good looks, with smart ideas of dress, and smarter ability to
verbally hold her own in any set, it goes without saying that her
grandmother having "kep' a accommodation" is not remembered against
her to any harmful extent in everyday life, where a large percentage
of folks in all cliques have to survive the knowledge of their
progenitors having been worse things than irreproachable proprietors
and conductors of most exemplary accommodation houses for those who
travel.

As Ada Grosvenor is not a girl in a book but in everyday life, I
cannot record that she has married a man worthy of her. Such an one
would have to be a leader of men--a prime minister, reformer, or other
prominent worker in the cause of humanity--and as these do not abound
in the quiet whirlpools of existence, I can only hope that she does
not drop in for a too impossible noodle, as is frequently the fate of
noble women. "Dora" Eweword would have done very well to discharge the
clodhopping work of her earthly journey--could have made her
bread-and-butter and carried her parcels, but if I can depend on
Andrew's letters, which breathe more heavily of generosity than of
grammar and gracefulness, this eligible and strapping young member of
Noonoon society has been rejected a second time, so