see you, Ethel. But I was sure that you would come as soon
as you knew I wanted you."

"Oh, indeed, Dora, you must not make yourself too sure of such a thing
as that! I really came to London to get some new gowns. I have been
shopping all morning."

"I thought you had come in answer to my letter. I was expecting you.
That is the reason I did not go out with Basil."

"Don't you expect a little too much, Dora? I have a great many interests
and duties----"

"I used to be first."

"When a girl marries she is supposed to----"

"Please don't talk nonsense. Basil does not take the place of everyone
and everything else. I think we are often very tired of each other. This
morning, when I was telling him what trouble I had with my maid, Julia,
he actually yawned. He tried to smother the yawn, but he could not, and
of course the honeymoon is over when your bridegroom yawns in your face
while you are telling him your troubles."

"I should think you would be glad it was over. Of all the words in the
English language 'honeymoon' is the most ridiculous and imbecile."

"I suppose when you get married you will take a honeymoon."

"I shall have more sense and more selfishness. A girl could hardly
enter a new life through a medium more trying. I am sure it would
need long-tested affections and the sweetest of tempers to make it
endurable."

"I cannot imagine what you mean."

"I mean that all traveling just after marriage is a great blunder.
Traveling makes the sunniest disposition hasty and peevish, for women
don't love changes as men do. Not one in a thousand is seen at her best
while traveling, and the majority are seen at their very worst. Then
there is the discomfort and desolation of European hotels--their
mysterious methods and hours, and the ways of foreigners, which are not
as our ways."

"Don't talk of them, Ethel. They are dreadful places, and such queer
people."

"Add to these troubles ignorance of language and coinage, the utter
weariness of railway travel, the plague of customs, the trunk that
won't pack, the trains that won't wait, the tiresome sight-seeing,
the climatic irritability, broiling suns, headache, loneliness,
fretfulness--consequently the pitiful boredom of the new husband."

"Ethel, what you say is certainly too true. I am weary to death of it
all. I want to be at Newport with mother, who is having a lovely time
there. Of course Basil is very nice to me, and yet there have been
little tiffs a