hen you come back from a holiday to a sodden and monstrous London,
it is best to be welcomed by something young--by a creature that is
convinced that it has been enjoying itself, and that convinces you as
well, although you can't for the life of you understand the details.
Why should anything enjoy itself or anything else in this Cimmerian
gloom, while away over there the great Alpine peaks are white against
the blue, and otherwhere the music of a hundred seas mixes with their
thunder on a thousand shores? Why come home?

But when we do and find that nothing particular has happened, and that
there's a card for us on the mantelpiece, how stuffy are our welcomers,
and how well they tone into the surrounding grey when they are elderly
and respectable? It is different when we find that, from their point of
view, it is we that have been the losers by our absence from all the
great and glorious fun the days have been made of while we were away
on a mistaken and deluded continent, far from this delectable human
ant-hill--this centre and climax of Life with a capital letter. But
then, when this is so, they have to be young, as Sally was.

The ex-honeymooners came back to jubilant records of that young lady's
experience during the five weeks of separation. She listened with
impatience to counter records of adventures abroad, much preferring to
tell of her own at home. Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick acquiesced in the _role_
of listeners, and left the rostrum to Sally after they had been revived
with soup, and declined cutlets, because they really had had plenty to
eat on the way. The rostrum happened to be a hassock on the hearthrug,
before the little bit of fire that wasn't at all unwelcome, because
September had set in quite cold already, and there was certain to be a
warm Christmas if it went on like this, and it would be very unhealthy.

"And oh, do you know"--thus Sally, after many other matters had been
disposed of--"there has been such an awful row between Tishy and her
mother about Julius Bradshaw?" Sally is serious and impressed; doesn't
see the comic side, if there is one. Her mother felt that if there was
to be a volley of indignation discharged at Mrs. Wilson for her share
in the row, she herself, as belonging to the class mother, might feel
called on to support her, and was reserved accordingly.

"I suppose Laetitia wants to marry Mr. Bradshaw. Is that it?"

"Of course that's it! He hasn't proposed, because he's promised no