our wraps, glances of triumphant pity
indescribable.

"Weddin' party, zur," explained the guard, touching his cap to our
friend. "Jus' come down in fly." They looked to us a good deal more as
if they were just going up in a "fly." The train shrieked into the
station, and we were soon rushing over the road to New Haven, from
which, in an evil moment, we had planned to cross the Channel. There was
little new or strange in the picture seen from our window. The cottages
were now of a dull, clay color, instead of the dingy red we had observed
before, as though they had been erected in sudden need, without waiting
for the burning of the bricks. There were brick-yards all along the way,
answering a vexed question in my mind as to where all the bricks came
from which were used so entirely in town and village here, in the
absence of the wood so plentiful with us. The canals added much to the
beauty of the landscape, winding through the meadows as if they were
going to no particular place, and were in no haste to reach their
destination. They turned aside for a clump of willows or a mound of
daisy-crowned earth; they went quite out of their way to peep into the
back doors of a village, and, in fact, strolled along in a lazy,
serpentine manner that would have crazed the proprietor of a Yankee
canal boat.

It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our
fellow-passengers along the way, the blissful couple among them.
Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we
need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy
little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not
inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in
England,--high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or
drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in
architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead
of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door
of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a
home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took
possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below,
beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little
French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf.
Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a
hand-breadth here, widene