evoured Mrs. Parker's
teas of bread and butter and cream, jam and cake, laid on snow-white
cloth upon trestle table; and watched their flat-pebbled ducks and
drakes skip more or less successfully across the waters.

They had tramped to Croyde, George Ham, Saunton, and all the other
lovely spots, and whistled over the lighthouse wall at Bull Point to be
regaled by tea on a tray, handed over by one of the perfectly charming
family of Howgego, which comprises the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and
his bonny daughter.

All this had been done by stealth.

Creeping about the cottage in stockinged feet at dawn, polishing the
high boots before retiring to bed until they shone again; packing the
haversack, creeping out of the cottage, vaulting the wall to the left
to evade the gate which either jammed or creaked, and away up the steep
incline, also to the left, and to wherever love listed.

Upbraidings at night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and
the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early
morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a
black abyss through the medium of an empty stomach.

She had seized upon every passing moment, wringing the uttermost out of
it that she might have something put by with which to fill in the
blanks of the drear future, the vacuum where should have been a
tumultuously throbbing heart of love, and a pulse of life and passion.

Also did she glean and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners,
memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a
dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea
air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever
new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in the heart museum.

Not a word had she said about the wedding.

Cowardly? Yes, indeed! But if a prisoner were given a bottle of
champagne to drink just before his death by hanging, it's odds on that
instead of merely tasting a few drops he would drink the whole bottle,
and go to his doom with the exultant thought of something nice, anyway,
having happened to cheer him on his final exit.

She simply radiated love, and allowed neither the frequent upbraidings
of her distracted aunt, nor the hourly approach of the fatal day to dim
the sunlight of the hour in hand.

"Never you worry," she said one day, when her aunt had waylaid and
implored her to have her wedding-dress fitted, "We'll pin i