l
you've had your after-cure in Holland." She was very firm in this, but
she added, "We will stay another night, here, and go to the Hague
tomorrow. Sit down, and let us talk it over. Where were we?"

She lay down on the sofa, and he put a shawl over her. "We were just
starting for Liverpool."

"No, no we weren't! Don't say such things, dearest! I want you to help me
sum it all, up. You think it's been a success, don't you?"

"As a cure?"

"No, as a silver wedding journey?"

"Perfectly howling."

"I do think we've had a good time. I never expected to enjoy myself so
much again in the world. I didn't suppose I should ever take so much
interest in anything. It shows that when we choose to get out of our rut
we shall always find life as fresh and delightful as ever. There is
nothing to prevent our coming any year, now that Tom's shown himself so
capable, and having another silver wedding journey. I don't like to think
of it's being confined to Germany quite."

"Oh, I don't know. We can always talk of it as our German-Silver Wedding
Journey."

"That's true. But nobody would understand nowadays what you meant by
German-silver; it's perfectly gone out. How ugly it was! A sort of greasy
yellowish stuff, always getting worn through; I believe it was made worn
through. Aunt Mary had a castor of it, that I can remember when I was a
child; it went into the kitchen long before I grew up. Would a joke like
that console you for the loss of Italy?"

"It would go far to do it. And as a German-Silver Wedding Journey, it's
certainly been very complete."

"What do you mean?"

"It's given us a representative variety of German cities. First we had
Hamburg, you know, a great modern commercial centre."

"Yes! Go on!"

"Then we had Leipsic, the academic."

"Yes!"

"Then Carlsbad, the supreme type of a German health resort; then
Nuremberg, the mediaeval; then Anspach, the extinct princely capital;
then Wurzburg, the ecclesiastical rococo; then Weimar, for the literature
of a great epoch; then imperial Berlin; then Frankfort, the memory of the
old free city; then Dusseldorf, the centre of the most poignant personal
interest in the world--I don't see how we could have done better, if we'd
planned it all, and not acted from successive impulses."

"It's been grand; it's been perfect! As German-Silver Wedding Journey
it's perfect--it seems as if it had been ordered! But I will never let
you give up Holland! No, we will go this