When we had cooled down to the point of speech, I was surprised to find that I had been expected, that Bertha knew I was coming.  When Mary Phillips had left me that morning to prepare my breakfast, she had sent a message to Bertha, and then she had detained me until she thought it had been received and Bertha was prepared to meet me.

“I did not want any slips or misses,” she said, when she explained the matter to me afterward.  “I don’t want to say anything about your personal appearance, Mr. Rockwell, but there are plenty of servants in London who, if they hadn’t had their orders, would shut the door in the face of a much less wild-eyed person than you were, sir, that morning.”

Bertha and I were married in London, and two weeks afterward we returned to America in the new ship Glaucus, commanded by Captain Guy Chesters and his wife.

Our marriage in England instead of America was largely due to the influence of Mary Phillips, who thought it would be much safer and more prudent for us to be married before we again undertook the risks of a sea-voyage.

“Nobody knows what may happen on the ocean,” she said; “but if you’re once fairly married, that much is accomplished, anyway.”

Our choice of a sailing-vessel in which to make the passage was due in a great part to our desire to keep company as long as possible with Captain Chesters and his wife, to whom we truly believed we owed each other.

When we reached New York, and Bertha and I were about to start for the Catskill Mountains, where we proposed to spend the rest of the summer, we took leave of Captain Guy and his wife with warmest expressions of friendship, with plans for meeting again.

Everything seemed to have turned out in the best possible way.

We had each other, and Mary Phillips had some one to manage.

We should have been grieved if we had been obliged to leave her without occupation.

At the moment of parting I drew her aside.  “Mary,” I said, “we have had some strange experiences together, and I shall never forget them.”

“Nor shall I, sir,” she answered.  “Some of them were so harrowing and close-shaved, and such heart-breaking disappointments I never had.  The worst of all was when you threw that rope clean over our ship without holding on to your end of it.  I had been dead sure that the rope was going to bring us all together.”

“That was a terrible mishap,” I answered; “what did Bertha think of it?”

“Bless my soul!” ejaculated Mary Phillips; “she wasn’t on deck, and she never knew anything about it.  When I am nursing up a love match I don’t mention that sort of thing.”

THE BAKER OF BARNBURY.

A CHRISTMAS STORY.

It was three days before Christmas, and the baker of the little village of Barnbury sat in the room behind his shop.  He was a short and sturdy baker, a good fellow, and ordinarily of a jolly demeanor, but this day he sat grim in his little back room.