disaster that only made their present fortune more prosperous.  The city ceased about them, and they walked on up the street, the first man and first woman in the garden of the new-made earth.  As they were both very conscious people, they recognized in themselves some sense of this, and presently drolled it away, in the opulence of a time when every moment brought some beautiful dream, and the soul could be prodigal of its bliss.

“I think if I had the naming of the animals over again, this morning, I shouldn’t call snakes ‘snakes’; should you, Eve?” laughed Basil in intricate acknowledgment of his happiness.

“O no, Adam; we’d look out all the most graceful euphemisms in the newspapers, and we wouldn’t hurt the feelings of a spider.”

II.  MIDSUMMER-DAY’S DREAM.

They had waited to see Leonard, in order that they might learn better how to find his house in the country; and now, when they came in upon him at nine o’clock, he welcomed them with all his friendly heart.  He rose from the pile of morning’s letters to which he had but just sat down; he placed them the easiest chairs; he made a feint of its not being a busy hour with him, and would have had them look upon his office, which was still damp and odorous from the porter’s broom, as a kind of down-town parlor; but after they had briefly accounted to his amazement for their appearance then and there, and Isabel had boasted of the original fashion in which they had that morning seen New York, they took pity on him, and bade him adieu till evening.

They crossed from Broadway to the noisome street by the ferry, and in a little while had taken their places in the train on the other side of the water.

“Don’t tell me, Basil,” said Isabel, “that Leonard travels fifty miles every day by rail going to and from his work!”

“I must, dearest, if I would be truthful.”

“Then, darling, there are worse things in this world than living up at the South End, aren’t there?” And in agreement upon Boston as a place of the greatest natural advantages, as well as all acquirable merits, with after talk that need not be recorded, they arrived in the best humor at the little country station near which the Leonards dwelt.

I must inevitably follow Mrs. Isabel thither, though I do it at the cost of the reader, who suspects the excitements which a long description of the movement would delay.  The ladies were very old friends, and they had not met since Isabel’s return from Europe and renewal of her engagement.  Upon the news of this, Mrs. Leonard had swallowed with surprising ease all that she had said in blame of Basil’s conduct during the rupture, and exacted a promise from her friend that she should pay her the first visit after their marriage.  And now that they had come together, their only talk; was of husbands, whom they viewed in every light to which husbands could be turned,