The little tinge of discontent, which had colored their sentiment of return faded now in the kindly light of home.  Their holiday was over, to be sure, but their bliss had but began; they had entered upon that long life of holidays which is happy marriage.  By the time dinner was ended they were both enthusiastic at having got back, and taking their aunt between them walked up and down the parlor with their arms round her massive waist, and talked out the gladness of their souls.

Then Basil said he really must run down to the office that afternoon, and he issued all aglow upon the street.  He was so full of having been long away and of having just returned, that he unconsciously tried to impart his mood to Boston, and the dusty composure of the street and houses, as he strode along, bewildered him.  He longed for some familiar face to welcome him, and in the horse-car into which he stepped he was charmed to see an acquaintance.  This was a man for whom ordinarily he cared nothing, and whom he would perhaps rather have gone out upon the platform to avoid than have spoken to; but now he plunged at him with effusion, and wrung his hand, smiling from ear to ear.

The other remained coldly unaffected, after a first start of surprise at his cordiality, and then reviled the dust and heat.  “But I’m going to take a little run down to Newport, to-morrow, for a week,” he said.  “By the way, you look as if you needed a little change.  Aren’t you going anywhere this summer?”

“So you see, my dear,” observed Basil, when he had recounted the fact to Isabel at tea, “our travels are incommunicably our own.  We had best say nothing about our little jaunt to other people, and they won’t know we’ve been gone.  Even if we tried, we couldn’t make our wedding-journey theirs.”

She gave him a great kiss of recompense and consolation.  “Who wants it,” she demanded, “to be Their Wedding Journey?”

NIAGARA REVISITED, TWELVE YEARS AFTER THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY.

Life had not used them ill in this time, and the fairish treatment they had received was not wholly unmerited.  The twelve years past had made them older, as the years must in passing.  Basil was now forty-two, and his moustache was well sprinkled with gray.  Isabel was thirty-nine, and the parting of her hair had thinned and retreated; but she managed to give it an effect of youthful abundance by combing it low down upon her forehead, and roughing it there with a wet brush.  By gaslight she was still very pretty; she believed that she looked more interesting, and she thought Basil’s gray moustache distinguished.  He had grown stouter; he filled his double-breasted frock coat compactly, and from time to time he had the buttons set forward; his hands were rounded up on the backs, and he no longer wore his old number of gloves by two sizes; no amount of powder or manipulation from the young lady in the shop would induce them