It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun.  And there is generally an afterglow.  In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life was touched with a certain novelty.  There was a new runabout and a horse which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her husband.  On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long excursions, into the country—­until the golf season began, when the lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed.  But after a while certain male competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued.  Sunday, after his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field day.  Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold Howard taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will be dug up and transplanted.  The soil was congenial.  He played poker on the train with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them famously.  And it was to him an enigma—­when occasionally he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon such trivial matters—­why Honora was not equally congenial with the wives.

There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many stories could be written:  people with loves and fears and anxieties and joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.  There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents —­like Honora’s—­came from afar, from family centres formed in a social period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there were—­inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the survival of the fittest—­commercial calamities, and the heartrending search for new employment.

Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners.  And Honora returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman’s Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion.  In the evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.  Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining in Rivington the rest of their lives!

Honora was kind to these ladies.  As we know, she was kind to everybody.  She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in fashionable restaurants.  Their range of discussion included babies and Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee.  It would be interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever to depart.  The time and manner of this departure were matters to be determined in the future.