his song, "The Wearing of the Grane," that Mr. O'Rourke, the
punch being all gone, withdrew unobserved, and went in quest of Mrs.
O'Rourke--with what success the reader knows.

*****

According to the love-idyl of the period, when Laura and Charles
Henry, after unheard-of obstacles, are finally united, all cares and
tribulations and responsibilities slip from their sleek backs like
Christian's burden. The idea is a pretty one, theoretically, but, like
some of those models in the Patent Office at Washington, it fails to
work. Charles Henry does not go on sitting at Laura's feet and reading
Tennyson to her forever: the rent of the cottage by the sea falls due
with prosaic regularity; there are bakers, and butchers, and babies, and
tax-collectors, and doctors, and undertakers, and sometimes gentlemen
of the jury, to be attended to. Wedded life is not one long amatory poem
with recurrent rhymes of love and dove, and kiss and bliss. Yet when
the average sentimental novelist has supplied his hero and heroine with
their bridal outfit and arranged that little matter of the marriage
certificate, he usually turns off the gas, puts up his shutters, and
saunters off with his hands in his pockets, as if the day's business
were over. But we, who are honest dealers in real life and disdain to
give short weight, know better. The business is by no means over; it is
just begun. It is not Christian throwing off his pack for good and all,
but Christian taking up a load heavier and more difficult than any he
has carried.

If Margaret Callaghan, when she meditated matrimony, indulged in any
roseate dreams, they were quickly put to flight. She suddenly found
herself dispossessed of a quiet, comfortable home, and face to face with
the fact that she had a white elephant on her hands. It is not likely
that Mr. O'Rourke assumed precisely the shape of a white elephant to her
mental vision; but he was as useless and cumbersome and unmanageable as
one.

Margaret and Larry's wedding tour did not extend beyond Mrs.
Finnigan's establishment, where they took two or three rooms and set up
housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who was a tidy housewife, kept
the floor of her apartments as white as your hand, the tin plates on
the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and the cooking-stove as
neat as the machinery on a Sound steamer. When she was not rubbing the
stove with lamp-black she was cooking upon it some savory dish to tempt
the palate