on of the house,
the room she most enjoys, that from which it is difficult to keep out
the family, is the one that the man is permitted to call his own, in
which he retains some of the comforts and can indulge some of the habits
of his bachelor days. There is an important truth in this fact with
regard to the sexes, but I do not know what it is.

They were married in October, and went at once to their own house. I
suppose all other days were but a preparation for this golden autumn day
on which we went to church and returned to the wedding-breakfast. I am
sure everybody was happy. Miss Forsythe was so happy that tears were
in her eyes half the time, and she bustled about with an affectation of
cheerfulness that was almost contagious. Poor, dear, gentle lady! I can
imagine the sensations of a peach-tree, in an orchard of trees which
bud and bloom and by-and-by are weighty with yellow fruit, year after
year--a peach-tree that blooms, also, but never comes to fruition, only
wastes its delicate sweetness on the air, and finally blooms less and
less, but feels nevertheless in each returning spring the stir of the
sap and the longing for that fuller life, while all the orchard bursts
into flower, and the bees swarm about the pink promises, and the fruit
sets and slowly matures to lusciousness in the sun of July. I fancy the
wedding, which robbed us all, was hardest for her, for it was in one
sense a finality of her life. Whereas if Margaret had regrets--and deep
sorrow she had in wrenching herself from the little neighborhood, though
she never could have guessed the vacancy she caused by the withdrawal
of her loved presence--her own life was only just beginning, and she was
sustained by the longing which every human soul has for a new career, by
the curiosity and imagination which the traveler feels when he departs
for a land which he desires, and yet dreads to see lest his illusions
should vanish. Margaret was about to take that journey in the world
which Miss Forsythe had dreamed of in her youth, but had never set out
on. There are some who say that those are happiest who keep at home and
content themselves with reading about the lands of the imagination.
But happily the world does not believe this, and indeed would be very
unhappy if it could not try and prove all the possibilities of human
nature, to suffer as well as to enjoy.

I do not know how we fell into the feeling that this marriage was
somehow exceptional and imp