'line
informing him, for her ready identification in the crowd, that she would
be wearing 'my new sprigged-laylock cotton gown,' and Ned gaily
responding that, having married her the morning after her arrival, he
would make a day of it by taking her to the Exhibition. One early summer
afternoon, accordingly, he came from his place of work, and hastened
towards Waterloo Station to meet her. It was as wet and chilly as an
English June day can occasionally be, but as he waited on the platform in
the drizzle he glowed inwardly, and seemed to have something to live for
again.

The 'excursion-train'--an absolutely new departure in the history of
travel--was still a novelty on the Wessex line, and probably everywhere.
Crowds of people had flocked to all the stations on the way up to witness
the unwonted sight of so long a train's passage, even where they did not
take advantage of the opportunity it offered. The seats for the humbler
class of travellers in these early experiments in steam-locomotion, were
open trucks, without any protection whatever from the wind and rain; and
damp weather having set in with the afternoon, the unfortunate occupants
of these vehicles were, on the train drawing up at the London terminus,
found to be in a pitiable condition from their long journey; blue-faced,
stiff-necked, sneezing, rain-beaten, chilled to the marrow, many of the
men being hatless; in fact, they resembled people who had been out all
night in an open boat on a rough sea, rather than inland excursionists
for pleasure. The women had in some degree protected themselves by
turning up the skirts of their gowns over their heads, but as by this
arrangement they were additionally exposed about the hips, they were all
more or less in a sorry plight.

In the bustle and crush of alighting forms of both sexes which followed
the entry of the huge concatenation into the station, Ned Hipcroft soon
discerned the slim little figure his eye was in search of, in the
sprigged lilac, as described. She came up to him with a frightened
smile--still pretty, though so damp, weather-beaten, and shivering from
long exposure to the wind.

'O Ned!' she sputtered, 'I--I--' He clasped her in his arms and kissed
her, whereupon she burst into a flood of tears.

'You are wet, my poor dear! I hope you'll not get cold,' he said. And
surveying her and her multifarious surrounding packages, he noticed that
by the hand she led a toddling child--a little gir