her temples trimly into place. Then she rubbed her face
with a towel, and jumped up to straighten her belt, and run an
investigating finger about the embroidered "turn-down" collar that
finished her blue silk blouse. Finally she handed Jim her new
whisk-broom with a capable air, and presented straight little shoulders
to be brushed.

Jim turned her round and round, whisking and straightening, and
occasionally kissing the tip of a pink ear, or the straight white line
where her hair parted.

"Here, you can't keep that up all night!" Julia suddenly protested,
grabbing the brush. "I'll do you!" But Jim stopped the performance by
suddenly imprisoning girl and whiskbroom in his arms.

"Do you know I think we are going to have great fun!" said he. "You're
such a good little sport, Ju! No nerves and no nonsense about you! It's
such fun to do things with a person who isn't eternally fussing about
heat and cold, and whether she ought to wear her gloves into the
dining-car, and whether any one will guess that she's just married!"

"Oh, I have my nervous moments," Julia confessed, her eyes looking
honestly up into his. "It seems awfully strange and queer, rushing
farther and farther away from home, alone with you!" Her voice sank a
little; she put up her arms and locked them about his neck. "I have to
keep reminding myself that you are just you, Jim," she said bravely,
"who gave me my Browning, and took me to tea at the Pheasant--and then
it all seems right again! And then--such lots of nice people _have_ got
married, and gone away on honeymoons," she ended, argumentatively.

The laughter had gone from Jim's eyes; a look almost shy, almost
ashamed, had taken its place. He kept her as she was for a moment, then
gave her a serious kiss, and they went laughing through the rocking cars
to eat their first dinner together as man and wife. And Jim watched her
as she radiantly settled herself at table, and watched the frown of
childish gravity with which she studied her menu, with some new and
tender emotion stirring at his heart. Life had greater joys in it than
he had ever dreamed, and greater potentialities for sorrow, too. What
was bright in life was altogether more gloriously bright, and what was
dark seemed to touch him more closely; he felt the sorrow of age in the
trembling old man at the table across the aisle, the pathos of youth in
the two young travelling salesmen who chattered so self-confidently over
their meal.

Sever