She looked round, and caught her husband's eye.

"What is it?
Have I been bragging?
Well, you understand," she added to the bride, "I've only been over once, a great while ago, and I don't really know anything about it," and they laughed together.

"But I talked so much with people after we decided to go, that I feel as if I had been a hundred times." "I know," said the other lady, with caressing intelligence.

"That is just the way with--" She stopped, and looked at the young man whom the head steward was bringing up to take the vacant place next to March.

He came forward, stuffing his cap into the pocket of his blue serge sack, and smiled down on the company with such happiness in his gay eyes that March wondered what chance at this late day could have given any human creature his content so absolute, and what calamity could be lurking round the corner to take it out of him.