Doubtless, if they cared to search, they could find him there now.
"A bench in the Common, indeed!" stormed Billy, as she and Bertram hurried down the wide stone steps.

"Uncle William--on a bench!" "But surely now, dear," ventured her husband, "you'll come home and get your dinner!" Billy turned indignantly.
"And leave Uncle William on a bench in the Common?
Indeed, no! Why, Bertram, you wouldn't, either," she cried, as she turned resolutely toward one of the entrances to the Common.
And Bertram, with the "eyes all shining" still before him, could only murmur: "No, of course not, dear!" and follow obediently where she led.
Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a delightful hour for a walk.

The sun had almost set, and the shadows lay long across the grass.
The air was cool and unusually bracing for a day so early in September.
But all this was lost on Bertram.

Bertram did not wish to take a walk.
He was hungry.

He wanted his dinner; and he wanted, too, his old home with his new wife flitting about the rooms as he had pictured this first evening together.