Their Silver Wedding Journey, Part I.

ambition for the captain's table, but they convinced him more easily than he afterwards convinced Mrs. March that the captain's table had become a superstition of the past, and con

t adventure they could out of letting the head steward put them where he liked, and

cept the tremor from her screws. The sound of talking and laughing rose with the clatter of knives and forks and the clash of crockery; the homely smell of the coffee and steak and fish mixed with the spice of the roses and carnations; the stewards ran hither and thither, and a young foolish joy of travel welled up in the elderly hearts of the pair. When the head steward turned out the swivel-chairs where they were to sit they both made an inclination toward the people already at table, as if it had been a company at some far-forgotten table d'hote in the late

nse he could feel that it had been nothing more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting down

ugh she had at once a pretty nose, with a slight upward slant at the point, long eyes under fallen lashes, a straight forehead, not too high, and a mouth which perhaps the exigencies of breakfasting did not allow all its characteristic charm. She had what Mrs. March thought interesting hair, of a dull black, roughly rolled away from her forehead and temples in a fashion not particularly becoming to her, and she had the air of not looking so well as she might if she had chosen. The elderly man on her right, it was easy to see, was

cut short, at once questioned and tolerated the new-comers as he glanced at them. He responded to March's bow almost as decidedly as the nice boy, whose mother he confronted at the other end

r first struggle with the table-stewards, who repeated the order as if to show how fully they had misunderstood it. The gentleman at the head of

n," said the other. "It was

o acquaintance, and this exchange of small pleasantries made every one laugh, e

Mrs. March, "You may not get what

" said the young bride, and then bl

it, and she asked, "Have you ever been on one of th

petted mouth of deprecation, and added, simple-heartedly, "My husband w

eir deference, and in the pauses of his talk with the gentleman at the head of the table, March heard his wife abusing their inexperience to be unsparingly instructive about European tr

e was such a difference in steamers, but when Mrs. March perfervidly assured her that there was all the difference in the world, she submitted and said she suppos

oncile them to the inevitable, "all the rooms on the Norumbia are nice. T

n going west ever since we started, and I feel as if we should reach home in

the ship kept a southerly course they would have no fogs and no icebergs. 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 o

hat 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. The new-comer looked at March as if he knew him, and March saw at a second glance that he was the young fellow who had told him about the mother put off after the start. He asked him whether there was any c

off the Banks when I came out of my room, but it w

sent my husband back for my shawl!" Both the ladies la

ey ought to have fans going there by that pillar

it perhaps no more represents the individual mood than the convention of d

at as that, and then he glanced at the possible advantage of having your own steam-yacht like the one which he said they had just passed, so near that you could see what a good time the people were having on board. He began to speak to the Marches; his talk spread to the young

e sometimes produced in people by a sense of just, or even unjust, superiority; sometimes by serious trouble; sometimes by transient annoyance. The cause was not so deep-seated but Mrs. March, before she rose from her place, believed that she had detected a slant of the young lady's eyes, from under her la

f cold girl would be, though I'm not sure that she is cold. She's interesting, and you could see that he thought so, the more he looked at her; I co

deal, but I sat between you and that young fellow, and yo

tell by the expres

that with you, I give it up. When

out who all those people are

enger list will s