propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
question. You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
early."

"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.

"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
reproachfully; "I'd die. And then I am always having to get new cooks for
you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs. Men have
no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just wish you had
to go to those horrid intelligence offices. You wouldn't stay in
Rivington ten days. And all the good cooks drink."

Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
somebody. The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
the country.

It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun. And there is generally an
afterglow. In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
was touched with a certain novelty. There was a new runabout and a horse
which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
husband. On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed. But after a while certain male
competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued. Sunday, after