thought as yonder bird chasing the catkin down; tomorrow I shall be
married, with a whole summer to make love in, relieved at one bound of
all those uncertainties you acknowledge to, with nothing to do but lie
about on sunny banks with him whom chance sends me, come to the goal of
love without any travelling to get there.' Why, you must acknowledge
this is the perfection of ease."

"But supposing," I said, "chance dealt unkindly to you from your nuptial
urn, supposing the man was not to your liking, or another coveted him?"
To which An answered, with some shrewdness--

"In the first case we should do what we might, being no worse off than
those in your land who had played ill providence to themselves. In the
second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were
too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would
waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle,
and it is allowed us to barter and change a little."

All this was strange enough. I could not but laugh, while An laughed
at the lightest invitation, and thus chatting and deriding each other's
social arrangements we floated idly townwards and presently came out
into the main waterway perhaps a mile wide and flowing rapidly, as
streams will on the threshold of the spring, with brash or waste of
distant beaches riding down it, and every now and then a broken branch
or tree-stem glancing through waves whose crests a fresh wind lifted and
sowed in golden showers in the intervening furrows. The Martians seemed
expert upon the water, steering nimbly between these floating dangers
when they met them, but for the most part hugging the shore where a more
placid stream better suited their fancies, and for a time all went well.