“DO I look tired and dragged out?” asked the bride of an hour as they drove to the train.
“You look a little tired, a little flushed, a little ashamed, and tremendously interesting. But you may hold my hand.”
“I am ashamed,” and she pushed the upturned hand from her lap and looked out the window.
“But, Light of my Soul, you give us away by those imbecile blushes. You might just as well thrust your head out of the carriage and cry, ‘Behold the bride and groom!’”
She smiled and leaned back, but still looked out. “That’s the horrid feature of a honeymoon. Everybody knows it and everybody looks at you. Is it too late to go back and undo it?”
“What a bloodcurdling thought!”
“And it shouldn’t rain on our wedding-day, little Amos.”
“Of course it rains. These are the tears of countless lovers who lived before the days of Molly Cabot.”
But they left the rain behind them, and farther South, away down in Carolina, they found plenty of sunshine, with green grass and flowers and piny woods.
One of their first diversions on reaching this southern country was to go out with a driver and a pair of horses, but the harvest of pleasure was insufficient. “The conversation of a honeymoon,” observed the bridegroom, “is too exalted for other ears. If we talk as the spirit moves us, the coachman, unless in love himself, may collapse from nausea: so let us be merciful and drive ourselves.”