SEASIDE LODGINGS.
Percy Reeve.
"Oh!" said Georgina Honeybee one afternoon, just before Good Friday, "wouldn't it be nice to go away for Easter?"
Now it so happened, that the notion was by no means displeasing to Mr. Honeybee. He longed for a change; the thought of sea-breezes enchanted him. He felt worried with work, and yearned to hie him away somewhere without leaving his address behind him. So it fell out that, almost for the first time in his married existence, he agreed to his wife's proposition without demur—and long before a week was over, he never regretted anything so much in all his life.
With husband and wife of one mind (for a wonder), the preliminaries were speedily arranged. Swineleigh-on-Sea was selected as their destination. In less time than it takes to tell, Georgina was bustling about the house, giving parting instructions to the servants as to what they were to do during her absence (one would have thought she was going away for a year at least). Fanny (Mrs. Honeybee's maid, if you please) was packing-up her mistress's luggage, while John was being abused by his master for having no more idea than a child of how to fill a portmanteau. Everybody was hot and flurried, and the hall-door bell rang four times before it received the attention to which it was accustomed.
Honeybee stood in his shirt-sleeves, and in his dressing-room, while his perspiring and nervous man endeavoured to put boots on the top of clean shirts. Georgina flitted about her bedroom, saying—"Yes; thank you; if you'll put in my tea-gown. Yes; thank you—now the linen. Yes; thank you—no, I shouldn't lay the sponge-bag on the top of my handkerchief case. Yes; thank you—now the braided dress;" and sundry pretty babble of that kind.
At length everything was ready. A four-wheeled cab was called, and Mr. Honeybee, Georgina, and Fanny the maid, were soon driving across London to the railway-station. Their tickets got, the trio proceeded without adventure to Swineleigh, where, when she emerged from the slightly inferior class in which she had travelled, Fanny remarked to her mistress:
"This don't seem half a bad sort of place, mum."
Honeybee was beaming. His face seemed to say: "Ah! I tell you, when I do take it into my head to go out for a holiday with my wife and her maid, I go to the right place, and I have things done properly." Poor man—he little knew.