I have begun my voluminous farewells. I have kissed them all round once, and am beginning again. How can one make up one's mind where to stop? with whom to end? "Never you marry, Barbara!" say I, in a sobbing whisper, as I clasp her in my last embrace, greatly distorting my new bonnot, "it is _so_ disagreeable!" We are off, followed by a tornado of shoes--one, aimed with dexterous violence by that unlucky Bobby, goes nigh to cut the bridegroom's left eye open, as he waves his good-byes. As we trot smartly away, I turn round in the carriage and look at them through my tears. There they all are! After all, what a nice-looking family! Even Tou Tou! there is something pretty about her, and standing as she is now, her legs look quite nice and thick. * * * * * We reach Dover before dinner-time. Sir Roger has gone out to speak to the courier who meets us there. I am left alone in our great stiff sitting-room at the Lord Warden. Instantly I rush to the writing-materials. "What, writing already?" says my husband, reëntering, and coming over with a smile toward me. "Have you forgotten any of your finery?" "No, no!" cry I, impulsively, spreading both hands over the sheet; "do not look! you must not look!" "Do you think I _should_?" he says, reproachfully, turning quickly away. "But you may," cry I, with one of my sudden useless remorses, holding out the note to him. "Do! I should like you to!--I do not know why I said it!--I was only sending them a line, just to tell them how _dreadfully_ I missed them all!" CHAPTER X. I have been married a week. A _week_ indeed! a week in the sense in which the creation of the world occupied a week!--seven geological ages, perhaps, but _not_ seven days. We have been to Brussels, to Antwerp, to Cologne. We have seen--(with the penetrating incense odor in our nostrils, and the kneeling peasants at our feet)--the Descent from the Cross, the Elevation of the Cross--dead Christs manifold. Can it be possible that the brush which worthily painted Christ's agony, can be the same that descended to eternize redundant red fishwives, and call them goddesses? We have given ourselves cricks in the necks, staring up at the divine incompleteness of Cologne Cathedral. And all through Crucifixions, cathedrals, table d'hôtes, I have been deadly, _deadly_ homesick--homesick as none but one that has been a member of a large family and has been out into the world on his or her own account, for the first time, can understand. When first I drove away through the park, my sensations were something like those that we all used to experience, on the rare occasions when father, as a treat, took one or other of us out on an excursion with him--the _honor_ great, but the _pleasure_ small.