Honor only said what she believed to be the truth, and yet, for all that, her heart--although she could not have told you why--was heavy within her. Perhaps it was the enforced idleness of her life--for neither she nor John had anything to do at Ryde--which weighed upon her spirits. It had been so very different at the Clays’. There was Ruthie to teach, and little Jenny to pet and keep in order; to say nothing of Tom--that terrible Tom!--whose frock and trousers were always, do what you would, in the wash-tub; and Neddy, who was wise beyond his years, and whose questionings on abstruse subjects were for ever taxing Honor’s simple stores of knowledge to the utmost. It might be, then, that she missed the avocations which kept her always busy in her old home; and besides, she had so early seemed to have exhausted all she had to say to John. They had talked over the kindness of the Clays, and laughed together, just a very little, at Lady Millicent’s grandiosity, which even Honor’s limited experience taught her was slightly out of keeping with the nature of her gifts. The trifling incidents of the wedding also--the abnormal and unexpected ones, that is to say--had more than once, in the dearth of other topics, formed cheerful subjects for conversation between the newly-married pair. “I was sure that Joe Griggs would do something extraordinary,” Honor said, “when I saw him coming across the meadow with that great bunch of yellow flowers stuck upon his coat. I little thought they were nothing in the world but dandelions, and that he had brought them to give me in the church. Mrs. Clay was quite vexed with me for taking them, but I couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings; and if they did stain my frock it didn’t signify much--I can turn the side-breadth, and then no one will know anything about it.” John Beacham was profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of a lady’s dress; of “side-breadths” he knew no more than he did of Sanscrit, and he would hardly have noticed a stain if he had seen it; but he did know--and what was infinitely more to the purpose, he could appreciate--a delicate and an unselfish trait in the woman that he had made his wife. He thought it very “pretty” of Honor to accept the idiot’s offering, and so he told her lovingly as they wandered together in the pleasant walks outside the town, which in itself seemed to them both so infinitely dull.