“_Like you?_” he repeated with an amused laugh at the intense absurdity of the doubt implied. “Like you! I should think she would indeed! Why, Honey, you’ll be her daughter, child--think of that!--and the light of the home that never had a daughter in it before; and you’ll be petted and made much of; and those pretty little hands of yours won’t have anything to do but to make pictures of the trees and flowers as you’re so fond of doing; and sometimes, especially of a Sunday evening, when my mother loves a hymn dearly, you’ll sing to us in that warbling way you used to do at Clays’. I haven’t forgotten--no, nor I never shall, if I live to be a hundred--the first time I listened to your voice, Pet. It was just a simple nursery song to please the children--not much to speak of, I daresay, either as to words or music--but somehow or other, I don’t know how it was, it went to _my_ heart as straight as an arrow from a bow.” They were on the pier still--that cold shelterless Ryde Pier--the wild wind whistling about their ears, and toying with Honor’s drapery in a manner more rudely familiar than was altogether agreeable to that young lady’s feelings. At that moment the vision of certain peaceful lanes--lanes where the nightingales sang, and the clematis twined about the hawthorn-trees--flashed across her tenacious memory, and filled her mind with pleasant thoughts of home. “Anything would be better than this,” she said to herself, as the nor’-wester, tearing round the extremity of the pier, so nearly swept her off her legs that she was forced to cling convulsively to her husband’s strong arm for protection. John’s last words, and the cheery confidence with which he spoke of the success of their _solitude à trois_, from the contemplation of which she had hitherto nervously shrank, contributed not a little to her conviction that, all things considered, they would be better off at Updown Paddocks than listening in that half-deserted town to the melancholy murmur of “the sad sea waves.” “What’s in your little head now--eh, Honey?” asked John, when the hearty laugh caused by the wind’s boisterous behaviour had subsided, and they were trudging calmly homeward to their early--that is to say, their six-o’clock--dinner. “Nothing particular, only--” “Only what? Out with it, pet,” persisted John, who could not help nourishing a faint hope that Honor, like himself, might be growing home-sick, and was only watching for an opportunity of making known her weakness--“out with it. I shouldn’t wonder now,” he continued archly, “to find we were both thinking of the same thing.”