This was Ruth's first visit to America and surely he had never been at Pinewood in all his life! Later he forgot to speak about it. Indeed, he was too busy and too happy to be curious. He telephoned ahead for a suite of rooms at the only hotel which, he understood, was open at this time of year at Pinewood. This was the Pinewood Inn, one of the oldest and best-known hotels on the coast. Somehow there is a "newness" sticking to bridal couples that no amount of deception can hide--from the eagle eye of the railroad porter least of all! The colored functionary on their car hovered about them as though they had been especially placed in his care, and his attentions were so marked that they might as well have come aboard showered with rice and old shoes. Everybody in the coach very soon knew that they were newly wed. To tell the truth, John Ryder was inordinately proud of it. He was as delighted as a boy. It was an effort for him to retain his usual dignified bearing. A smile was continually breaking through the calm of his features. He wanted to shout or sing--and he sang like a crow! From a heretofore modest and retiring man socially he suddenly became bold and daring. He secretly wished to strut about and brag of himself, and show off his wife. He would have liked to distribute "largess" (whatever that might be) to the people at the stations where the train stopped; and he tipped the porter three separate times before the train was ten miles on its way. He had reason, good reason, for being proud. When Ruth removed her veil and hat she was startlingly beautiful. Somehow there had come a new expression into her face that increased her attractiveness. She had never seemed so sweet, so gentle and modest, so altogether adorable before. They reached their railroad destination just as dusk was falling. Pinewood Inn was exclusive--so exclusive, indeed, that it was back among the pines quite twelve miles from the station. A motor bus met all trains and transferred the arriving guests to the hotel. "Just a pleasant half hour's run," Ryder told his bride, helping her into the vehicle and getting in himself with several other arrivals. "We shall have an appetite for dinner I fancy." He was just then reminded that he had eaten nothing since a modest breakfast in his stateroom on the _Minnequago_--not even on the train. The bus rumbled away from the hamlet that surrounded the railroad station. They swept into the brown shadows of the pines and rolled almost silently over the velvet carpet of the needles. "Needles and pins, needles and pins! When a man marries----" The old rhyme came into his mind again. But he had thrown off all petty details. The needles and pins of business, or of anything else, should not rankle in his mind. This was the beginning of his honeymoon.