“Let us get a map and see what places look pleasantest?” says she. “As for that,” reply I, “on a map most places look equally pleasant.” “Never mind; get one!” I obey. “Do you like the seaside?” asks Elizabeth, lifting her little brown head and her small happy white face from the English sea-coast along which, her forefinger is slowly travelling. “Since you ask me, distinctly _no_,” reply I, for once venturing to have a decided opinion of my own, which during the last few weeks of imbecility I can be hardly said to have had. “I broke my last wooden spade five and twenty years ago. I have but a poor opinion of cockles--sandy red-nosed things, are not they? and the air always makes me bilious.” “Then we certainly will not go there,” says Elizabeth, laughing. “A bilious bridegroom! alliterative but horrible! None of our friends show the least eagerness to lend us their country house.” “Oh that God would put it into the hearts of men to take their wives straight home, as their fathers did,” say I, with a cross groan. “It is evident, therefore, that we must go somewhere,” returns she, not heeding the aspiration contained in my last speech, making her forefinger resume its employment, and reaching Torquay. “I suppose so,” say I, with a sort of sigh; “for once in our lives we must resign ourselves to having the finger of derision pointed at us by waiters and landlords.” “You shall leave your new portmanteau at home, and I will leave all my best clothes, and nobody will guess that we are bride and bridegroom; they will think that we have been married--oh, ever since the world began” (opening her eyes very wide). I shake my head. “With an old portmanteau and in rags we shall still have the mark of the beast upon us.” “Do you mind much? do you hate being ridiculous?” asks Elizabeth, meekly, rather depressed by my view of the case; “because if so, let us go somewhere out of the way, where there will be very few people to laugh at us.” “On the contrary,” return I, stoutly, “we will betake ourselves to some spot where such as we do chiefly congregate--where we shall be swallowed up and lost in the multitude of our fellow-sinners.” A pause devoted to reflection. “What do you say to Killarney?” say I, cheerfully. “There are a great many fleas there, I believe,” replies Elizabeth, slowly; “flea-bites make large lumps on me; you would not like me if I were covered with large lumps.” At the hideous ideal picture thus presented to me by my little beloved I relapse into inarticulate idiocy; emerging from which by-and-by, I suggest “The Lakes?” My arm is round her, and I feel her supple body shiver though it is mid July, and the bees are booming about in the still and sleepy noon garden outside. “Oh--no--no--not _there_!” “Why such emphasis?” I ask gaily; “more fleas? At this rate, and with this _sine quâ non_, our choice will grow limited.”