After the excitement of the Pastoral Play had subsided into calm satisfaction with the handsome sum of money which it had provided for supplying the future needs of the Parish Nurse, Fay and I went off for a second little honeymoon by our two selves. I urged Annabel to come with us, as she had been baulked by my marriage of her usual trip abroad with me in the spring; but she declined, preferring to visit some old friends of hers who had a place in Scotland. In the depths of my selfish and undisciplined heart there was hidden an unholy relief and joy at the thought of having Fay to myself for a time; but I loyally strove to hide and quench this unbrotherly feeling, of which I was glad to know I was thoroughly ashamed. How could I shut out my sister from any happiness of mine, when I was confident that she would never exclude me from any joy of hers? Nay, more than this, I was convinced that Annabel was incapable of finding happiness, or even pleasure in anything that she did not share with me. We had decided to go for two or three weeks to an hotel in a little village on the East Coast, where Annabel and I had once spent a month some few years previously, and had found the air wonderfully invigorating. It is marvellous, that East Coast air, for blowing cobwebs out of tired brains, and making the weak grow strong and the old feel young again. "I am sorry that Annabel will not come with us," I said to Fay one glorious afternoon in early August as we were sitting in the garden at home; and my secret knowledge that I really was not as sorry as I ought to have been made me say it all the more vehemently: "she has had a tiring summer, and it would have done her good." Fay happened to be in one of her unresponsive moods. "She is going to Scotland," she said. "I know she is; but she will not find Scotland as bracing as Bythesea. In fact, I always think the Macdonalds' place decidedly relaxing." "Well, she had her choice. She could have come with us if she had wanted to. You asked her." It occurred to me that perhaps Fay was a little hurt at Annabel's having preferred, for the time being, the Macdonalds' society to ours; so I hastened to put this right. "You mustn't misjudge Annabel, my darling, and think that her refusal to go with us to Bythesea shows any want of affection for you, or any lack of appreciation of your dear society, because I know it really isn't so." "I never thought anything of the kind," replied Fay, and her usually gay voice sounded a little flat. "I expect that it was really her unselfishness that made her refuse to come with us. Annabel always puts other people's pleasure before her own. She evidently thought we should enjoy a bit of time to ourselves." "Well, we shall, shan't we?"