I did not want to lose my temper with my old nurse, so I went out of the room. But I was dreadfully disappointed in Ponty. I thought she would have known better. CHAPTER X A BIRTHDAY PRESENT Fay and I were married early in the year, which always appears to me the proper time for marrying and giving in marriage. It seems so appropriate for the new heaven and the new earth to begin at the same time. We went first to the Italian lakes and then back to Switzerland, so that spring met us in Italy, accompanied us through the Swiss mountains, and arrived at Restham Manor about the same time as we did. Thus our path was literally strewn with flowers all the way. It would be both undignified and impossible, to describe what a heavenly time that honeymoon was to me. I had never imagined that such bliss was attainable in this work-a-day world: I thought it only existed in fairy-tales. And indeed my life was a fairy-tale just then, with Fay for the leading fairy. I think that it was a very happy time for her, too; though I could not expect her to feel the absorbing delight in my society that I felt in hers. How could she, considering how dull and stupid I was, and how vivid and radiant was she? But she seemed contented with me, and delighted with the lakes and the mountains and the wealth of flowers: and she grew lovelier and more lovable every day. Her intoxicating society renewed my youth, and we walked and rode and boated together like a pair of happy and careless children, till I believed that she had spoken truth when she said that Love had indeed accomplished the impossible as far as I was concerned, and had set the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. The arrangements for our honeymoon had been highly approved of by Annabel, as they prevented that meeting between the east wind and me, which she spent her life in trying to avert, so that by the time we reached home at the end of April, the east wind was chained up again in his kennel with the keenest of his teeth extracted. At least so Annabel preached, and so she believed; for my part I had met him rushing loose about the fields on a May morning, with a tooth as keen as any ingratitude of man's. We arrived at home on a lovely afternoon--one of those blue and golden afternoons of late spring--and found Annabel waiting in the hall to welcome us. How good it was to see her there! I should hardly have felt it was a real home-coming without Annabel, and nice as it was for me, I felt it was still nicer for Fay to have a woman to come home to--a woman who could comprehend and comfort and cherish her as no man, however devoted, could possibly do, and who could, to a certain extent, take the place of the mother whom--to her lifelong impoverishment--she had lost. "Come and have some tea, my dear," said Annabel, after we had duly embraced her and greeted the entire household, who were likewise waiting in the hall to receive us.