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go down to Stickleford and fetch her. But if she would come to him, and say she was sorry, as was only fair; why, yes, he would marry her, knowing what a good little woman she was to the core. He added that the request for ber to come to him was a less one to make than it would have been when he first left Stickleford, or even a few mouths ago; for the new railway into South Wessex was now open, and there had just begun to be run wonderfully contrived special trains, called excursion-traing, on account of the Great Exhibition; so that she could come up easily alone.

She said in her reply how good it was of bim to treat her so generously, after her hot-and-cold treatment of him; that though she felt frightened at the magnitude of the journey, and was never as yet in a railway-train, having only seen one pass at a distance, she embraced his offer with all her heart; and would, indeed, own to him how sorry she was, and beg his pardon, and try to be a good wife always, and make up for lost time.

The remaining details of when and where were soon settled, Car’line informing him, for her ready identification in the crowd, that she would be wearing “my new eprigged-laylock cotton gown,” and Ned gayly responding that, having married her the morning after her arrival, he would make a day of it by taking her to the Exhibition, One early summer afternoon, accordingly, he came from his place of work, and hastened towards Waterloo Station to meet her. It was as wet and chilly as an English June day can occasionally be, but as he waited on the platform in the drizzle he glowed inwardly, and seemed to have something to live for again.

The “excursion-train”—an absolutely new departure in the history of travel —- was still a novelty on