Both bride and bridegroom effaced themselves from the party until their appearance was necessary. They were to leave Wroxton by a train soon after four, and the interval between their mingling with the party and the last possible moment of catching their train was short. Jack held that wedding parties were a barbarity, Jeannie that it was better not to be a principal actor; and, as a matter of fact, they sat quietly in the nursery and amused the baby till Arthur warned them it was time to go to their train. For both there was rice and slippers, for each there was the other.
The family who had taken Merton were in London, and were delighted that the two should spend their honeymoon there. Merton was only a couple of stations from Wroxton, and they arrived soon after five. All about her were the dear familiarities of childhood, by her the crown of her womanhood. Nowhere else, she thought, could Jack have known her as well as here.
From tea till dinner-time they wandered about the place; like two children, the one introducing the other to her home. This was the hedge where the long-tailed tit built, and this the copse where wild lilies-of-the-valley flowered in May. There was a reminiscence dear to her, and infinitely dear to him, about every yard of the place. The old boat-house with a leaky punt had given her many a Columbus voyage to the island on the lake, and the clusters of water-lilies to surprised eyes had been a Sargasso Sea. The punt was gone, but a newer boat was there, and they rowed about for nearly an hour, and watched the quick fishes in the water, and gathered the tall rushes and the golden-hearted lilies, and together were rung to dressing time, as Jeannie in the old days had been rung to bed. And as before they delayed to obey.
Dinner was over, and they sat on the south of the terrace-fronted house; a full moon moved like a queen bee among the swarming stars, and the world was refashioned out of soft darkness and ivory and pearl. Pearl-coloured was Jeannie’s dress, and she the pearl of pearls.
“How strange one’s life goes in acts,” she said. “The act at Wroxton is over now, but what a pleasant one it was. Oh, Jack, I hope this act will be a long one. Do you remember the plank bridge by the mill, and Toby shaking himself?”