BEFORE AND AFTER.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2906, 8 June 1878, Page 4

BEFORE AND AFTER.

They were very pretty, and there was apparently five or six years' difference in their ages. As the train pulled up, the youngest girl blushed, flattened her nose nervously against the window and drew back in;joyous smiles as a young man came dashing into the carriage, shook hands tenderly and cordially, insisted on carrying her valise, magazine, little paper bundle, and would probably have carried her if she had permitted him. The passengers smiled as she left, and the murmur went ; rippling through the carriage: •They're engaged.' The other girl sat looking nervously out of the window, and once or twice gathered her parcels together as though she would leave, yet seeming to be expecting some one. At last he came. He bulged into the door like a house on fire, looked along the seats until his manly gaze fell upon her upturned expectant face, when he roared, 'Come on! I've been waiting for you on the platform fifteen minutes ?' seized her basket and strode out'of the carriage while she followed with a little valise, a band-box, a paper bag full of lunch, a bird-cage, a glass jar of jelly preserves, and an extra shawl. And a crusty-looking old bachelor in the further end of the carriage croaked out, in UDison with the indignant looks of the passengers ' They're married.'