HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3177, 30 April 1909, Page 2

HER SILENCE JUSTIFIED.

CHAPTER I. A YOUNG HUSBAND IS SURPRISED. There was not a happier bride in England than Daisy Lawrence. For over six months the honeymoon had lasted, and almost daily heard her husband proclaim, as he ardently caressed her, that he adored her with a heart that would never change. He had been very kind to her, and ecpedingly generous; the slightest Wish was no sooner exrjresse-J than it was gratified, if it was in the power of Laurence Haydon to do so. No wonder that Daisy considered herself among the most fortunate of women. On this sunny October morning she came into the porch of their cottage home near Slade, and laughed in the gladness of her heart as she shaded her eyes from tha dazzling picture which blue sea, and white cliffs, and cloudless shies presented, or tried to imitate, with her fresh, clear voice, the song of the robin swaying on a bough of the huge old cherry tree that grew in the centre of the grass plot in front of the cottage. She looked too young to be a wife, too childlike herself to be anticipating the additional happiness of being a mother.

Stepping back, she peered round the door that opened into what the owner of the dwelling called the house clace—a room half parlour half kitchen—and accosted a buxom middle-aged woman who with her sleeves rolled up and her dress protected with an enormous checked apron was washing the cups and saucers used by her lodgers at breaklast. "I'm just off to join Mr Lawrence" —it looked ominous for Daisy's future that she only knew her husbcnd by his Christian names —"going to join him on the beach," she cried gaily, "so guod bye, Mrs Wakely, till lunch time." Mrs Wakely put down her towel, and can-e to "the door to survey the sky critically. "'Twon't be fine all day, so don't ye go too far, missie—ma'am, I mean. Can't think how it is 1 always find myself calling you missie."

The girl pouied, and drew her wed-ding-ring up and flown her slender finger. "It is because I was foolish to confide to you that I am only sixteen; but what of that? I am sure lam very staid and matronly, and my husband tells me that in some parts of India they marry earlier than I have done.' ; "More shame for the mothers and fathers to let'em, poor dears." retorted Mi-d Wakely, with her customary bluntness. "If I'd hud any daughter of my own, they shouldn't ha' looked at a man with a view to matrimony till they was wsll on for thirty, same as me when I took up wi' my Jan—rest his soul. Little did I think that, after giving me the trouble of nursing him for three long years, he'd go an' die, an' leaving me a lone widder!"

"Ah, but Mrs Wakely," said thn young wife wistfully. "I bad neither father nor mother to trouble themselves as to what I did, isnd no one to love me till he came. I was horribly frienaless till my dear, good husband took mo under his care." "I shan't tlhink Mr Lawrence taltes much car.2 of you if he lets you go down them steep, awkward steps to the beach all alone by yourself,'' Mrs Wakely remarked, as she fallowed down the garden. "Just you stop whan you get to them, and ?hout your loudest till he comes to help you!" "I'll cooey like the Australian''," replied Daisy, "or arouse him wi h a cowboy shout." Looking back repeatedly to laugh at the mystified face of the woman, she walked across the short soft swjird that lay between the cottage and the edge of the cliffs, swinigng the little basket she carried, and humming one of the ballads he loved. till, the step 3 safely descended, the scent of a cigar directed her to the spot where her husband awaited her. Laurence Haydon, at the aga of one and twenty, was considered a very handsome man, though there was something efn oinate about him t'hat did not recommend itself to his own sex. And yet, at the public school in which he was educated, he had never shirked the rougest sports; moveroer. he rowed well, was a fair shot, and took a good place at football and polo.

Why, then, did he never excell in anything he attempted—never climb to the van, no matter what he took part in? Was it because he lacked energy and that share of ambition every man needs who excells?—or because the affection of his ftahar, General Haydon, enabled him to have all that makes life pleasant without the trauble of striving to attain it for himself? He had plunged into the sea this morning to take his morning bath, and swim as far as an isolated rock, to which clung a rare kind of seaweed Daisy was anxious to add to her collection; but, chancing to discover a tuft of it under a rugged bolder nearer the shore, hs decided that it would be folly to take the trouble of procuring the other; and had dressed and thrown himself on the sand to smoke till his young wile appeared. "Oh, Edgar, see this glorious weather Has not fortune favoured us since we came here? Mrs Wakely says this is the mildest, suniest autumn she san remember since she was a girl!" "Had she ever a girlhood?" asked the young husband, (lazily. "Can you fancy her anything but chubby and fiat-iooted'and ill-dressed, with a % away cap on the top of hair peppered with gray?" wy ;,* "Don't laugh at her," £ pleaded Daisy, sitting down on thejsand s©

BY HESRILTTA B. RUTH VEX. Author of "His Second L>ve," " Corydon's Infatuation," " Daring Dot a," " An Unlucky Legacy," Etc., Etc.

that her spouse might rest his head on htr knees. "Don't laugh at her, for she is very good to trie!" "And will be as kng as I pay hexthirty shillings a week lor her uncomfortable little rooms—eh, love?" "But I ihough you liked the cottage!" observed the young wife anxiously. "It's well enough. As long as you are contented, it will do, "especially as the living is cheap," he answered, with a careless smile. This remark touched the chord of another of Dairy's secret anxieties. "You're quite sure we are not spending too much? Kemember that I >*as not accustomed to living in luxury beiore you married me, and I could be happy in one room on bread aud cheese, you with." He laugh-vd teasingly. "Oh. little goose that you are! You silly little field flower, why didn't you propose a diet of grass at once? Don't bother your, head about such things, I can aflord all we have."

"If you are sure of that. I'm so afraid your love for me. makes you extravagant. Think what it must have cost you when you took me to Switzerland after our marriage. It takes my breath away whenever I recall the sum total of those dreadful hotel bills." "What of them! We are very happy. Daisy. It's a pity such a halcyon time should fleet away so quickly." "But we are quite as happy here! he cried quickly. "I would not exchanged this quiet English scene for all the grandeur of the mountains and valeys we saw abroad." The husband yawned. "It must be confoundedly dull in winter." "But it is never cold -not very cold; and we shall have charming evenings beside the fire—you with your book, I with my work;] and when baby comes " A little gesture of impatience j checked her. "Wot even to please you, my precious, will I pretend to take pleasure in the greasy, flabby, staicky society of children! I want you, and no disturbing elements." Daisy winced and reddened, but only for a moment, and then she laughed, and stroked back the hair from his white forehead. Of course, he was only saying this to tease her; he would—he must love baby for her sake. So she attached no importance to the protest ;°and, when the silence and the touch of her fingers lulled him into a doze, she was careful not to disurb him by moving, but sat watching over him with the tenderest affection. What a fortunate young wife she was! How neglected and oppressed till she met him? At the cheap school to which she had been sent after the death of her parents she h::d been a drudge to the younger pupils, I till an outbreak of fever compelled the'clohirg of the school, and Daisy was sent home to the only relatives she hac. [to be continued.]