The boy, in supplying Basil with an
advertisement of the line, made a specious show of haste, as if there
were a long queue of tourists waiting behind him to be served with
tickets. Perhaps there was, indeed, a spectral line there, but Basil was
the only tourist present in the flesh, and he shivered in his isolation,
and fled with the advertisement in his hand. Isabel met him at the door
of the station with a frightened face.
"Basil," she cried, "I have found out what the trouble is! Where are the
brides?"
He took her outstretched hands in his, and passing one of them through
his arm walked with her apart from the children, who were examining at
the news-man's booth the moccasins and the birchbark bric-a-brac of the
Irish aborigines, and the cups and vases of Niagara spar imported from
Devonshire.
"My dear," he said, "there are no brides; everybody was married twelve
years ago, and the brides are middle-aged mothers of families now, and
don't come to Niagara if they are wise."
"Yes," she desolately asserted, "that is so! Something has been hanging
over me ever since we came, and suddenly I realized that it was the
absence of the brides. But--but--down at the hotels--Didn't you see
anything bridal there? When the omnibuses arrived, was there no burst of
minstrelsy? Was there--"
She could not go on, but sank nervelessly into the nearest seat.
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