Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/106

104 "There is Port Phillip, and that black spot in the northern corner is Melbourne, where now my first identity glances up at the coming day and lies wearily back for another nap. Poor man, he has long been a widower and his work is hard. Would not you like to comfort him, Helen, as of yore?"

"I will," and she put her hand on Charley's forehead.

A moment later the old man looked round and said, "How pleasant. A moment ago I was young again, and felt the caressing touch of my dear wife."

Of this both Charley and Helen were conscious.

The sun now shone upon half the continent, and lit up Japan and Eastern China, and bathed the Indian Islands in its light.

Charles put his arm round Helen's waist, and said, "Now, Helen, tell me, when shall we renew the holy compact which we both so faithfully kept for forty years in the toil and turmoil of yonder grand but yet only half-developed world?"

"Look at Melbourne again," said Helen,

"I am looking."

"See you a small green space, a mere pin point, to the north of the City?" asked Charley's questioner.

"I see it, and know what it is."

"In a short time that weary old man, the Earth, half of you who is now preparing for the labors of another day, will lay down his earthly covering and you will be all here. In two more days that pin speck of green will receive the mortal remains of Adam Jacobs, my widowered husband. While your kin and friends follow that shell to its resting place, and mourn you deceased, we will solemnise our marriage in the most appropriate place, the Great Hall of the Earthborn's Club. Now the day is fixed, Charley dear."

"I agree," said Charley. "It is well, we'll tell Grayson."

The Editor could not mourn when the other day he read of the decease of Jacobs; nor could he record the marriage at the Club, for the hand of the diarist could pen no more of the bright pages on which we have dwelt so long.