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“All right,” said Celia, “I’ll ask father to do it. ‘Dear Mrs. Bunn, my little boy wants to spend his holidays with you in June. I am writing to ask you if you will take care of him and see that he doesn’t do anything dangerous. He has a nice disposition, but wants watching.'” She patted my head gently. “Something like that.”

I got up and went to the writing-desk.

“I can see I shall have to do it myself,” I sighed. “Give me the address and I’ll begin.”

“But we haven’t quite settled where we’re going yet, have we?”

I put the pen down thankfully and went back to the sofa.

“Good! Then I needn’t write to-day, anyhow. It is wonderful, dear, how difficulties roll away when you face them. Almost at once we arrive at the conclusion that I needn’t write to-day. Splendid! Well, where shall we go? This will want a lot of thought. Perhaps,” I added, “I needn’t write to-morrow.”

“We had almost fixed on England, hadn’t we?”

“Somebody was telling me that Lynton was very beautiful. I should like to go to Lynton.”

“But every one goes to Lynton for their honeymoon.”

“Then let’s be original and go to Birmingham. ‘The happy couple left for Birmingham, where the honeymoon will be spent.’ Sensation.”

“‘The bride left the train at Ealing.’ More sensation.”

“I think the great thing,” I said, trying to be businesslike, “is to fix the county first. If we fixed on Rutland, then the rest would probably be easy.”

“The great thing,” said Celia, “is to decide what we want. Sea, or river, or mountains, or–or golf.”

At the word golf I coughed and looked out of the window.

Now I am very fond of Celia–I mean of golf, and–what I really mean, of course, is that I am very fond of both of them. But I do think that on a honeymoon Celia should come first. After all, I shall have plenty of other holidays for golf … although, of course, three weeks in the summer without any golf at all—- Still, I think Celia should come first.

“Our trouble,” I said to her, “is that neither of us has ever been on a honeymoon before, and so we’ve no idea what it will be like. After all, why should we get bored with each other? Surely we don’t depend on golf to amuse us?”

“All the same, I think your golf would amuse me,” said Celia. “Besides, I want you to be as happy as you possibly can be.”

“Yes, but supposing I was slicing my drives all the time, I should be miserable. I should be torn between the desire to go back to London and have a lesson with the professional and the desire to stay on honeymooning with you. One can’t be happy in a quandary like that.”

“Very well then, no golf. Settled?”

“Quite. Now then, let’s decide about the scenery. What sort of soil do you prefer?”

When I left Celia that day we had agreed on this much: that we wouldn’t bother about golf, and that the mountains, rivers, valleys, and so on should be left entirely to nature. All we were to enquire for was (in the words of an advertisement Celia had seen) “a perfect spot for a honeymoon.”

In the course of the next day I heard of seven spots; varying from a spot in Surrey “dotted with firs,” to a dot in the Pacific spotted with–I forget what, natives probably. Taken together they were the seven only possible spots for a honeymoon.

“We shall have to have seven honeymoons,” I said to Celia when I had told her my news. “One honeymoon, one spot.”

“Wait,” she said. “I have heard of an ideal spot.”

“Speaking as a spot expert, I don’t think that’s necessarily better than an only possible spot,” I objected. “Still, tell me about it.”

“Well, to begin with, it’s close to the sea.”

“So we can bathe when we’re bored. Good.”

“And it’s got a river, if you want to fish—-“