just been talking, about eternal disgraces
and so forth! I am an honest man and you're an honest woman, and,
therefore, what cause or impediment can there be? Come, Mary, it's no
use resisting; my mind is made up, and you MUST!"

"Oh, think!" she said; "oh, think only once, before it is too late for
ever!"

"I have thought," said Tom, "as I told you before, for twenty years;
and I ain't likely to alter my opinion in ten minutes. Come, Mary. Say,
yes!"

And so she said yes.

"Mrs. Buckley," said Tom, as they came up arm in arm to the house, "it
will be a good thing if somebody was to go up to our place, and nurse
Mrs. Sam in her confinement."

"I shall go up myself," said Mrs. Buckley, "though how I am to get
there I hardly know. It must be nearly eight hundred miles, I am
afraid."

"I don't think you need, my dear madam," said he. "My wife will make an
excellent nurse!"

"Your wife!"

Tom looked at Mary, who blushed, and Mrs. Buckley came up and kissed
her.

"I am so glad, so very glad, my love!" she said. "The very happiest and
wisest thing that could be! I have been hoping for it, my love, and I
felt sure it would be so, sooner or later. How glad your dear aunt
would be if she were alive!"

And, in short, he took her off with him, and they were married, and
went up to join Sam and his wife in New England--reducing our party to
four. Not very long after they were gone, we heard that there was a new
Sam Buckley born, who promised, said the wise women, to be as big a man
as his father. Then, at an interval of very little more than two years,
Mrs. Buckley got a long letter from Alice, announcing the birth of a
little girl to the Troubridges. This letter is still extant, and in my
possession, having been lent me, among other family papers, by Agnes
Buckley, as soon as she heard that I was bent upon correcting these
memoirs to fit them for the press. I will give you some extracts from
it:--

... "Dear Mary Troubridge has got a little girl, a sweet, quiet,
brighteyed little thing, taking, I imagine, after old Miss Thornton.
They are going to call it Agnes Alice, after you and I, my dearest
mother.

"You cannot imagine how different Mary is grown from what she used to
be! Stout, merry, and matronly, quite! She keeps the house alive, and I
think I never saw a couple more sincerely attached than are she and her
husband. He is a most excellent companion for my Sam. Not to make
matters too long, we are just ab