er since that old city merchant of a Hanbury took it into his
head that he was a cadet of the Hanburys of Hanbury, and left her that
handsome legacy. I'll warrant you that the mortgage was paid off
pretty fast; and Mr. Horner's money--or my lady's money, or Harry
Gregson's money, call it which you will--is invested in his name, all
right and tight; and they do talk of his being captain of his school,
or Grecian, or something, and going to college, after all! Harry
Gregson the poacher's son! Well! to be sure, we are living in strange
times!

'But I have not done with the marriages yet. Captain James's is all
very well, but no one cares for it now, we are so full of Mr. Gray's.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Gray is going to be married, and to nobody else but
my little Bessy! I tell her she will have to nurse him half the days
of her life, he is such a frail little body. But she says she does
not care for that; so that his body holds his soul, it is enough for
her. She has a good spirit and a brave heart, has my Bessy! It is a
great advantage that she won't have to mark her clothes over again:
for when she had knitted herself her last set of stockings, I told her
to put G for Galindo, if she did not choose to put it for Gibson, for
she should be my child if she was no one else's. And now you see it
stands for Gray. So there are two marriages, and what more would you
have? And she promises to take another of my kittens.

'Now, as to deaths, old Farmer Hale is dead--poor old man, I should
think his wife thought it a good riddance, for he beat her every day
that he was drunk, and he was never sober, in spite of Mr. Gray. I
don't think (as I tell him) that Mr. Gray would ever have found
courage to speak to Bessy as long as Farmer Hale lived, he took the
old gentleman's sins so much to heart, and seemed to think it was all
his fault for not being able to make a sinner into a saint. The
parish bull is dead too. I never was so glad in my life. But they
say we are to have a new one in his place. In the meantime I cross
the common in peace, which is very convenient just now, when I have so
often to go to Mr. Gray's to see about furnishing.

'Now you think I have told you all the Hanbury news, don't you? Not
so. The very greatest thing of all is to come. I won't tantalize
you, but just out with it, for you would never gues