r sorry for him; thought perhaps he had
been taken in, till some story got wind of its having been an "old
attachment," which interested them of course; still, the good folks were
half angry with him. To go and marry an old maid when he might have
had his choice of half a dozen young ones! when, with his fortune and
character, he might, as people say--as they had said of that other good
man, Mr. Moseley--"have married any body!"

They forgot that Mr. Roy happened to be one of those men who have no
particular desire to marry "any body;" to whom _the_ woman, whether
found early or late--alas! in this case found early and won late--is the
one woman in the world forever. Poor Fortune--rich Fortune! she need not
be afraid of her fading cheek, her silvering hair; he would never see
either. The things he loved her for were quite apart from any thing that
youth could either give or take away. As he said one, when she lamented
hers, "Never mind, let it go. You will always be yourself--and mine."

This was enough. He loved her. He had always loved her: she had no
fear but that he would love her faithfully to the end.

Theirs was a very quiet wedding, and a speedy one. "Why should they
wait? they had waited too long already," he said, with some bitterness.
But she felt none. With her all was peace.

Mr. Roy did another very foolish thing which I can not conscientiously
recommend to any middle-aged bachelor. Besides marrying his wife, he
married her whole family. There was no other way out of the difficulty,
and neither of them was inclined to be content with happiness, leaving
duty unfulfilled. So he took the largest house in St. Andrews, and
brought to it Janetta and Helen, till David Dalziel could claim them;
likewise his own two orphan boys, until they went to Oxford; for he
meant to send them there, and bring them up in every way like his own
sons.

Meantime, it was rather a heterogeneous family; but the two heads of it
bore their burden with great equanimity, nay, cheerfulness; saying
sometimes, with a smile which had the faintest shadow of pathos in it,
"that they liked to have young life about them."

And by degrees they grew younger themselves; less of the old bachelor
and old maid, and more of the happy middle-aged couple to whom
Heaven gave, in their decline, a St. Martin's summer almost as sweet as
spring. They were both too wise to poison the present by regretting the
past--a past which, if not who