f the lad was mine, I'd cut him off with a shilling,
to buy a halter for his drab of a wife. Dang it, Mrs. Floyd, it'll never
do to see so queer a Mrs. Jonathan Junior, a standing in your tidy shoes
beside this kitchen dresser."

These estimable counsels were, I grieve to say, of too flattering a
nature to displease, and of too lucrative a quality not to be
continually repeated; until, really, Jonathan was threatened with
beggary and the paternal malediction, if he would persist in his
disreputable attachment.

Nevertheless, Jonathan clung to the right like a hero.

"Granting poor Acton is the wretch you think--but I do not believe one
word of it--does his crime make his daughter wicked too? No; she is an
angel, a pure and blessed creature, far too good for such a one as I.
And happy is the man that has gained her love; he should not give her up
were she thrice a felon's daughter. My father and mother," Jonathan went
on to say, "never found a fault in her till now. Who was more welcome on
the hill than pretty Grace? who would oftenest come to nurse some sickly
lamb, but gentle Grace? who was wont, from her childhood up, to run home
with me so constantly, when school was over, and pleased my kinsfolk so
entirely with her nice manners and kind ways? Hadn't he fought for her
more than once, and though he came home with bruises on his face, his
mother praised him for it?" Then, with a natural divergence from the
strict subject-matter of objection, vicarious felony, Jonathan went on
to argue about other temporal disadvantages. "Hadn't he heard his father
say, that, if she had but money, she was fit to be a countess? and was
money, then, the only thing, whereof the having, or the not having,
could make her good or bad?--money, the only wealth for soul, and mind,
and body? Are affections nothing, are truth and honour nothing, religion
nothing, good sense nothing, health nothing, beauty nothing--unless
money gild them all? Nonsense!" said Jonathan, indignantly, warmed by
his amatory eloquence; "come weal, come wo, Grace and I go down to the
grave together; for better, if she can be better--for worse, if she
could sin--Grace Acton is my wealth, my treasure, and possession; and
let man do his worst, God himself will bless us!"

So, all this knit their loves: she knew, and he felt, that he was going
in the road of nobleness and honour; and the fiery ordeal which he had
to struggle through, raised that hearty earthly lover more