mbre thought when speaking of
Mary Gordon's marriage? None doubted her husband's truth, her own deep
devotion, as they crowded around when the simple rite was ended to
congratulate them, and breathe a fervent wish that their joy might
increase as the years of their life rolled onward. They went forth
from that quiet church with new and strange feelings springing up, and
as Mary looked upon the throng who still reiterated their friendly
wishes, she felt an inward consciousness that God had blessed and
sustained her through those years of trial and probation.

"Who _would have thought_ that the deacon's Mary would ever have grown
up such a fine woman?" said Aunty Gould, as she wiped her spectacles
upon the corner of her new gingham apron. "The deacon himself ain't
got much sperit in him, and as for _Miss Gordon_, I don't believe she
ever whipped one of them children in her life. She always let 'em have
their own way a great deal too much to suit me. Jest think of her
letting Mary go off to Lowell, in the midst of that city of iniquity,
and stay three or four years, jest because James must be college
larned. As if it warn't as respectable to stay to home and be a
farmer, as his father and his grandfather was before him. I haven't
much 'pinion of _him_, but Stephen Gordon is going to make the man.
Steddy and industrious a'most as the deacon himself."

So we see the differences of opinion which exist in the narrowest
community; for Mrs. Hall, as she turned toward her own bright home,
said to her husband that Mary Gordon was a pattern to the young girls
now growing up in the village. But for her honest independence and
hardihood in braving the opinion of the world, her family might have
been living without education, and without refinement. Now she had won
for herself the love of a noble heart--could see her brother
successful through her efforts, and knew that their parents were happy
in feeling that they were so. "She has been the sun of that
household," replied her husband, "and I doubt not will ever be the
happiness of her own."

They were sitting alone--the newly made husband and wife--on the eve
of their marriage-day. They were in their home, which was henceforth
to be the scene of all their love and labors. The last kind friend had
gone, and for the first time that day they could feel the calm,
unclouded serenity which the end of a long and often wearisome toil
had brought.

The moonlight trembled through the shad