m home, she was to have a brother and
his wife beside her, living in the pretty little cottage which was
building behind the oak copse for the new laborer. Miss Foote inquired
about the wife, but could learn little. Susan told nothing but that she
was a respectable woman, but so old, and otherwise unsuitable, that it
was a vexation to the family that Harry had made such a marriage. Harry
never seemed to see a single fault in her; but his father and mother did
not like Dinah at all.

When Miss Foote afterward came to know the whole, she thought this
marriage the most terribly significant part of the whole family history
of the Bankses. At thirty years of age Harry was a pattern of a
farm-laborer; yet he had no prospect in life but of earning a precarious
nine shillings a week, till he should be too old to earn so much. He
worked for a rich, close-fisted Dissenting gentleman, who had always
pious sayings on his lips and at the point of his pen, but never took
off his eye for an instant from his money gains and savings. His wife
was like him, and their servants grew like them--even the warm-hearted,
impetuous Harry, and much more Dinah, their worn out maid-of-all-work.
Dinah always said that the register of her birth was unfortunately lost,
and she could not tell precisely how old she was; and she called herself
"upwards o' forty." Most people supposed her about sixty when she
married. She used to tell Harry that she was the prettiest girl in the
city when she was young, and Harry did not ask how long ago that was,
nor look too much at the little wizened face, not more marked by
small-pox than by signs of over-exhausting toil. Whatever might be her
age, she was worn out by excessive work. When Harry's father heard that
she and Harry were going before the registrar to be married, he kindly
and seriously asked Harry if he had considered what he was about; and
Harry's reply was enough to make any heart ache.

"Yes, father, I have. I'm not so very much set on it; but I think it
will be most comfortable. You see, there's no use in people like us
thinking of having children. Children would only starve us downright,
and bring us to the Union. You see, none of us are married, nor likely
to be, except me with Dinah. She's clean and tidy, you see, and she has
some wages laid by, and so have I; and so nobody need find fault. And I
shall be more comfortable like, with somebody to do for me at home;
and--"

And he was going on to te