and
good-humored habit, thought that he could piece his widowed years with
the not insignificant, fraction of life left to Miss Silence, to their
mutual advantage. He came to the village, therefore, where Father
Pemberton was very glad to have him supply the pulpit in the place of
his unfortunate disabled colleague. The courtship soon began, and was
brisk enough; for the good man knew there was no time to lose at his
period of life,--or hers either, for that matter. It was a rather odd
specimen of love-making; for he was constantly trying to subdue his
features to a gravity which they were not used to, and she was as
constantly endeavoring to be as lively as possible, with the innocent
desire of pleasing her light-hearted suitor.

"Vieille fille fait jeune mariee." Silence was ten years younger as a
bride than she had seemed as a lone woman. One would have said she had
got out of the coach next to the hearse, and got into one some half
a dozen behind it,--where there is often good and reasonably cheerful
conversation going on about the virtues of the deceased, the probable
amount of his property, or the little slips he may have committed, and
where occasionally a subdued pleasantry at his expense sets the four
waistcoats shaking that were lifting with sighs a half-hour ago in
the house of mourning. But Miss Silence, that was, thought that two
families, with all the possible complications which time might bring,
would be better in separate establishments. She therefore proposed
selling The Poplars to Myrtle and her husband, and removing to a house
in the village, which would be large enough for them, at least for the
present. So the young folks bought the old house, and paid a mighty good
price for it; and enlarged it, and beautified and glorified it, and one
fine morning went together down to the Widow Hopkins's, whose residence
seemed in danger of being a little crowded,--for Gifted lived there with
his Susan,--and what had happened might happen again,--and gave Master
Byles Gridley a formal and most persuasively worded invitation to come
up and make his home with them at The Poplars.

Now Master Gridley has been betrayed into palpable and undisguised
weakness at least once in the presence of this assembly, who are looking
upon him almost for the last time before they part from him, and see his
face no more. Let us not inquire too curiously, then, how he received
this kind proposition. It is enough, that, when he fou