“Victory and union,” said Frederic F. Frew.
“Exhaustion,” said Charley, from Oxford.
“Compromise,” said Bobby, from Liverpool.
“The Lord Almighty, when He shall have done His work,” said the parson. “And, in the meantime, Molly, do you keep plenty of fire under the kitchen boiler.”
That was clearly the business of the present hour, for all in Mr. Granger’s part of the country;—we may say, indeed, for all on Mr. Granger’s side of the water. It mattered little, then, in Lancashire, whether New York might have a Democratic or a Republican governor. The old cotton had been burned; the present crop could not be garnered; the future crop—the crop which never would be future, could not get itself sown.
Mr. Granger might be a slow politician, but he was a practical man, understanding the things immediately around him; and they all were aware, Frederic F. Frew with the rest of them, that he was right when he bade his wife keep the fire well hot beneath the kitchen boiler.
“Isn’t it almost wicked to be married in such a time as this?” It was much later in the evening when Nora, still troubled in her mind about her widow’s mite, whispered these words into her lover’s ears. If she were to give up her lover for twelve months, would not that be a throwing in of something to the treasury from off her own back and out of her own mouth? But then this matter of her marriage had been so fully settled that she feared to think of disturbing it. He would never consent to such a postponement. And then the offering, to be of avail for her, must be taken from her own back, not from his; and Nora had an idea that in the making of such an offering as that suggested, Mr. Frederic F. Frew would conceive that he had contributed by far the greater part. Her uncle called him an Amalekite, and she doubted whether it would be just to spoil an Amalekite after such a fashion as that. Nevertheless, into his ears she whispered her little proposition.
“Wicked to get married!” said Frederic; “not according to my idea of the Christian religion.”
“Oh! but you know what I mean,” and she gave his arm a slight caressing pinch.
At this time her uncle had gone to his own room; her cousins had gone to their studies, by which I believe they intended to signify the proper smoking of a pipe of tobacco in the rectory kitchen; and Mrs. Granger, seated in her easy chair, had gone to her slumbers, dreaming of the amount of fuel with which that kitchen boiler must be supplied.