"Ah, like them! Thoroughbung will have enough of them."
"He is our only happiness now."
"Poor Thoroughbung! I pity him if he has to do happiness for the whole household."
"Joshua is a most excellent young man. Where we should be without him I do not know." The flourishing young brewer was named Joshua, and had been known to Harry for some years, though never as yet known as a brother-in-law.
"I am sure he is; particularly as he has chosen Molly to be his wife. He is just the young man who ought to have a wife."
"Of course he ought."
"Because he can keep a family. But now about my uncle. He is to perform this ceremony of cutting me off. Will he turn out to have had a wife and family in former ages? I have no doubt old Scarborough could manage it, but I don't give my uncle credit for so much cleverness."
"But in future ages—" said the unhappy mother, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.
"You mean that he is going to have a family?"
"It is all in the hands of Providence," said the parson's wife.