The lady was startled by the proposition, waited a moment, and then said:
"I do not know how to thank you, but I came here to teach music. I have several pupils, and have a contract to sing in the choir of one of the churches. I need the little revenue that I receive, but if I could get released from my obligations I would most gladly go, for I do covet a change exceedingly."
"Then," said Grace, "if I can get that release, and will pay you as much as you receive here, and all your expenses out and back, will you go?"
"Indeed, I will," she answered, "and will be grateful to you all my life."
The arrangement was easily made, and the further arrangement that Sedgwick and his bride should go to Ohio, visit Sedgwick's family for three or four days; then should join the Forbeses and Mrs. Hazleton at a certain hotel in New York, and all would embark on the steamer that would sail on the next week Saturday—ten days from that day.
Then Sedgwick and Grace started for the Miami Valley.
What a welcome was there! The old house had been repaired, modernized, refurnished and repainted. A new house had been built on the other farm. It was in the first days of February. That year there was good sleighing, and the whole town seemed to turn out to celebrate the occasion of Jim Sedgwick's bringing home his bride. Four days passed in a whirl of pleasure. The first morning after their arrival, Sedgwick asked his brother for his trotting team, his new cutter, and the bells, to give Grace her first sleigh-ride. The steppers were of the 2:30 class, the roads good, and the fair English girl-wife was in ecstacies. They drove past the Jasper farm on the hill, and Sedgwick told Grace that it was his dream for years to accumulate $30,000 to release the mortgage from his father's farm and to buy the Jasper farm.
"Then what would I have done?" asked Grace.
"Married some English banker, or may be some 'My Lord Fitzdoodle,' probably," said Sedgwick.
"But, then, suppose a year later I had seen you, what would become of me?" she said.