As soon as the meal was over, Ishmael said:
"Now, Uncle Reuben, if you will give me those farm books you were wanting me to arrange, I will make a commencement."
"No, you won't, Ishmael, my lad. You have worked yourself nearly to death this winter and spring, and now, please the Lord, you shall do no more work for a month. When I picked you up for dead that day, I promised the Almighty Father to be a father to you; so, Ishmael, you must regard me as such, when I tell you that you are to let the books alone for a whole month longer, until your health is restored. So just get your hat and come with us; I am going to show your aunt over the place."
Ishmael smiled and obeyed. And all three went out together. And oh! with how much pride Reuben displayed the treasures of her little place to his long-loved Hannah. He showed her her cows and pigs and sheep; and her turkeys and geese and hens; and her beehives and garden and orchard.
"And this isn't all, either, Hannah, my dear! We can have as much as we want for family use, of all the rare fruits and vegetables from the greenhouses and hotbeds up at Tanglewood; and, besides that, we have the freedom of the fisheries and the oyster beds, too; so you see, my dear, you will live like any queen! Thank the Lord!" said Reuben, reverently raising his hat.
"And oh, Reuben, to think that you should have saved all this happiness for me, poor, faded, unworthy me!" sighed his wife.
"Why, law, Hannah, who else should I have saved it for but my own dear old sweetheart? I never so much as thought of another."
"With all these comforts about you, you might have married some blooming young girl."
"Lord, dear woman, I ha'n't much larnin', nor much religion, more's the pity; but I hope I have conscience enough to keep me from doing any young girl so cruel a wrong as to tempt her to throw away her youth and beauty on an old man like me; and I am sure I have sense enough to prevent me from doing myself so great an injustice as to buy a young wife, who, in the very natur' of things, would be looking for'ard to my death as the beginning of her life; for I've heard as how the very life of a woman is love, and if the girl-wife cannot love her old husband—Oh, Hannah, let us drop the veil—the pictur' is too sickening to look at. Such marriages are crimes. Ah, Hannah, in the way of sweethearting, age may love youth, but youth can't love age. And another thing I am sartin' sure of—as a young girl is a much more delicate cre'tur' than a young man, it must be a great deal harder for her to marry an old man than it would be for him to marry an old woman, though either would be horrible."
"You seem to have found this out somehow, Reuben."