The two tall Misses Richards ceased to be serious as soon as it became decidedly mauvais ton at Wrexhill to be so: and in process of time they too married; leaving their charming little mother leisure to cultivate the friendship of Rosalind, who retained her partiality for her, and enjoyed her friendship and society for many happy years.
Need it be said that Rosalind and Helen were married on the same day?—So it was, however; and Mr. Edward Wallace performed the ceremony, the Vicar of Wrexhill being indisposed. Indeed the air of the Vicarage evidently disagreed with him; but, by the influence of some of the most distinguished of his party, both in religion and politics, he soon obtained an exchange with a gentleman who held preferment in the Fens. He did not, however, obtain a mitre, though a great many serious people declared that he deserved it: a disappointment which was perhaps the more cutting from the circumstance of Mr. Jacob's having joined a troop of strolling players; and as he was not sufficiently successful amongst them to add any glory thereby to the family name, the loss of episcopal honours was the more severely felt.
Every thing else, I think, went just as it ought to do. Poor Miss Mimima was sent off to her mamma, who never again ventured to show her face at Wrexhill; probably fearing that she might cease to be considered as the principal person of the village.
Mr. Mowbray speedily re-established Mr. Marsh in his school; the old lawyer and apothecary returned; the newly-hired serious servants retreated before the returning honest ones—and, in short, a whole flight of fanaticals followed their incomparable vicar, till the pretty village of Wrexhill once more became happy and gay, and the memory of their serious epidemic rendered its inhabitants the most orderly, peaceable, and orthodox population in the whole country.