“Because it would half kill you to be left alone.”
“But I shall not be left alone,” he cried, excitedly. “I shall bitterly regret parting from this dear old home; but I am not so old that I could not make another in a foreign land.”
“Oh! Henry Bolter,” protested the little lady, “it must not be!”
“But it must,” said her brother, taking her in his arms, and kissing her tenderly. “There are other reasons, Mary, why I should like to go. I need not explain what those reasons are; but I tell you honestly that I should like to see this distant land.”
“Where natural history runs mad, Arthur,” cried the doctor, excitedly. “Hurrah!”
“Oh, Arthur!” cried his sister, “you cannot mean it. It is to please me.”
“And myself,” he said, quietly. “There; I am in sober earnest, and I tell you that no greater pleasure could be mine than to see you two one.”
“At the cost of your misery, Arthur.”
“To the giving of endless pleasure to your husband and my brother,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling; and before she could thoroughly realise the fact, little quiet Miss Mary Rosebury was sobbing on the doctor’s breast.