"To you, my kind, noble old partner? Ah, I love and honour you above all men!"
"Then," said Tom, putting his arm round her waist, "to the devil with all the nonsense you have just been talking, about eternal disgraces and so forth! I am an honest man and you're an honest woman, and, therefore, what cause or impediment can there be? Come, Mary, it's no use resisting; my mind is made up, and you MUST!"
"Oh, think!" she said; "oh, think only once, before it is too late for ever!"
"I have thought," said Tom, "as I told you before, for twenty years; and I ain't likely to alter my opinion in ten minutes. Come, Mary. Say, yes!"
And so she said yes.
"Mrs. Buckley," said Tom, as they came up arm in arm to the house, "it will be a good thing if somebody was to go up to our place, and nurse Mrs. Sam in her confinement."
"I shall go up myself," said Mrs. Buckley, "though how I am to get there I hardly know. It must be nearly eight hundred miles, I am afraid."
"I don't think you need, my dear madam," said he. "My wife will make an excellent nurse!"
"Your wife!"
Tom looked at Mary, who blushed, and Mrs. Buckley came up and kissed her.