A year or more after his arrival in America he wrote to Jack Trevellian as follows:
"I hardly think you would know the once fastidious Neil McPherson, if you could see him now in a noisy cotton-mill, screaming at the top of his voice to the stupid operatives, and button-holed confidentially by the Brother Jonathans, who address him as 'Square, and speak of his aunt as the 'old woman.' But it is astonishing how soon one gets accustomed to things, and I really am very happy, especially when scouting the country on my beautiful bay, a present from my aunt, who gave it to me on condition that I would take care of it myself. Think of me in overalls and knit jacket, currying a horse and bedding him down, for I do all that; in fact, I do everything, even to splitting the kindlings when the chore-boy (that's what they call him here) does not come.
"Ah, well; I have learned many things in this land of democracy, and am content; though in my heart I believe I still have a hankering after old aristocratic England, provided I could be one of the aristocrats. I suppose you know that poor Blanche died last winter of fever in Naples, but perhaps you do not know that she left me ten thousand pounds! Fifty thousand dollars they count that in America, and I actually do not know what to do with it. My aunt gives me a thousand a year for spending money, and when she dies, I shall have, as nearly as I can estimate it, half a million, which in this country makes a rich man. If Bessie had not provided for old Anthony and Dorothy, I should care for them; but as she has, I believe I shall use the interest of Blanche's money in paying for scholarships in India, and China, and Japan, and Greece, and I'll call them the Blanche Trevellian and the Bessie McPherson scholarships. That will please Bessie, for she is great on missions, both at home and abroad, and her kitchen is a regular soup-house in the winter, for every beggar in Boston knows Mrs. Grey Jerrold. Jack, you don't know what a lovely woman Bessie is. Sweeter and prettier even than when she was a girl and you and I were both in love with her. And Grey—well, you ought to see how he worships her! Why, she is never within his reach that he does not put his hands upon her, and if he thinks no one is looking on he always kisses her, and by Jove, she kisses him back as if she liked it! And I—well, I bear it now with a good deal of equanimity. Eels, they say, can get used to being skinned, and so I am getting accustomed to think of Bessie as Grey's wife instead of mine, and I really have quite an uncleish feeling for her children. Indeed. I intend to make them my heirs
"And so good-by to you, old chap; with love to Flossie and the twins, from your Yankeefied friend,
"NEIL McPHERSON."
And now our story winds to a close, and we are dropping the curtain upon the characters, who go out one by one and pass from our sight forever. In the cozy rectory Hannah Jerrold's last days are passing happily and peacefully with the Rev. Charles Sanford, who loves her just as dearly and thinks her just as fair as on that night years and years ago, when she walked with him under the chestnut trees, and while her heart was breaking with its load of care and pain, sent him from her with no other explanation than that it could not be.
At Grey's Park Lucy Grey lives her life of sweet unselfishness, looked up to by the villagers as the lady par excellence of the town, and idolized by the little ones from Boston, who know no spot quite as attractive as her house in the park.
Miss Betsey and Neil still scramble along together, he indolent at times and prone to lapse into his old habits of luxurious ease, for which she rates him sharply, though on the whole she pets him as she has never petted a human being before.
"Boys will be boys," she says, forgetting that Neil is over thirty years of age, and she keeps his breakfast warm for him, and gets up to let him in when he has staid later than usual at the Ridge House, where he is a frequent visitor, for he and Allen Browne are fast friends and boon companions. Together they ride and drive, and row on the lakes around Allington; together they smoke and lounge on the broad piazza of the Ridge House, but Neil never drinks or plays with Allen, or any one else, for his aunt made it a condition of her friendship, that he should never touch a drop of anything which could intoxicate, or soil his hands with cards, even for amusement. The shadow of that awful tragedy at Monte Carlo is over her still, and she looks upon anything like card-playing as savoring of the pit.
Allen Browne is a young man of elegant leisure, who takes perfumed baths, and wears an overcoat which comes nearly to his feet, and a collar which cuts his ears. He is a graduate from Harvard, and his mother says his 'schoolin' has cost over fifteen thousand dollars, though where under the sun and moon the money went she can't contrive.