"Bless my soul!" almost shouted Dr. Sunbury, stopping short and gazing at Dr. Forman's immovable face.
"Why not?" said the doctor testily. "I see them together half a dozen times a week."
Dr. Sunbury was at heart an inveterate matchmaker, as all truly benevolent old persons are apt to be, and as soon as he allowed his imagination to feast upon the idea of a match between Thorburn and Priscilla, its manifest fitness impressed itself so upon him that he would fain have got out a license, gone to them, and commanded them to stand up and be married immediately. He did, however, firmly resolve to give Thorburn a hint; but giving Thorburn hints was always a matter of more or less difficulty with everybody. At last, however, the opportunity came, and Dr. Sunbury seized it courageously. He had been spending the evening with Mr. Thorburn at his lodgings, and the other clergyman happening to mention, as Dr. Sunbury was taking his leave, that he thought of getting lodgings elsewhere, Dr. Sunbury remarked quite naturally that he "had heard something regarding Mr. Thorburn and Miss Priscilla Mildmay which perhaps accounted for the proposed change." They were standing at Mr. Thorburn's door, and by the bright moonlight Dr. Sunbury saw the dark flush which overspread Mr. Thorburn's somewhat saturnine face.
"I—I assure you—" he began; and then, after a pause, "I am too old."
"Nonsense!" replied Dr. Sunbury. "Priscilla is nearly twenty-six" (ah! doctor, you know she was only twenty-five month before last), "and you are—let me see—thirty-seven."
"Thirty-nine," conscientiously said Mr. Thorburn.
"Well, thirty-nine. You are enough man of the world to see that age interposes no obstacle in the case. However, I shall say no more. Good-night."
"If I hadn't been going just then, I don't think I could have said it," confidentially remarked Dr. Sunbury to Dr. Forman.
The little seed that Dr. Sunbury had planted in Mr. Thorburn's mind grew, and waxed to be a great tree. But all the time he looked upon it as impossible. Priscilla was but a child, and he was a man grown old in sorrow, in suffering, and labor. No, it could never be. And having come to the conclusion that he was in no danger whatever, Mr. Thorburn fared just as such presumptuous Samsons always do. He met Priscilla under the most adverse circumstances, running home from a shower, and in a manner the most unexpected to himself, proposed to her just as they came in front of the West Harrowby savings-bank, which was also the post-office and the principal apothecary's shop. Priscilla's behavior was of a piece with his own. The idea had never been presented to her mind before, and it was a matter that required the utmost circumspection in deciding, and yet by the time she reached her own door she had accepted Mr. Thorburn, the rain meanwhile from his umbrella trickling in little rivers down her back. There was neither time nor opportunity for love-making in the midst of a pouring shower, upon the pavement in front of the Mildmay mansion, so Mr. Thorburn could only take her little cold hand and say, "God bless you, God bless you, my Priscilla!"
In due course of time the wedding—a very quiet one—came off, and Mr. and Mrs. Thorburn were settled in a modest rectory in East Harrowby. The Misses Mildmay had suggested—indeed, urged—that Mr. Thorburn should establish his rectory in the more fashionable precinct of West Harrowby, but Mr. Thorburn demurred, on the ground of its being a clergyman's duty to live in his parish.