"Good health, captain," said he, with a merry laugh--a laugh that somehow reassured Captain Copp. "And now tell me what wonderful event put you up to say this."
"It was mother," answered the simple-minded captain. "The thought struck her somehow--you were both of you good-looking, she said. I knew there was no danger; 'the young Thornycrofts are not marrying men,' I said to her. But now, look here, you and Anna had not better go out together again, lest other people should take up the same notions."
With these words Captain Copp believed he had settled the matter, and done all that was necessary in the way of warning. He said as much to Amy, confidentially. Whether it might have proved so, he had not the opportunity of judging. On the following morning that lady received a pressing summons to repair to London. One of her sisters, staying there temporarily, was seized with illness, and begged the captain's wife to come and nurse her. By the next train she had started, taking Anna.
"To be out of harm's way," she said to herself. "To help me take care of Maria," she said to the captain.
Mrs. Wortley was a widow without children. So many events have to be crowded in, and the story thickens so greatly, that nothing more need be said of her. The lodgings she had been temporarily occupying were near to old St. Pancras Church, and there Mrs. Sam Copp and Anna found her--two brave, skilful, tender nurses, ever ready to do their best.
Never before had Anna found illness wearisome; never before thought London the most dreary spot on earth. Ah, it was not in the locality; it was not in the illness that the ennui lay; but in the absence of Isaac Thornycroft. He called to see them once, rather to the chagrin of the captain's wife, and he met Anna the same day when she went for her walk. Mrs. Sam Copp did not suspect it.
They had been in London about a month, the invalid was better, and Mrs. Copp began to talk of returning home again; when one dark November morning, upon Anna's returning home from her walk--which Mrs. Copp, remembering her past weak condition, the result of work and confinement, insisted on her taking--Isaac Thornycroft came in with her. He put his hat down on the table, took Mrs. Copp's hands in his, and was entering upon some story, evidently a solemn one, when Anna nearly startled Mrs. Copp into fits by falling at her feet with a prayer for forgiveness, and bursting into tears.
"Oh, aunt, forgive, forgive me! Isaac over-persuaded me; he did indeed."
"Persuaded you to what?" asked Mrs. Copp.
"To become my wife," interposed Isaac. "We were married this morning."