Evelyn did not say, what perhaps rose to her mind, “You might have been, with a great deal harder work, a respectable foreman in the foundry, as good a man, and as admirable an example of what labour and honest zeal can do.” She did not say it, but her historian does for her. Mrs. Rowland only pressed her husband’s arm, and said, “The young ones, perhaps, are not without reason too.”
At all events, Mr. Rowland said no more of the ranch for Eddy, and in due time, when the young pair were old enough, they married, and settled at Gilston, which was relieved and rescued by Marion’s money, and restored to its dignity as one of the finest places in the county, where, if they did not perhaps live happy ever after, they were at least a great deal better off than they deserved, and fulfilled all their own prophecies, and suited each other—down to the ground, as Eddy said. Old Aunt Sarah died in the course of time, and completed their prosperity. And there was not a livelier house in England, nor a couple who enjoyed their life more.
As for Archie, his complete development into a man, on a different level from his father, with other aims, and an ambition which grew slowly with his powers, cannot be here entered into. It would exceed the limits permitted in these pages, and might touch upon graver problems than are open to the historian of domestic life.
Rosamond has not yet married any more than he, and has had full opportunities of testing the power of work and its results. Mabel Leighton, of course, was soon drawn off from that eccentric career, and is now a mother of children, much like what her own mother was before her. But the further history of those two, if it is ever written, will demand a new beginning and an extended page.
THE END.
PRINTED BY F. A. BROCKHAUS, LEIPZIG.