Muriel's fortune turned out less than it might have been. The portion in Jordan's hands having disappeared, Considine offered to make good the deficiency to the last cent he possessed as far as it would have gone. But the moiety he had manipulated himself had prospered, and made a very pretty fortune as it was; and for the rest--no one doubts that some day Muriel will fall heir to all that he, his wife, and her sister possess.
The man with the two wives, is how his acquaintance speak of Considine, for the three go everywhere together. He is as attentive to Penelope as to his wife, and she is far more adoring than her sister, who, being married, has her rights, to criticise, to have little tempers--though, indeed, Matilda's are of the smallest--and so forth.
And now there seems no more to say. Betsey Bunce is in her right place as mistress of a farm. Her poultry lay larger eggs, and her cows give more butter than those of any one else. She is busy and cheery all day long, and neither man nor maid dare ever be idle on the premises. She has proved a fortune to her husband, if she brought him none, and he owns now that the bad luck which first made him think of Betsey was the luckiest circumstance of his life. She is bound to make a rich man of him, and a legislator at Ottawa, some day soon.
FOOTNOTE
[Footnote 1]: Sugar-bush. A grove of maple trees. The farmers tap the juice in spring, and boil it into sugar. In Lower Canada and New Hampshire, scarcely any other sugar is consumed in the country places.
[Footnote 2]: Jennie Jeffers, queen of the gypsies in the United States, died in Greenfield, Tennessee, March 10, 1884, and was buried at Dayton, Ohio, April 16. Fifteen hundred gipsies from all parts of the country were present.--American Paper.