"Ring out the false, ring in the true"
of this hoary world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."
Joanna said, "Yes; God bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, God blessed them.
Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.
Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty will come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"
But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later:—"Dear Cousin Joanna,—I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding godly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and you were the woman to perform the delectable feat."
Polly had found her heart not a very lofty one, not a very sensitive one—but an honest and kind heart in the main, which was permitted to extricate itself from the slough of luxury and self-indulgence, and beat warmly and faithfully throughout the rest of its course.