"Hang you, and your Martha!" thought I, as I turned helplessly to the beef-steak, but I felt too much excited to do it the least justice. After deliberately knocking the ashes from his pipe, and taking a long draught of ale from the pewter-pot beside him, the old farmer went on of his own accord.
"I s'pose the young man told Miss Ellen that he could not live without her. We all tell 'em so, but we never dies a bit the sooner, for all that; and the pretty Miss told him to speak to her father, and he did speak, and to his surprise, old parson did not like it at all, and did not give him a very civil answer; and turned the young chap out of the house. He said that he did not approve of sporting characters for sons-in-law, and Miss Ellen should never get his consent to marry him. But as I told you before, sir, the women-folk will have their own way, especially when there is a sweet-heart or a new bonnet in the case; and the young lady gave him her own consent, and they took French leave and went off without saying a word to nobody. Next morning old parson was running about the village, asking everybody if they had seen his child, the tears running over his thin face, and he raving like a man out of his head."
"And were the young people ever married?" and in spite of myself I felt the colour flush my face to crimson.
"I never heard to the contrary. But it was not right to vex the poor old man: he took it so to heart, that it quite broke his spirit, and he lived but a very few months after she left him. His death was a great loss to the neighbourhood. We never had a parson that could hold a candle to him since. He was a father to the poor, and it was a thousand pities to see the good old man pining and drooping from day to day, and fretting himself after the spoilt gal who forsook him in his old age."
"You are too hard upon the young lady," said Suds: "it was but human nature after all, and small blame in her to prefer a young husband to an old snuffy superannuated parson."
"Did she ever return to ——?"
"She came to see her father in his dying illness, but too late to receive his forgiveness, for he died while her step was on the stairs. His last words—'Thank God, Ellen is come, I shall see her before I die.' But he did not, for he expired directly the words were out of his mouth. She and her husband followed the old man to his grave, and barring her grief, I never saw a handsomer couple."
"Do you know," said I, hesitatingly, "the church in which they were married?"
"I never heard, sir, not feeling curious to ask, as it did not concern me, but Mrs. Hepburn up at the Grove knows: she was Miss Lee then, and she and old parson's daughter went to school together, and were fast friends."
"Thank you," I replied carelessly, drawing my chair from the table, "you have satisfied my curiosity."