Rachel's eyes fell to the floor, and a gentle sigh escaped from her bosom. This was noticed by her husband.
"Have you any objection to R—?" he asked.
"Why not go back to the old place?" Rachel ventured to say, while her eyes were again fixed upon him, but now earnestly and tearfully.
"Would you rather live there?" he asked, with more than usual tenderness in his voice.
"I have never been happy since we left there," the poor wife replied, sinking forward and biding her tearful face on his breast.
Parker was confounded. He had never dreamed of this. Rachel had always so patiently acquiesced in all that he had proposed to do, that he had imagined her as willing to remove from one place to another as he had been. But now a new truth flashed upon his mind—"Never been happy since we left there?"
"We will go back, Rachel," he said, with some emotion. "If I had only known this!"
And they went back. But somehow or other Rachel Parker did not recover the healthy tone of body or mind that she had lost. By strict attention to business and continuing at it for some years in one place, her husband got along well enough, though he did not get rich. As for Rachel, she gradually declined and three years after her return was laid at rest.