“As far as I am concerned, Anderson, I most gladly consent.  Bramble is to live with us—­that is arranged, and if no objections are raised by others you may be sure of my acceding, and, indeed, if objections should be raised, of persuading all I can.”

“You can do no more, Tom,” replied Anderson; “nor can more be expected.”

This point was very satisfactorily arranged.  Bramble and Bessy both gave their cheerful consent, and it was settled that as soon as we had a house to receive him, my father should quit Greenwich and live with us.  The arguments of my father, added to the persuasions of Bramble and me, had their due weight, and on the 13th of September, 1807, Bessy and I exchanged our vows, and I embraced her as my own.

FINALE

If the reader will refer back to the first part of this narrative, he will find that I was born in the year 1786; and as I am writing this in the year 1840, I am now fifty-four years old.  I was but little more than twenty-one when I married; I have, therefore, the experience of thirty-two years of a married life; but I will not anticipate.  I ended the last chapter with my own happy union; I must now refer to those events which followed close upon that period.

Sir James and Lady O’Connor had taken up their residence at Leamington, then a small village, and not the populous place which it has since become.  After a few months’ residence, during which I had repeated letters from Lady O’Connor and Virginia, they were so pleased with the locality and neighborhood that Sir James purchased a property of some hundred acres, and added to a house which was upon it, so as to make it a comfortable and elegant residence.  Lady O’Connor, after the first year, presented her husband with a son, and has since that been very assiduous in increasing his family—­more so, perhaps, than would have been convenient to Sir James O’Connor’s income at the time that he purchased the property, had it not been that the increase of its value, in consequence of a large portion of it having been taken as building land, has been so great as to place them in most affluent circumstances.  About a year after my marriage I had notice from Lady O’Connor that a certain gentleman had arrived there who had shown great attention to Virginia; and she added that he had been very well received by my sister, being an old acquaintance of the name of Sommerville, a clergyman with a good living, and a very superior young man.  I immediately recollected him as the preceptor who had behaved with such propriety when my sister was persecuted by the addresses of the young nobleman; and I, therefore, felt very easy upon the subject.  A few months afterward I had a letter from Virginia, stating that he had proposed, and that she had conditionally accepted him.  I wrote to her, congratulating her upon the choice she had made, giving her father’s consent and blessing (of my mother hereafter); and shortly after they were married; and I am happy to say that her marriage has turned out as fortunate as my own.