Of course after it was settled he went straight to Martha’s grave and staid there all the afternoon, and did a little gardening around it, and trained the rose-bush around the head-stone, and picking a half open blossom, put it in his button-hole and silently apostrophized the dead woman at his feet, telling her that though he was about to bring a new mistress to the home where she had reigned supreme, he should not forget her, and should so far as was consistent, see that all her ideas were carried out, especially as far as his health was concerned.  Then be walked thoughtfully away, whispering to himself;

“Martha was a very good and excellent woman, but I loved Hanny first, and God forgive me if it is wrong to say it, I think I love her the best.”

Then he went and told Miss McPherson, who called him and Hannah fools, to think of marrying at their time of life, but said she was satisfied if they were.  Then he told Lucy Grey, who congratulated him warmly and was sure he would be happy.  Then he told Bessie, who cried at first because her Aunt Hannah was not to live with her, and then entered heart and soul into the affair and became as much interested in the wedding and the wedding outfit as if the bride-elect had been a young girl in her teens instead or an elderly woman in her fifties.  Then he told his senior warden, who, having himself been married three times, had nothing to say, but hurried home with the news, which was all over Allington by the next day, and was received differently, according to the different natures of the receivers.  Some were very glad, and predicted that the rector would be far happier with Hannah than he had been with Martha, while others wondered what that worthy woman would say if she knew that another was to fill her place, and all calculated the ages of the respective parties, making him out younger than he was and her a great deal older.  But neither he nor she ever knew what was said, and they would not have cared if they had, for both were supremely happy and thankful for the peace and blessedness which had crowned their later life.  Fifty and even sixty is not so very old, at least to those who have reached it, and Hannah neither looked nor felt old when in her becoming traveling dress of seal brown she stood up in the parlors of her brother’s house on Beacon street and was made Mrs. Charles Sanford.

This was early in February, and six weeks before, on Christmas Eve, there had come to that same house on Beacon street a little black-eyed, black-haired boy, as unlike either Bessie or Grey as a baby well could be.

“He is not like any one I have ever seen of your family,” the old nurse said, when she brought the sturdy fellow to Bessie, who, the moment she looked at him exclaimed: 

“Why, Grey, he is exactly like Neil; his eyes, his hair, his expression, and Neil will be so glad.  We must have his picture taken at once and sent to Neil, with a lock of his hair.”