which time might bring, would be better in separate establishments.  She therefore proposed selling The Poplars to Myrtle and her husband, and removing to a house in the village, which would be large enough for them, at least for the present.  So the young folks bought the old house, and paid a mighty good price for it; and enlarged it, and beautified and glorified it, and one fine morning went together down to the Widow Hopkins’s, whose residence seemed in danger of being a little crowded,—­for Gifted lived there with his Susan,—­and what had happened might happen again,—­and gave Master Byles Gridley a formal and most persuasively worded invitation to come up and make his home with them at The Poplars.

Now Master Gridley has been betrayed into palpable and undisguised weakness at least once in the presence of this assembly, who are looking upon him almost for the last time before they part from him, and see his face no more.  Let us not inquire too curiously, then, how he received this kind proposition.  It is enough, that, when he found that a new study had been built on purpose for him, and a sleeping-room attached to it so that he could live there without disturbing anybody if he chose, he consented to remove there for a while, and that he was there established amidst great rejoicing.

Cynthia Badlam had fallen of late into poor health.  She found at last that she was going; and as she had a little property of her own,—­as almost all poor relations have, only there is not enough of it,—­she was much exercised in her mind as to the final arrangements to be made respecting its disposition.  The Rev. Dr. Pemberton was one day surprised by a message, that she wished to have an interview with him.  He rode over to the town in which she was residing, and there had a long conversation with her upon this matter.  When this was settled, her mind seemed too be more at ease.  She died with a comfortable assurance that she was going to a better world, and with a bitter conviction that it would be hard to find one that would offer her a worse lot than being a poor relation in this.

Her little property was left to Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton and Jacob Penhallow, Esq., to be by them employed for such charitable purposes as they should elect, educational or other.  Father Pemberton preached an admirable funeral sermon, in which he praised her virtues, known to this people among whom she had long lived, and especially that crowning act by which she devoted all she had to purposes of charity-and benevolence.

The old clergyman seemed to have renewed his youth since the misfortune of his colleague had incapacitated him from labor.  He generally preached in the forenoon now, and to the great acceptance of the people,—­for the truth was that the honest minister who had married Miss Silence was not young enough or good-looking enough to be an object of personal attentions like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, and the old minister