“Cynthia Badlam Fund Hopkins,” said the good woman triumphantly,—­“is that what you mean?”

“Suppose we leave out one of the names,—­four are too many.  I think the general opinion will be that Hehninthia should unite the names of her two benefactresses,—­Cynthia Badlam Hopkins.”

“Why, law!  Mr. Gridley, is n’t that nice?—­Minthy and Cynthy,—­there ain’t but one letter of difference!  Poor Cynthy would be pleased if she could know that one of our babes was to be called after her.  She was dreadful fond of children.”

On one of the sweetest Sundays that ever made Oxbow Village lovely, the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Pembertan was summoned to officiate at three most interesting ceremonies,—­a wedding and two christenings, one of the latter a double one.

The first was celebrated at the house of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, between the Rev. Cyprian Eveleth and Bathsheba, daughter of the first-named clergyman.  He could not be present on account of his great infirmity, but the door of his chamber was left open that he might hear the marriage service performed.  The old, white-haired minister, assisted, as the papers said, by the bridegroom’s father, conducted the ceremony according to the Episcopal form.  When he came to those solemn words in which the husband promises fidelity to the wife so long as they both shall live, the nurse, who was watching, near the poor father, saw him bury his face in his pillow, and heard him murmur the words, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”

The christenings were both to take place at the same service, in the old meeting-house.  Colonel Clement Lindsay and Myrtle his wife came in, and stout Nurse Byloe bore their sturdy infant in her arms.  A slip of paper was handed to the Reverend Doctor on which these words were written:—­“The name is Charles Hazard.”

The solemn and touching rite was then performed; and Nurse Byloe disappeared with the child, its forehead glistening with the dew of its consecration.

Then, hand in hand, like the babes in the wood, marched up the broad aisle—­marshalled by Mrs. Hopkins in front, and Mrs. Gifted Hopkins bringing up the rear—­the two children hitherto known as Isosceles and Helminthia.  They had been well schooled, and, as the mysterious and to them incomprehensible ceremony was enacted, maintained the most stoical aspect of tranquillity.  In Mrs. Hopkins’s words, “They looked like picters, and behaved like angels.”

That evening, Sunday evening as it was, there was a quiet meeting of some few friends at The Poplars.  It was such a great occasion that the Sabbatical rules, never strict about Sunday evening,—­which was, strictly speaking, secular time,—­were relaxed.  Father Pemberton was there, and Master Byles Gridley, of course, and the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, with his son and his daughter-in-law, Bathsheba, and her mother, now in comfortable health, aunt Silence and her husband, Doctor Hurlbut and his wife (Olive Eveleth that was), Jacob Penhallow, Esq., Mrs. Hopkins, her son and his wife (Susan Posey that was), the senior deacon of the old church (the admirer of the great Scott), the Editor-in-chief of the “Banner and Oracle,” and in the background Nurse Byloe and the privileged servant, Mistress Kitty Fagan, with a few others whose names we need not mention.