How Mr. Blackthorn ever came to ask her that question, nobody can guess, and Harold believes he does not know himself.  However, it got an answer two years ago, and Mrs. King gave her consent with all her heart, though she knew Betsey Hardman would talk of picking a husband up out of the gutter, and that my Lady would look severe, and say something of silly girls.  Yes—­and though the rich widower bailiff had said sundry civil things of Miss Ellen being well brought up and notable—­’For,’ as Mrs. King wrote to Matilda, ’I had rather see Ellen married to a good religious man than to any one, and I do not know one I can be so sure of as Paul, nor one that is so like a son to me; and if he has no friends belonging to him, that is better than bad friends.’  And Ellen herself, from looking on him as a mere boy, as she had done at their first acquaintance, had come to thinking no one ever had been so wise or so clever, far less so good, certainly not so fond of her—­so her answer was no great wonder.  Then they were to be prudent, and wait for some dependence; and so they did till Mr. Shaw recommended Paul Blackthorn for Hazleford school, where there is a beautiful new house for the master, so that he will have no longer to live in lodgings, and be ‘done for,’ as the saying is.  Harold tells Ellen that he is afraid that without her he won’t wash above once in four months; but however that may be, she is convinced that the new school-house will be lost on him, and that in spite of all his fine arithmetic, his fifty pounds will never go so far for one as for two; and so she did not turn a deaf ear to his entreaties that she would not send him alone to Hazleford.

They wanted very much to get ‘Mother’ to come and live with them, give up the post-office, and let Harold live in Mr. Cope’s house; but Mother has a certain notion that Harold’s stately looks and perfect health might not last, if she were not always on the watch to put him into dry clothes if he comes in damp, and such like ‘little fidgets,’ as he calls them, which he would not attend to from any one but Mother.  So she will keep on the shop and the post-office, and try to break in that uncouth girl of John Farden’s to be a tidy little maid; and Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorn will spend their holidays with her and Harold.  She may come to them yet in time, if, as Paul predicts, Master Harold takes up with Lucy at the Grange—­but there’s time enough to think of that; and even if he should, it would take many years to make Lucy into such a Mrs. King as she who is now very busy over the dinner at home, but thinking about a good deal besides the dinner.

There!  Paul and Ellen have stood and knelt in an earnest reverent spirit, making their vows to one another and before God, and His blessing has been spoken upon them to keep them all their lives through.

It is with a good heart of hope that Mr. Cope speaks that blessing, knowing that, as far as human eye can judge, here stands a man who truly feareth the Lord, and beside him a woman with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.