“Mary Bacon doesn’t look as well as when I last saw her.”

“So it struck me,” returned Mr. Green.

“I’m afraid she has taken upon her more than she has the strength to accomplish.  She is certainly paler and thinner than she was, and is far from looking as cheerful and happy as when I saw her six months ago.”

Mr. Green did not reply to this, but his countenance assumed a thoughtful expression.

“Mary is a good daughter,” he at length said, as if speaking to himself.

“There is not one in a thousand like her,” replied Henry, with a warmth of manner that caused Mr. Green to lift his eyes to his son’s face.

“I fully agree with you in that,” he answered.

“Then, father,” said Henry, “why hold her any longer to her contract, thus far so honorably fulfilled.  The trial has proved her.  You see the pure gold of her character.”

“I have long seen it,” returned Mr. Green.

“Her father is thoroughly reformed.”

“So I have reason to believe."’

“Then act from your own heart’s generous impulses, father, and forgive the balance of the debt.”

“Are you certain that she will accept what you ask me to give?  Will her own sense of justice permit her to stop until the whole claim is satisfied?” asked Mr. Green.

“I cannot answer for that father,” returned Henry.  “But, let me beg of you to at least make the generous offer of a release.”

Mr. Green went to his secretary, and, taking a small piece of paper from a drawer, held it up, and said—­

“This, Henry, is her acknowledgment of the debt to me.  If I write upon it ‘satisfied,’ will you take it to her and say, that I hold the obligation no farther.”

“Gladly!” was the instant reply of Henry.  “You could not ask me to do a thing from which I would derive greater pleasure.”

Mr. Green took up his pen and wrote across the face of the paper, in large letters, “satisfied,” and then, handing it to his son, said—­

“Take it to her, Henry, and say to her, that if I had given way to my feelings, I would have done this a year ago.  And now, let me speak a word for your ear.  Never again, in this life, may a young woman cross your path, whose character is so deeply grounded in virtue, who is so pure, so unselfish, so devoted in her love, so strong in her good purposes.  Her position is humble, but, in a life-companion, we want personal excellences, not extraneous social adjuncts.  You have my full consent to win, if you can, this sweet flower, blooming by the way-side.  A proud day will it be for me, when I can call her my daughter.  I have long loved her as such.”

More welcome words than these Mr. Green could not have spoken to his son.  They were like a response to his own feelings.  He did not, however, make any answer, but took the contract in silence and quickly left the room.

The reader can easily anticipate what followed.  Mary did not go back to Lowell.  A year afterwards she was introduced to a select circle of friends in Boston as the wife of Henry Green, and she is now the warmly esteemed friend and companion of some of the most intelligent, refined, right-thinking, and right-feeling people in that city.  Her husband has seen no reason to repent of his choice.