“But it is; I haven’t changed a bit.”

“You ha’n’t changed for the wohse, anyway.”

“Didn’t I always try to do what I had to?”

“I guess you did, Clem.”

“Well, then!”

Mr. Orson, after a decent hesitation, consented to perform the ceremony.  It took place in a parlor of the hotel, according to the law of New York, which facilitates marriage so greatly in all respects that it is strange any one in the State should remain single.  He had then a luxury of choice between attaching himself to the bridal couple as far as Ohio on his journey home to Michigan, or to Claxon who was going to take the boat for Boston the next day on his way to Middlemount.  He decided for Claxon, since he could then see Mrs. Lander’s lawyer at once, and arrange with him for getting out of the vice-consul’s hands the money which he was holding for an authoritative demand.  He accepted without open reproach the handsome fee which the elder Hinkle gave him for his services, and even went so far as to say, “If your son should ever be blest with a return to health, he has got a helpmeet such as there are very few of.”  He then admonished the young couple, in whatever trials life should have in store for them, to be resigned, and always to be prepared for the worst.  When he came later to take leave of them, he was apparently not equal to the task of fitly acknowledging the return which Hinkle made him of all the money remaining to Clementina out of the sum last given her by Mrs. Lander, but he hid any disappointment he might have suffered, and with a brief, “Thank you,” put it in his pocket.

Hinkle told Clementina of the apathetic behavior of Mr. Orson; he added with a laugh like his old self, “It’s the best that he doesn’t seem prepared for.”

“Yes,” she assented.  “He wasn’t very chee’ful.  But I presume that he meant well.  It must be a trial for him to find out that Mrs. Landa wasn’t rich, after all.”

It was apparently never a trial to her.  She went to Ohio with her husband and took up her life on the farm, where it was wisely judged that he had the best chance of working out of the wreck of his health and strength.  There was often the promise and always the hope of this, and their love knew no doubt of the future.  Her sisters-in-law delighted in all her strangeness and difference, while they petted her as something not to be separated from him in their petting of their brother; to his mother she was the darling which her youngest had never ceased to be; Clementina once went so far as to say to him that if she was ever anything she would like to be a Moravian.