Here Kenelm followed the young couple into the parlour,
where, seated by the window, they found old Mrs. Somers
reading the Bible and rocking the baby, who slept
peacefully in its cradle.
“Will,” said Kenelm, bending his dark
face over the infant, “I will tell you a pretty
thought of a foreign poet’s, which has been thus
badly translated:
“’Blest babe, a boundless world
this bed so narrow seems to thee;
Grow man, and narrower than this bed the
boundless world shall
be.’"[1]
[1] Schiller.
“I don’t think that is true, sir,”
said Will, simply; “for a happy home is a world
wide enough for any man.”
Tears started into Jessie’s eyes; she bent down
and kissed—not the baby, but the cradle.
“Will made it.” She added blushing,
“I mean the cradle, sir.”
Time flew past while Kenelm talked with Will and the
old mother, for Jessie was soon summoned back to the
shop; and Kenelm was startled when he found the half-hour’s
grace allowed to him was over, and Jessie put her
head in at the door and said, “Mrs. Braefield
is waiting for you.”
“Good-by, Will; I shall come to see you again
soon; and my mother gives me a commission to buy I
don’t know how many specimens of your craft.”
A SMART pony-phaeton, with a box for a driver in livery
equally smart, stood at the shop-door.
“Now, Mr. Chillingly,” said Mrs. Braefield,
“it is my turn to run away with you; get in!”
“Eh!” murmured Kenelm, gazing at her with
large dreamy eyes. “Is it possible?”
“Quite possible; get in. Coachman, home!
Yes, Mr. Chillingly, you meet again that giddy creature
whom you threatened to thrash; it would have served
her right. I ought to feel so ashamed to recall
myself to your recollection, and yet I am not a bit
ashamed. I am proud to show you that I have turned
out a steady, respectable woman, and, my husband tells
me, a good wife.”
“You have only been six months married, I hear,”
said Kenelm, dryly. “I hope your husband
will say the same six years hence.”
“He will say the same sixty years hence, if
we live as long.”
“How old is he now?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“When a man wants only two years of his hundredth,
he probably has learned to know his own mind; but
then, in most cases, very little mind is left to him
to know.”
“Don’t be satirical, sir; and don’t
talk as if you were railing at marriage, when you
have just left as happy a young couple as the sun
ever shone upon; and owing,—for Mrs. Somers
has told me all about her marriage,—owing
their happiness to you.”
“Their happiness to me! not in the least.
I helped them to marry, and in spite of marriage they
helped each other to be happy.”
“You are still unmarried yourself?”
“Yes, thank Heaven!”
“And are you happy?”
