—­But yesterday she comes up to me after breakfast, and asks me to go up with her into her little room.  Now, says I to myself, I shall hear all about it.  I saw she looked as if she’d got some of her trouble off her mind, and I guessed that it was settled, and so, says I to myself, I must wish her joy and hope it’s all for the best, whatever I think about it.

—­Well, she asked me to set down, and then she begun.  She said that she was expecting to have a change in her condition of life, and had asked me up so that I might’ have the first news of it.  I am sure—­says I—­I wish you both joy.  Merriage is a blessed thing when folks is well sorted, and it is an honorable thing, and the first meracle was at the merriage in Canaan.  It brings a great sight of happiness with it, as I’ve had a chance of knowing, for my hus—­

The Landlady showed her usual tendency to “break” from the conversational pace just at this point, but managed to rein in the rebellious diaphragm, and resumed her narrative.

—­Merriage!—­says she,—­pray who has said anything about merriage?—­I beg your pardon, ma’am,—­says I,—­I thought you had spoke of changing your condition and I—­She looked so I stopped right short.

-Don’t say another word, says she, but jest listen to what I am going to tell you.

—­My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was hunting among his old Record books, when all at once he come across an old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name.  He took it into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a condition that if it was n’t kept, the property would all go back to them that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found out was me.  Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the company that owned the property—­it was ever so rich a company and owned land all round everywhere—­hadn’t kept to the conditions.  So he went to work, says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round, and he found out pretty much all about it, and at last he come to me—­it ’s my boarder, you know, that says all this—­and says he, Ma’am, says he, if you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you’ve only got to say so.  I didn’t know what he meant, and I began to think, says she, he must be crazy.  But he explained it all to me, how I’d nothing to do but go to court and I could get a sight of property back.  Well, so she went on telling me—­there was ever so much more that I suppose was all plain enough, but I don’t remember it all—­only I know my boarder was a good deal worried at first at the thought of taking money that other people thought was theirs, and the Register he had to talk to her, and he brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to her, and the upshot of it all was that the company agreed to settle the business by paying her, well, I don’t know just how much, but enough to make her one of the rich folks again.