The marriage of Will and Ease was naturally a quiet one. Wedding Ease with the certainty of hard work before him, and with the consciousness of taking up a man's burdens, Will was thoughtful and grave. He was full of a serious joy, and, as Patty declared, began already to look older and more sedate. Regret as he might the loss to his bride of her old home, he secretly experienced a virile joy that their fortunes were to be of his own carving.

"My boy," Dr. Sanford said to him upon the eve of his wedding-day, "make two agreements with your wife the day you marry, and stick to them,—never to cry over spilt milk, and never to cross a bridge till you come to it. That takes care of the past and the future; and, if you cannot bear the present together, you had better separate."

Bathalina, too, had her word to say.

"I approve of your bein' married," she said. "Some folks don't take no stock in folks gettin' married so young; but I believe in it. Then you ain't so much older than your children that they treat you as if you was their grand-dad; but they're kind of company for you. Now, when you get to be an old man, you may have a son as old as or older than yourself to stick by you. I always believed in folks bein' married young myself."

The ceremony took place at the Episcopal church, which the Mullens had for years attended, and was wholly free from display.

"God bless you!" Dr. Sanford greeted the newly-wedded pair as they stepped over the threshold of his home. "May you never be less in love than now!"

On the following day Miss Mullen flitted from Montfield like the last-remaining bittern, and established herself with her maiden cousin in Boston, where she gradually recovered her normal condition, and posed before a circle of select if somewhat antiquated people, among whom she soon came to feel perfectly at home.

Meanwhile life in Montfield went on much as usual. Tom Putnam endeavored vainly to come to an understanding with Patty. She resolutely avoided him, except on a single occasion. As Ease and Patty sat sewing one day, conversation turned on Mrs. Toxteth's masquerade.

"Do you know," Ease said, "I never found out what you wore? Emily Purdy told me beforehand that you were going in a man's dress, but of course I didn't believe that."

"Emily Purdy!" exclaimed Patty.

In an instant the whole matter was clear to her, and she saw how Putnam had obtained his knowledge of her costume. The following day she met the lawyer on the street, and stopped him with a little gesture of the hand.

"It is hardly worth while to bother you with apologies," she said; "but I shall respect myself a trifle more if I tell you that I have discovered how you knew of my masquerade-dress, and I beg your pardon for so misjudging you."

"You do not need to apologize," said he eagerly. "It is I who should"—

"Not at all," she interrupted. "Good-morning."

And she walked swiftly away.

For the rest of our friends, Burleigh continually urged upon Flossy the desirability of a speedy marriage; Clarence Toxteth had taken his wounded heart, or vanity, to Europe; Mrs. Smithers took possession of Mullen House; and December brooded in a sulky, rainy mood over the land.

"A green Christmas," Mrs. Sanford said, "makes a full churchyard. I knew we'd have a mild fall when the 21st of September was so mild. Don't you remember, mother? The wind was south-west, and the day very warm."

"The weather has truly been very warm this season," replied grandmother Sanford.

"I think it must be the weather," continued Mrs. Sanford, "that ails Bathalina. She isn't worth any thing for work now: all she'll do is the heavy talking and light lifting. She seems to lay up her husband's death against the doctor. But, as I told her, Peter wouldn't respond to the medicine; and what could Charles do?"

"I know of only one thing Bathalina is good for now," Patty remarked. "She'd make a very ornamental figure in a lunatic-asylum, with her long widow's veil."

"She is certainly crazy enough," put in Flossy. "She told me last night that Noah must have been familiar with the Bible, because he gave his sons names out of it, and that that showed how old the Bible was."

"There comes Will with the letters," Ease said, running to meet him.

"It's as good as eating perennial wedding-cake to see Ease and Will," Flossy laughed. "They are those two souls, you know, that have only a single thought."

"Young married couples," Patty returned somewhat cynically, "are apt to be so foolish that a single thought is quite as much as they can get up between them."

"You are getting misanthropical," Flossy said. "It isn't becoming. And, so saying, she went to stir up the young couple to see—Oh, here you are!"

"Here's a letter for Patty," Will said: "I think it is from Hazard Breck."

The letter which he put into his sister's hands was written in a bold, somewhat boyish hand, which always seemed to Patty very like Hazard himself. It was as follows:—

Dear Patty,—I don't know as I ought to write to you as I am going to, but I am sure you are too much my friend not to understand that I mean right. I want your help; and, to make things clear, I must tell you something. You know that Smithers woman who has got possession of Mullen House, and I dare say you have heard folks blame uncle Tom for taking so much care of her. He has always treated her better than she deserved. When her daughter ran away, she came after him to help find her; but they lost all trace till now. I am mixing things all up, for I hate to tell you the truth: it must come, though. You know well enough what father was, and—think how hard it is for me to tell you, Patty, and you'll excuse my writing this—Mrs. Smithers always said that this girl, her daughter, was my half-sister. Father asked uncle Tom, on his death-bed, to take care of the two; and she's had an income out of his pocket. The man with whom Alice Smithers ran away from Samoset has left her, and somehow or other she has got here. She met me on the street, and begged for a bit of bread. She is sick and penniless, and promises, that, if her mother will let her come home, she will behave. Mrs. Smithers only answers her letters by threats of vengeance if she dares go to Mullen House. I can't write to uncle Tom; for Mrs. Smithers hates him for having tried to make her behave decently, and, now that she is independent, she will do nothing for him. Cannot you do something, Patty, to help this poor girl? She looks half dead, and she has always been delicate.

I am too troubled about this to write about any thing else; but I hope you will have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Very truly yours,
Hazard Breck.

Patty read this letter carefully twice. Then she started up.

"I am going down to the brook for rose-hips to put about the Christmas-cake," she said.