is as harmless as a tow string. Come then, Lizzy, come! I have not known a happy moment since I left you, and I am sure you cannot be happy. This is a land of peace and plenty—a land where—”
Thomas Ward did not know that a stranger had entered the room, and was now looking over his shoulder, and reading what he had written. Just as his pen was on the sentence left unfinished above, a pair of soft hands were suddenly drawn across his eyes, and a strangely familiar voice said, tremblingly—”Guess who it is!”
Before he had time to think or to guess, the hands passed from his eyes to his neck, and a warm wet cheek was laid tightly against his own. He could not see the face that lay so close to his, but he knew that Lizzy’s arms were around him, that her tears were upon his face, and that her heart was beating against him.
“Bless us!” ejaculated the old farmer, who had followed after the young woman who had asked at the door with such an eager interest for Thomas Ward—”what does all this mean?”
By this time Thomas had gained a full view of his wife’s tearful but happy face. Then he hugged her to his bosom over and over again, much to the surprise and delight of the farmer’s urchins, who happened to be in the room.
“Here she is, sir; here she is!” he cried to the farmer, as soon as he could see any thing else but Lizzy’s face, and then first became aware of the old gentleman’s presence; “here is your English dairy maid.”
“Then it’s your wife, Thomas, sure enough.”
“Oh, yes, sir; I thought she would be along after a while, but didn’t expect this happiness so soon.”
“How is this, my young lady?” asked the farmer, good-humouredly—”how is this? I thought you wasn’t going to come to this country. But I suppose the very next packet after your husband left saw you on board. All I blame him for is not taking you under his arm, as I would have done, and bringing you along as so much baggage. But no doubt you found it much pleasanter coming over alone than it would have been in company with your husband—no doubt at all of it.”
The kind-hearted farmer then took his children out of the room, and, closing the door, left the reunited husband and wife alone. Lizzy was too happy to say any thing about how wrong she had been in not consenting to go with her husband; but she owned that he had not been gone five minutes before she would have given the world, if she had possessed it, to have been with him. Ten days afterwards another packet sailed for the United States, and she took passage in it. On arriving in New York she was fortunate enough to fall in with a passenger who had come over in the Shamrock, and from him learned where she could find her husband, who acknowledged that she had given him the most agreeable surprise he had ever known in his life.
Lizzy has never yet had cause to repent of her voyage to America. The money she received for managing the dairy of the old farmer, added to what her husband could save from his salary, after accumulating for some years, was at length applied to the purchase of a farm, the produce of which, sold yearly in New York, leaves them a handsome annual surplus over and above their expenses. Thomas Ward is in a fair way of becoming a substantial and wealthy farmer.
MARRYING A TAILOR.
“KATE, Kate!” said Aunt Prudence, shaking her head and finger at the giddy girl.
“It’s true, aunt. What! marry a tailor? The ninth part of a man, that doubles itself down upon a board, with thimble, scissors, and goose! Gracious!”
“I’ve heard girls talk before now, Kate; and I’ve seen them act, too; and, if I am to judge from what I’ve seen, I should say that you were as likely to marry a tailor as anybody else.”
“I’d hang myself first!”
“Would you?”
“Yes, or jump into the river. Do any thing, in fact, before I’d marry a tailor.”
“Perhaps you would not object to a merchant tailor?”
“Perhaps I would, though! A tailor’s a tailor, and that is all you can make of him. ‘Merchant tailor!’ Why not say merchant shoemaker, or merchant boot-black? Isn’t it ridiculous?”
“Ah well, Kate,” said Aunt Prudence, “you may be thankful if you get an honest, industrious, kind-hearted man for a husband, be he a tailor or a shoemaker. I’ve seen many a heart-broken wife in my day whose husband was not a tailor. It isn’t in the calling, child, that you must look for honour or excellence, but in the man. As Burns says —’The man’s the goud for a’ that.’”
“But a
“You talk like a thoughtless, silly girl, as you are, Kate. But time will take all this nonsense out of you, or I am very much mistaken. I could tell you a story about marrying a tailor, that would surprise you a little.”
“I should like, above all things in the world, to hear a story of any interest, in which a tailor was introduced.”
“I think I could tell you one.”
“Please do, aunt. It would be such a novelty. A very
“If you don’t cry, Kate, I shall wonder,” said Aunt Prudence, looking grave.
“Cry? oh, dear! And all about a tailor! But tell the story, aunt.”
“Some other time, dear.”
“Oh, no. I’m just in the humour to hear it now. I’m as full of fun as I can stick, and shall need all this overflow of spirits to keep me up while listening to the pathetic story of a tailor.”
“Perhaps you are right, Kate. It may require all the spirits you can muster,” returned Aunt Prudence, in a voice that was quite serious. “So I will tell you the story now.”
And Aunt Prudence thus began:
A good many years ago,—I was quite a young girl then,—two children were left orphans, at the age of eleven years. They were twins—brother and sister. Their names I will call Joseph and Agnes Fletcher. The death of their parents left them without friends or relatives; but a kind-hearted tailor and his wife, who lived neighbours, took pity on the children and gave them a home. Joseph was a smart, intelligent lad, and the tailor thought he could do no
