When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his
sister good Aunt Martha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred.
'This is a weary day for me,' said good Aunt Martha, smiling
through her tears, as she embraced her nieces; 'for I lose my dear
companion in making you all happy; and what can you give me, in
return for my Marion?'
'A converted brother,' said the Doctor.
'That's something, to be sure,' retorted Aunt Martha, 'in such a
farce as - '
'No, pray don't,' said the doctor penitently.
'Well, I won't,' replied Aunt Martha. 'But, I consider myself ill
used. I don't know what's to become of me without my Marion, after
we have lived together half-a-dozen years.'
'You must come and live here, I suppose,' replied the Doctor. 'We
shan't quarrel now, Martha.'
'Or you must get married, Aunt,' said Alfred.
'Indeed,' returned the old lady, 'I think it might be a good
speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear,
is come home much the better for his absence in all respects. But
as I knew him when he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman
then, perhaps he mightn't respond. So I'll make up my mind to go
and live with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not
be very long, I dare say) to live alone. What do YOU say,
Brother?'
'I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous world altogether, and
there's nothing serious in it,' observed the poor old Doctor.
'You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony,'
said his sister; 'but nobody would believe you with such eyes as
those.'
'It's a world full of hearts,' said the Doctor, hugging his
youngest daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace - for he
couldn't separate the sisters; 'and a serious world, with all its
folly - even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole
globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks
upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the
miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need
be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of
sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the
surface of His lightest image!'
You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it
dissected and laid open to your view the transports of this family,
long severed and now reunited. Therefore, I will not follow the
poor Doctor through his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had
had, when Marion was lost to him; nor, will I tell how serious he
had found that world to be, in which some love, deep-anchored, is
the portion of all human creatures; nor, how such a trifle as the
absence of one little unit in the great absurd account, had
stricken him to the ground. Nor, how, in compassion for his
distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by
slow degrees, and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his
self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side.
Nor, how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the
course of that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had
promised him, as her brother, that on her birth-day, in the
evening, Grace should know it from her lips at last.
'I beg your pardon, Doctor,' said Mr.
