This,
however, was not a matter speedily to be accomplished. Plan after plan
was formed, and plan after plan failed. The good-humoured cheek of Jeanie
lost the first flush of juvenile freshness; Reuben's brow assumed the
gravity of manhood, yet the means of obtaining a settlement seemed remote
as ever. Fortunately for the lovers, their passion was of no ardent or
enthusiastic cast; and a sense of duty on both sides induced them to
bear, with patient fortitude, the protracted interval which divided them
from each other.
In the meanwhile, time did not roll on without effecting his usual
changes. The widow of Stephen Butler, so long the prop of the family of
Beersheba, was gathered to her fathers; and Rebecca, the careful spouse
of our friend Davie Deans, wa's also summoned from her plans of
matrimonial and domestic economy. The morning after her death, Reuben
Butler went to offer his mite of consolation to his old friend and
benefactor. He witnessed, on this occasion, a remarkable struggle betwixt
the force of natural affection and the religious stoicism which the
sufferer thought it was incumbent upon him to maintain under each earthly
dispensation, whether of weal or woe.
On his arrival at the cottage, Jeanie, with her eyes overflowing with
tears, pointed to the little orchard, "in which," she whispered with
broken accents, "my poor father has been since his misfortune.
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