"Oh, auntie! Oh, Uncle Dionysius!" She involved first one and then the other in her manifold frills and puffings by way of embrace. "Congratulate me!--do!--Just think!" "Sit down, Betsey, and calm yourself," remonstrated the rector, "and then, perhaps, it may be possible to think. Meanwhile you take our breath away. Have you had your dinner?" "Well, no. But I don't care--or rather, I dare say I _will_ take just a morsel. What have you been having? Chickens? Well, I will take just a bone, and a good plateful of salad, and the rest of that melon. That's all I want. Such news! Only guess! But you would never think. Fact is, the squire--Squire Webb--has--what do you think?" "Why!" cried Aunt Judy, "I saw you go for a drive with him?--Oh!--Indeed." CHAPTER X. AT GORHAM. Mrs. Martha Herkimer, with her husband, travelling at their leisure in "Noo Hampshire," the country of her girlhood, was a happy woman. He was constantly with her, had few letters to write, and no men to talk business with. He seemed to have laid business aside, would read his newspaper beside her of a morning, and drive with her in the afternoon, to admire the scenery--"objects of interest," the American says, meaning everything the residents plume themselves upon, from the Falls of Niagara, should they possess them, to the new school-house at the Five-mile Cross Roads. It felt like a renewal of the honeymoon, or those delightful "latter rains," spoken of in scripture, when the thirsty earth, long parched and chapped with drought, drinks in once more the life-restoring moisture, and clothes itself anew with grass and verdure. He told her one day that his house had suspended payment and he was bankrupt, but as they were travelling with every comfort, and there seemed no lack of money, she accepted it as one of the inscrutable phenomena of the commercial world, which she had long given up attempting to understand. Her Ralph, she told herself, could have done nothing wrong. He was fonder of money, and harder and keener about acquiring it, she feared, than was perhaps, perfectly right. Her father had been a preacher of the old Puritan school, ministering to villagers in a sequestered valley, and warning them against worldliness and the race for wealth, the world of wealth being an unknown country there about. If Ralph had lost some of his gatherings now, it might be for his greater good perhaps in other ways. She saw many around her who had failed, and yet lived comfortably and respected afterwards, and she would not be sorry if such were to be the fate of her own good man. It would wean him from the hurry and worry of business, and let him stay more at home than theretofore, to his own good, very probably, and assuredly to her greater happiness.