What money she had possessed she had expended courageously in giving a professional education to her son. Her little annuity of twelve pounds a year was all she had saved for herself. Upon that she believed with her own exertions, she could manage to exist till her son was able to support both; but she had been struck down earlier than she calculated upon. She had at this time lost the use of her lower limbs altogether, and was visited with such trembling in her hands, that she was obliged to close the task abruptly, and to sit down dependent upon her son before she had expected it. It had been very trying work till he obtained his present situation, and he still felt very poor, because he was resolved every year to lay twenty pounds or so by, that, in case any thing should happen to him, his mother might have some little addition to her means provided. He was rather strangely provident for the case of his own death; so young man as he was; perhaps he felt the faltering spring of life within, which he had inherited from his father. Three years the mother and son had thus lived together, and Fisher was master of sixty pounds. He had never allowed himself to cast a thought upon marriage, though of a temper ardently to desire, and rapturously to enjoy, domestic felicity. He said to himself he must first provide for his mother's independence, and then think about his own happiness. But the accident which had brought him and Lucy together had produced other thoughts--thoughts which he had, but the very day before the nursing so suddenly closed, communicated to his mother, and she had said, "I think you are quite right, John. Imprudent marriages are, in most cases, very wrong things--a mere tempting of Providence: and, that no blessing follows such tempting, we know from the best authority: but this is a most pious, benevolent, and very rational attempt to save a fellow-creature upon the brink of destruction, and I think it would be a want of faith, as well as a want of common humanity, in either of us to hesitate; I am very glad she seems such a sweet, innocent, pretty creature, for your sake, my darling John; I hope she will bring a blessing into your dwelling and repay you for your goodness to me; I am sorry she must come and live with your old mother, for young wives don't like that--but I promise you I will do my very best to be as amiable as an old woman can; and, moreover, I will neither be cross nor disappointed if she is not always as amiable as a young woman ought to be. Will that do? Yes, yes; fetch her away from that sink of iniquity, and we'll all get along somehow or other, never fear." And so Lucy Miles, blushing like a rose, and, as her young and delighted husband thought, more beauteous than an angel of light, was in a few weeks married to John Fisher, and she went home to the old lady.