Miss Allison had been to her, not indeed as a mother, but as what a step-mother is, who is led by natural benevolence and a religious sense of duty, to perform as far as possible a mother's part to her husband's children. There are more such step-mothers than the world is willing to believe, and they have their reward here as well as hereafter. It was impossible that any new friend could fill up her place in Mrs. Dove's affections,—impossible that she could ever feel for another woman the respect and reverence, and gratitude, which blended with her love for this excellent person. Though she was born within four miles of Doncaster, and had lived till her marriage in the humble vicarage in which she was born, she had never passed four-and-twenty hours in that town before she went to reside there; nor had she the slightest acquaintance with any of its inhabitants, except the few shop-keepers with whom her little dealings had lain, and the occasional visitants whom she had met at the Grange. An Irish officer in the army, happening to be passenger in an armed vessel during the last war, used frequently to wish that they might fall in with an enemy's ship, because he said, he had been in many land battles, and there was nothing in the world which he desired more than to see what sort of a thing a sea fight was. He had his wish, and when after a smart action, in which he bore his part bravely, an enemy of superior force had been beaten off, he declared with the customary emphasis of an Hibernian adjuration, that a sea-fight was a mighty _sairious_ sort of thing. The Doctor and Deborah, as soon as they were betrothed had come to just the same conclusion upon a very different subject. Till the day of their engagement, nay till the hour of proposal on his part, and the very instant of acceptance on hers, each had looked upon marriage, when the thought of it occurred, as a distant possibility, more or less desirable, according to the circumstances which introduced the thought, and the mood in which it was entertained. And when it was spoken of sportively, as might happen, in relation to either the one or the other, it was lightly treated as a subject in which they had no concern. But from the time of their engagement, it seemed to both, the most serious event of their lives.