Yielding to Bessie's earnest solicitations Grey decided to remain with her in Allington during the summer and superintend in person the work, which, owing to good management and the great number of men employed, went on so rapidly that by the last of October everything was done except the furnishing, which was to be put off until Spring, for before the autumn came it was known that Hannah would never occupy the house save as she went there a visitor. The words spoken to her many years before by the Rev. Charles Sanford had been repeated, and this time her answer had been: "Yes, Charlie, if you do not think it too ridiculous for people as old as we are to marry. Why, I am almost sixty."
"But just as dear and young to me as if you were sixteen," was the reply of the Rev. Charles, who was quite as much in love as he had been nearly forty years before, when he asked Hannah Jerrold to be his wife.
Of course after it was settled he went straight to Martha's grave and staid there all the afternoon, and did a little gardening around it, and trained the rose-bush around the head-stone, and picking a half open blossom, put it in his button-hole and silently apostrophized the dead woman at his feet, telling her that though he was about to bring a new mistress to the home where she had reigned supreme, he should not forget her, and should so far as was consistent, see that all her ideas were carried out, especially as far as his health was concerned. Then be walked thoughtfully away, whispering to himself; "Martha was a very good and excellent woman, but I loved Hanny first, and God forgive me if it is wrong to say it, I think I love her the best."
Then he went and told Miss McPherson, who called him and Hannah fools, to think of marrying at their time of life, but said she was satisfied if they were. Then he told Lucy Grey, who congratulated him warmly and was sure he would be happy. Then he told Bessie, who cried at first because her Aunt Hannah was not to live with her, and then entered heart and soul into the affair and became as much interested in the wedding and the wedding outfit as if the bride-elect had been a young girl in her teens instead or an elderly woman in her fifties. Then he told his senior warden, who, having himself been married three times, had nothing to say, but hurried home with the news, which was all over Allington by the next day, and was received differently, according to the different natures of the receivers. Some were very glad, and predicted that the rector would be far happier with Hannah than he had been with Martha, while others wondered what that worthy woman would say if she knew that another was to fill her place, and all calculated the ages of the respective parties, making him out younger than he was and her a great deal older. But neither he nor she ever knew what was said, and they would not have cared if they had, for both were supremely happy and thankful for the peace and blessedness which had crowned their later life. Fifty and even sixty is not so very old, at least to those who have reached it, and Hannah neither looked nor felt old when in her becoming traveling dress of seal brown she stood up in the parlors of her brother's house on Beacon street and was made Mrs. Charles Sanford.