County Chronicle

Miss Lucy Marling, as we all know, had a great deal of courage and a dogged perseverance that had helped her through many difficulties connected with the market gardening and farming ventures of her present employer and future husband, Mr. Adams. She was also the possessor of a hearty bellow, which had so far never failed to penetrate her father’s deafness whether natural (as indeed it was and not improving with age) or assumed (as his family had often known far too well and much to their annoyance). It was on a Saturday evening in early autumn after a happy day of clearing out Mr. Adams’s well that the rich ironmaster had asked her to be his wife. All that night she had slept heavily and dreamlessly. All through Sunday she moved in a kind of trance of quiet happiness, only disturbed by the thought that her parents must be told, for so far her happiness was so unexpected and overpowering that she did not know how to speak of it.