"Take these shillings for my daughter's portion.

Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her.

It is not every wife that's worth her weight in silver!" The children laughed heartily at this legend, and would hardly be convinced but that Grandfather had made it out of his own head.

He assured them faithfully, however, that he had found it in the pages of a grave historian, and had merely tried to tell it in a somewhat funnier style.

As for Samuel Sewell, he afterwards became Chief Justice of Massachusetts.
"Well, Grandfather," remarked Clara, "if wedding portions now-a-days were paid as Miss Betsey's was, young ladies would not pride themselves upon an airy figure as many of them do.".