Rachel was a buxom young woman of five-and-twenty, shortly to be advanced to the dignity of a wedded wife.

She would have been married before but for the feeble health of her mother; but the ceremony was not to be postponed much longer on that account, for fear the bridegroom, a silk mercer in thriving way of business, should grow weary of delay, and seek another partner for his hand and home.

But Abraham Dyson saw another way of getting his sick wife properly looked to, and had whispered his notion in the ear of his brother-in-law.

The Dysons and the Holts had had intimate business dealing with each other for generations, and there had been many matrimonial connections between them in times past.

Martin himself had married Abraham's sister, and he listened with equanimity and pleasure to the proposal to ally one of his daughters with the solid and stolid Jacob.
Jacob was not much to look at, but he would be a man of considerable substance in time, and he had a shrewd head enough for business.