Rebecca fulfilled her old functions of the useful daughter at home, though it was thought she would not long remain there, as she was being openly courted by a young mercer in Southwark, who had bought a business left without head through the ravages of the plague, and was rapidly working it up to something considerable and successful.
The Master Builder, too, was getting on, although still doing a very small trade compared to what he had done before.

Many of his patrons were dead, others had been scared away altogether from London for the present, and with so many vacant houses to fill nobody cared to think of building.

Still he found employment of a kind, and was never idle, although things were very different from what they had been, and he thought rather of paying his way in a quiet fashion than of building up a great fortune.

He lived in the old house with his daughter and son-in-law, and was happier than in the old days, when his wife had always been trying to make him ape the ways of the gentry, and his son had been wearying his life out with ceaseless importunities for money, which would only be wasted in drunkenness and rioting.
Now the days passed happily and peacefully.

Gertrude was a loving wife and a loving daughter.