ers a very
treasure among daughters. William Carley liked comfort, and liked money
still better, and he was quite aware that his daughter was valuable to
him, though he was careful not to commit himself by any expression of
that opinion.

He knew her value so well that he was jealously averse to the idea of her
marrying and leaving him alone at the Grange. When young Frank Randall,
the lawyer's son, took to calling at the old house very often upon summer
evenings, and by various signs and tokens showed himself smitten with
Ellen Carley, the bailiff treated the young man so rudely that he was
fain to cease from coming altogether, and to content himself with an
occasional chance meeting in the lane, when Ellen had business at
Crosber, and walked there alone after tea. He would not have been a
particularly good match for any one, being only an articled clerk to his
father, whose business in the little market-town of Malsham was by no
means extensive; and William Carley spoke of him scornfully as a pauper.
He was a tall good-looking young fellow, however, with a candid pleasant
face and an agreeable manner; so Ellen was not a little angry with her
father for his rudeness, still more angry with him for his encouragement
of her other admirer, a man called Stephen Whitelaw, who lived about a
mile from the Grange, and farmed his own land, an estate of some extent
for that part of the country.

"If you must marry," said the bailiff, "and it's what girls like you seem
to be always thinking about, you can't do better than take up with Steph
Whitelaw. He's a warm man, Nell, and a wife of his will never want a meal
of victuals or a good gown to her back. You'd better not waste your
smiles and your civil words on a beggar like young Randall, who won't
have a home to take you to for these ten years to come--not then,
perhaps--for there's not much to be made by law in Malsham now-a-days.
And when his father dies--supposing he's accommodating enough to die in a
reasonable time, which it's ten to one he won't be--the young man will
have his mother and sisters to keep upon the business very likely, and
there'd be a nice look-out for you. Now, if you marry my old friend
Steph, he can make you a lady."

This was a very long speech for Mr. Carley. It was grumbled out in short
spasmodic sentences between the slow whiffs of his pipe, as he sat by the
fire in a little parlour off the hall, with his indefatigable daughter at
work at a table n