I've got a good home to take you
to. Mother Tadman will march, of course, between this and my wedding-day.
I sha'n't want her when I've a wife to keep house for me."
"Of course not," said the bailiff. "Relations are always dangerous about
a place--ready to make mischief at every hand's turn."
"O, Mr. Whitelaw, you won't turn her out, surely--your own flesh and
blood, and after so many years of service. She told me how hard she had
worked for you."
"Ah, that's just like her," growled the farmer. "I give her a comfortable
home for all these years, and then she grumbles about the work."
"She didn't grumble," said Ellen hastily. "She only told me how
faithfully she had served you."
"Yes; that comes to the same thing. I should have thought you would have
liked to be mistress of your house, Nell, without any one to interfere
with you."
"Mrs. Tadman is nothing to me," answered Ellen, who had been by no means
prepossessed by that worthy matron; "but I shouldn't like her to be
unfairly treated on my account."
"Well, we'll think about it, Nell; there's no hurry. She's worth her
salt, I daresay."
Mr. Whitelaw seemed to derive a kind of satisfaction from the utterance
of his newly-betrothed's Christian name, which came as near the rapture
of a lover as such a sluggish nature might be supposed capable of.
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