him to be ill. It was only when she was dying that the bailiff knew he
was going to lose her; and it must be confessed that he took the loss
very calmly.

Whatever natural grief he may have felt was carefully locked in his own
breast. His underlings, the farm-labourers, found him a little more
"grumpy" than usual, and his daughter scarcely dared open her lips to him
for a month after the funeral. But from that time forward Miss Carley,
who was rather a spirited damsel, took a very different tone with her
father. She was not to be crushed and subdued into a mere submissive
shadow, as her mother had been. She had a way of speaking her mind on all
occasions which was by no means agreeable to the bailiff. If he drank
too much overnight, she took care to tell him of it early next morning.
If he went about slovenly and unshaven, her sharp tongue took notice of
the fact. Yet with all this, she waited upon him, and provided for his
comfort in a most dutiful manner. She saved his money by her dexterous
management of the household, and was in all practical matters 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