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Updated: June 25, 2025
Let her bring plenty of wood, and put a couple of logs on top of the coals. I'm frozen to the very bones driving home in the rain." Mrs. Tadman gave a plaintive sigh as she departed to obey her kinsman. "That's just like Stephen," she said; "if it was you or me that wanted a fire, we might die of cold before we got leave to light one; but he never grudges anything for his own comfort!"
Tadman watched him. At last, about an hour after the tea-table had been cleared, he rose suddenly, with an abrupt gesture, and said, "Come, Whitelaw, if you mean to show me this house of yours, you may as well show it to me at once." His voice had a harsh unpleasant sound as he said this.
He got into a habit of sitting up at night, after the rest of the household had gone to bed. He had done this more or less from the time of his marriage; and Mrs. Tadman had told Ellen that the habit was one which had arisen within the last few months. "He would always see to the fastenings of the house with his own eyes," Mrs.
Tadman urged upon him the necessity of new muslin curtains here, and new dimity there, a coat or so of paint and new whitewash in such and such rooms, and other small revivals of the same character; not sorry to be able to remind him in this indirect manner that marriage was an expensive thing. "A young woman like that will expect to see things bright and cheerful about her," said Mrs.
And now it was virtually necessary that he should do so, or else, perhaps, his wealth would, by some occult process, be seized upon by the crown a power which he had been accustomed to regard in the abstract with an antagonistic feeling, as being the root of queen's taxes. To leave all to his wife, with some slight pension to Mrs. Tadman, seemed the most obvious course.
But the girl was quite silent, and there was a blank expression in her eyes, which looked out across the level stretch of grass between the house and the river, a look that told Mrs. Tadman very few of her words had been heard by her companion.
Tadman, who was an inveterate gossip, and never easy until she arrived at the bottom of any small household mystery. She wondered not a little also at Ellen's supreme indifference to her husband's proceedings. "I can't for the life of me think what's taken him to Malsham to-day," she said, as she plied her rapid knitting-needles in the manufacture of a gray-worsted stocking.
But I've not been called a servant, you see; and I suppose Stephen thinks that's payment enough for my trouble. Goodness knows I've saved him many a pound, and that he'll know when I'm gone; for he's near, is Stephen, and it goes to his heart to part with a shilling." "But why should you ever leave him, Mrs. Tadman?" Ellen asked kindly. "I shouldn't think he could have a better housekeeper."
These were the guests who consumed great quantities of Ellen's pies and puddings, and who sat under her festal garlands of holly and laurel. She had been especially careful to hang no scrap of mistletoe, which might have afforded Mr. Whitelaw an excuse for a practical display of his gallantry; a fact which did not escape the playful observation of his cousin, Mrs. Tadman.
Tadman opened her eyes and stared aghast as she heard the invitation given. It had been accepted too, much to Ellen's disgust; and her father told her more than once in the course of the ensuing week that she was to put on her best gown, and smarten herself up a bit, on New-year's-day.
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