"It's all along o' that Mrs. Carline!" he grumbled to his wife. "Miss Ella, bless her, would never have made changes of her own accord. I don't like it, mark you, and I wish she was gone." "Miss Ella would be but lonely without her aunt just now," Dorothy ventured to answer deprecatingly. "Waste and extravagance!--them's the words," burst out Aaron. "More servants here indoors; more on 'em out; and a spick-and-span new carriage from London. The old Squire's hair would stand on end if he could put his head out of his coffin and take a quiet look round." But if Aaron did not like "Mrs. Carline"--as he chose to call her in domestic privacy--neither did she like him; and it was the old man's hair that might have stood on end, instead of the Squire's, had he heard the advice that lady one day gave her niece. There was something about Aaron himself that Mrs. Carlyon had always disliked, and his sour temper and general crustiness of manner did not tend to soften her impression. "My dear Ella, I suppose you will now pension off old Aaron Stone and his wife?" Ella looked up in surprise. "I have not thought of doing anything of the kind. I have never thought about it at all." "It is time you did. They are growing old and infirm; they belong to the past. Quite anomalies, they seem, in a modern establishment." "No one could be a more faithful servant than Aaron was to my uncle. They were together for nearly fifty years. I could not think of parting from him, Aunt Gertrude," added Ella, with a heightened colour. "As you please, of course, child. He is a most cross-grained old man; everybody must admit that. He lords it over the other servants as if he were master of the house. They cannot like it: and it is hardly the thing, I think, for you to oblige them to put up with it. It might have been all very right in your uncle's time; but that is over." "It is Aaron's manner only that is in fault, Aunt Gertrude; we are all used to that, and nobody minds it. He bears a heart of gold under that rugged exterior." Mrs. Carlyon shrugged her shoulders. Ella smiled. "You don't seem to believe in the gold, then!" "No, I do not, Ella. That he was a truly faithful servant to your uncle I admit--all praise to him for it!--but whether he is as faithful to others, I cannot say. There is a curious secretiveness of manner about him now that I don't like, and don't pretend to account for. However, we will leave all that and go to another phase of the question. Has it never struck you, my dear, that the old couple may wish to retire from service, and would think it only proper and kind on your part to suggest it to them? They may be hoping and waiting for you to make such a proposal--of course, accompanied by a promise of your countenance for their remaining days." Ella paused, revolving the suggestion.