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.
"Young ladies don't often forget to put up a bit of mistletoe," said this matron, "when there's a chance of them they like being by;" and she glanced in a meaning way from Ellen to the master of Wyncomb Farm.
"Miss Carley isn't like the generality of young ladies," Mr.Whitelaw answered with a glum look, and his kinswoman was fain to drop the subject.
Alone with Ellen, sly Mrs.Tadman took occasion to launch out into enthusiastic praises of her cousin; to which the girl listened in profound silence, closely watched all the time by the woman's sharp gray eyes.

And then by degrees her tone changed ever so little, and she owned that her kinsman was not altogether faultless; indeed it was curious to perceive what numerous shortcomings were coexistent with those shining merits of his.
"He has been a good friend to me," continued the matron; "that I never have denied and never shall deny.

But I have been a good servant to him; ah! there isn't a hired servant as would toil and drudge, and watch and pinch, as I have done to please him, and never have had payment from him more than a new gown at Christmas, or a five-pound note after harvest.
And of course, if ever he marries, I shall have to look for a new home; for I know too much of his ways, I daresay, for a wife to like to have me about her--and me of an age when it seem a hard to have to go among strangers--and not having saved sixpence, where I might have put by a hundred pounds easy, if I hadn't been working without wages for a relation.

But I've not been called a servant, you see; and I suppose Stephen thinks that's payment enough for my trouble.