ely, as
she stood by her father.

"Whisht, whisht, child," said her father, "this may not be! I cannot
have my guest flouted."

"If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and
courtesy," said the maiden; "but when she comes where we look not for
guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on them to
do."

Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not without
hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she
contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet's
ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence
from interfering by the father's foolish fondness. He would rue the
day!

Meantime if the alderman's peace on one side was disturbed by his
visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet's hand gave him little rest.
She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though Mistress Headley
gave every one to understand that there was a contract with Giles, and
that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than
Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father. Jasper Hope
was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer--and Dennet
and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade.
Then there was a master-armourer, but he was a widower with sons and
daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the
bare notion. There also came a young knight who would have turned the
Dragon court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of
prudent toil had amassed.

If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance for
her son's interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly
of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack
and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own
conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her
father left her to herself, without giving her a good stepmother, or at
least putting a kinswoman in authority over her.

The alderman was stung. He certainly had warmed a snake on his hearth,
and how was he to be rid of it? He secretly winked at the resumption of
a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the noise and smoke
incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones hammered his loudest
there, when the guest might be taking her morning nap; but this had no
effect in driving her away, though it may have told upon her t