The father of Delia—­let the reader drop a tear over this blot in our little narrative—­had once been a tradesman.  He was naturally phlegmatic, methodical, and avaricious.  His ear was formed to relish better the hoarse voice of an exchange broker, than the finest tones of Handel’s organ.  He found something much more agreeable and interesting in the perusal of his ledger and his day book, than in the scenes of Shakespeare, or the elegance of Addison.  With this disposition, he had notwithstanding, when age had chilled the vigour of his limbs, and scattered her snow over those hairs which had escaped the hands of the barber, resigned his shop, and retired to enjoy the fruits of his industry.  It is as natural for a tradesman in modern times to desire to die in the tranquillity of a gentleman, as it was for the Saxon kings of the Heptarchy to act the same inevitable scene amidst the severities of a cloister.

The old gentleman however found, and it is not impossible that some of his brethren may have found it before him, when the great transaction was irretrievably over, that retirement and indolence did not constitute the situation for which either nature or habit had fitted him.  It has been observed by some of those philosophers who have made the human mind the object of their study, that idleness is often the mother of love.  It might indeed have been supposed, that Mr. Hartley, for that was his name, by having attained the age of sixty, might have outlived every danger of this kind.  But opportunity and temptation supplied that, which might have been deficient on the side of nature.

Within a little mile of the mansion in which he had taken up his retreat, resided two ancient maiden ladies.  Under cover of the venerable age to which they had attained, they had laid aside many of those modes which coyness and modesty have prescribed to their sex.  The visits of a man were avowedly as welcome to them, and indeed much more so, than those of a woman.  Their want of attractions either external or mental, had indeed hindered the circle of their acquaintance from being very extensive; but there were some, as well as Mr. Hartley, who preferred the company of ugliness, censoriousness and ill nature to solitude.

Such were the Miss Cranley’s, the name of the elder of whom was Amelia, and that of the younger Sophia.  Miss Amelia was nominally forty, and her sister thirty years of age.  Perhaps if we stated the matter more accurately, we should rate the elder at fifty-six, and the younger somewhere about fifty.  They both of them were masculine in their behaviour, and studious in their disposition.  Miss Amelia, delighted in the study of theology; she disputed with the curate, maintained a godly correspondence with a neighbouring cobler, and was even said to be preparing a pamphlet in defence of the dogmas of Mr. Whitfield.  Miss Sophia, who will make a much more considerable figure in this history, was altogether as indefatigable