William Yates, being a married man
with a family, commenced housekeeping on a small scale, and, to
oblige Peel, who was single, he agreed to take him as a lodger.
The sum which the latter first paid for board and lodging was only
8s. a week; but Yates, considering this too little, insisted on the
weekly payment being increased a shilling, to which Peel at first
demurred, and a difference between the partners took place, which
was eventually compromised by the lodger paying an advance of
sixpence a week. William Yates's eldest child was a girl named
Ellen, and she very soon became an especial favourite with the
young lodger. On returning from his hard day's work at "The
Ground," he would take the little girl upon his knee, and say to
her, "Nelly, thou bonny little dear, wilt be my wife?" to which the
child would readily answer "Yes," as any child would do. "Then
I'll wait for thee, Nelly; I'll wed thee, and none else." And
Robert Peel did wait. As the girl grew in beauty towards
womanhood, his determination to wait for her was strengthened; and
after the lapse of ten years--years of close application to
business and rapidly increasing prosperity--Robert Peel married
Ellen Yates when she had completed her seventeenth year; and the
pretty child, whom her mother's lodger and father's partner had
nursed upon his knee, became Mrs.
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