The captain was one of that class of gentlemen who read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called expectations.

Ever since the squire's grandfather had left him--then in short clothes--a legacy of L500, the captain had peopled the future with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little,--be now up and now down,--but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a millionnaire one of these days.

Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round sum in the ghostly books of the captain.

She was an expectation to the full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to leave him anything.
Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly sponged out of his visionary ledger, rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property.

If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take the heifer into the bargain.