we quite forgive you as regards ourselves. Nay"—feeling in spite of Selina's warning nudge, that she had hardly been kind enough—"we rather praise than blame you, Elizabeth. And if you like to stay with us and will do your best to improve, we are willing to keep you as our servant."
"Thank you ma'am. Thank you, Miss Hilary. Yes, I'll stop."
She said no more—but sighed a great sigh, as if her mind were relieved—("So," thought Hilary, "she was not so indifferent to us as we imagined")—and bustled back into her kitchen.
"Now for the clothing of her," observed Miss Leaf, also looking much relieved that the decision was over. "You know what we agreed upon; and there is certainly no time to be lost. Hilary, my dear, suppose you bring down your brown merino?" Hilary went without a word.
People who inhabit the same house, eat, sit, and sleep together—loving one another and sympathizing with one another, ever so deeply and dearly—nevertheless inevitably have momentary seasons when the intense solitude in which we all live, and must expect ever to live, at the depth of our being, forces itself painfully upon the heart. Johanna must have had many such seasons when Hilary was a child; Hilary had one now.
She unfolded the old frock, and took out of its pocket, a hiding place at once little likely to be searched, and harmless if discovered, a poor little memento of that happy midsummer day.
"Dear Miss Hilary. To-morrow, then, I shall come.
Yours truly, Robert Lyon."
The only scrap of note she had ever received; he always wrote to Johanna; as regularly as ever, or more so, now Ascott was gone; but only to Johanna. She read over the two lines, wondered where she should keep them now that Johanna might not notice them; and then recoiled, as if the secret were a wrong to that dear sister who loved her so well.
"But nothing makes me love her less; nothing ever could. She thinks me quite happy, as I am; and yet—oh, if I did not miss him so!"
And the aching, aching want which sometimes came over began again. Let us not blame her. God made all our human needs. God made love. Not merely affection but actual love—the necessity to seek and find out some other being, not another but the complement of one's self—the "other half," who brings rest and strength for weakness, sympathy in aspiration, and tenderness for tenderness, as no other person ever can. Perhaps, even in marriage, this love is seldom found, and it is possible in all lives to do without it. Johanna had done so. But then she had been young, and was now growing old; and Hilary was only twenty, with a long life before her. Poor child, let us not blame her!
She was not in the least sentimental, her natural disposition inclining her to be more than cheerful, actually gay. She soon recovered herself, and when, a short time after, she stood, scissors in hand, demonstrating how very easy it was to make something out of nothing, her sisters never suspected how very near tears had lately been to those bright eyes, which were always the sunshine of the house.
"You are giving yourself a world of trouble," said Selina. "If I were you, I would just make over the dress to Elizabeth, and let her do what she could with it."
"My dear, I always find I give myself twice the trouble by expecting people to do what they can't do. I have to do it myself afterward. Prove how a child who can't even handle a needle and thread is competent to make a gown for herself, and I shall be most happy to secede in her favor."
"Nay," put in the eldest sister, afraid of a collision of words, "Selina is right; if you do not teach Elizabeth to make her own gowns how can she learn?"
"Johanna, you are the brilliantest of women! and you know you don't like the parlor littered with rags and cuttings. You wish to get rid of me for the evening? Well, I'll go! Hand me the work basket and the bundle, and I'll give my first lesson in dress making to our South Sea Islander."
But Fate stood in the way of Miss Hilary's good intentions.
She found Elizabeth not as was her wont, always busy, over the perpetual toil of those who have not yet learned the mysterious art of arrangement and order, nor, as sometimes, hanging sleepily over the kitchen fire, waiting for bedtime; but actually sitting, sitting down at the table. Her candle was flaring on one side of her; on the other was the school room inkstand, a scrap of waste paper, and a pen But she was not writing; she sat with her head on her hands, in an attitude of disconsolate idleness, so absorbed that she seemed not to hear Hilary's approach.
"I did not know you could write, Elizabeth."
"No more I can," was the answer, in the most doleful of voices. "It bean't no good. I've forgotten all about it. T' letters wonna join."
"Let me look at them." And Hilary tried to contemplate gravely the scrawled and blotted page, which looked very much as if a large spider had walked into the ink bottle, and then walked out again on a tour of investigation. "What did you want to write?" asked she, suddenly.
Elizabeth blushed violently. "It was the woman, Mrs. Cliffe, t' little lad's mother, you know; she wanted somebody to write to her husband as is at work at Birmingham, and I said I would. I'd learned at the National, but I've forgotten it all. I'm just as Miss Selina says—I'm good for nowt."
"Come, come, never fret;" for there was a sort of choke in the girl's voice. "There's many a good person who never learned to write. But I don't see why you should not learn. Shall I teach you?"
Utter amazement, beaming gratitude, succeeded one another, plain as light, in Elizabeth's eyes, but she only said, "Thank you, Miss Hilary."
"Very well. I have brought you an old gown of mine, and was going to show you how to make it up for yourself, but I'll look over your writing instead. Sit down and let me see what you can do."
In a state of nervous trepidation, pitiful to behold, Elizabeth took the pen. Terrible scratches resulted; blots innumerable; and one fatal deluge of ink, which startled from their seats both mistress and maid, and made Hilary thankful that she had taken off her better gown for a common one, as, with sad thriftiness, the Misses Leaf always did of evenings.
When Elizabeth saw the mischief she had done, her contrition and humility were unbounded. "No, Miss Hilary, you can't make nothin' of me. I be too stupid, I'll give it up."
"Nonsense!" And the bright active little lady looked steadily into the heavy face of this undeveloped girl, half child, half woman, until some of her own spirit seemed to be reflected there. Whether the excitement of the morning had roused her, or her mistresses' kindness had touched Elizabeth's heart, and—as in most women—the heart was the key to the intellect; or whether the gradual daily influence of her changed life during the last month had been taking effect, now for the first time to appear—certain it is that Hilary had never perceived before what an extremely intelligent face it was; what good sense was indicated in the well shaped head and forehead; what tenderness and feeling in the deep-set grey eyes.
"Nonsense," repeated she. "Never give up any thing; I never would. We'll try a different plan, and begin from the beginning, as I do with my little scholars. Wait, while I fetch a copy book out of the parlor press."
She highly amused her sisters with a description of what she called her "newly instituted Polynesian Academy;" returned, and set to work to guide the rough, coarse hand through the mysteries of calligraphy.
To say this was an easy task would not be true. Nature's own laws and limits make the using of faculties which have been unused for generations very difficult at first. To suppose that a working man, the son of working
