to be an ill sort of woman, and in the habit of borrowing from Elizabeth stray shillings, which were never returned, was forbidden the house, Elizabeth resented it so fiercely that she sulked for a whole week afterward.
The other and still more dangerous crisis in Elizabeth's destiny was when a volume of Scott's novels, having been missing for some days, was found hidden in her bed, and she lying awake reading it was thus ignominiously discovered at eleven P. M. by Miss Selina, in consequence of the gleam of candle light from under her door.
It was true neither of these errors were actual moral crimes. Hilary even roused a volley of sharp words upon herself by declaring they had their source in actual virtues; that a girl who would stint herself of shillings, and hold resolutely to any liking she had, even if unworthy, had a creditable amount of both self-denial and fidelity in her disposition. Also that a tired out maid-of all-work, who was kept awake of nights by her ardent appreciation of the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," must possess a degree of both intellectual and moral capacity which deserved cultivation rather than blame. And though this surreptitious pursuit of literature under difficulties could not of course be allowed, I grieve to say that Miss Hilary took every opportunity of not only giving the young servant books to read, but of talking to her about them. And also that a large proportion of these books were—to Miss Selina's unmitigated horror—absolutely fiction! stories, novels, even poetry—books that Hilary liked herself—books that had built up in her own passionate dream of life; wherein all the women were faithful, tender, heroic, self-devoted; and all the men were—something not unlike Robert Lyon.
Did she do harm? Was it; as Selina and even Johanna said sometimes, "dangerous" thus to put before Elizabeth a standard of ideal perfection, a Quixotic notion of life—life in its full purpose power, and beauty—such as otherwise never could have crossed the mind of this working girl, born of parents who, though respectable and worthy, were in no respect higher than the common working class? I will not argue the point: I am not making Elizabeth a text for a sermon; I am simply writing her story.
One thing was certain, that by degrees the young woman's faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much harder to fight with.
"She makes me feel more sorry for her than angry with her," Miss Leaf would sometimes say, coming out of the kitchen with that grieved face, which was the chief sign of displeasure her sweet nature ever betrayed. "She will have up-hill work through life, like us all, and more than many of us, poor child!"
But gradually Elizabeth, too, copying involuntarily the rest of the family, learned to put up with Miss Selina; who, on her part, kept a sort of armed neutrality. And once, when a short but sharp illness of Johanna's shook the house from its even tenor, startled every body out of their little tempers, and made them cling together and work together in a sort of fear-stricken union against one common grief, Selina allowed that they might have gone farther and fared worse on the day they engaged Elizabeth.
After this illness of his Aunt. Ascott came home. It was his first visit since he had gone to London: Mr. Ascott, he said, objected to holidays. But now, from some unexplained feeling, Johanna in her convalescence longed after the boy—no longer a boy, however, but nearly twenty, and looking fully his age. How proud his aunts were to march him up the town, and hear every body's congratulations on his good looks and polished manners! It was the old story—old as the hills! I do not pretend to invent any thing new. Women, especially maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural tendency to clinging fondness, and ignorant, innocent hero worship. The Misses Leaf—ay, even Selina, whose irritation against the provoking boy was quite mollified by the elegant young man—were no wiser than their neighbors.
But there was one person in the household who still obstinately refused to bow the knee to Ascott. Whether it was, as psychologists might explain, some instinctive polarity in their natures; or whether, having once conceived a prejudice, Elizabeth held on to it like grim death; still there was the same unspoken antagonism between them. The young fellow took little notice of her except to observe "that she hadn't grown any handsomer;' but Elizabeth watched him with a keen severity that overlooked nothing, and resisted, with a passive pertinacity that was quite irresistible, all his encroachments on the family habits, all the little self-pleasing ways which Ascott had been so used to of old, that neither he nor his aunts apparently recognized them as selfish.
"I canna bear to see him" ("can not," suggested her mistress, who not seeing any reason why Elizabeth should not speak the Queen's English as well as herself, had instituted h's, and stopped a few more glaring provincialisms.) "I cannot bear to see him, Miss Hilary, lolling on the arm-chair, when Missis looks so tired and pale, and sitting up o' nights, burning double fires, and going up stairs at last with his boots on, and waking every body. I dunnot like it, I say."
"You forget; Mr. Ascott has his studies. He must work for the next examination."
"Why doesn't he get up of a morning then instead of lying in bed, and keeping the break-fast about till ten? Why can't he do his learning by daylight? Daylight's cheaper than mould candles, and a deal better for the eyes."
Hilary was puzzled. A truth was a truth, and to try and make it out otherwise, even for the dignity of the family, was something from which her honest nature revolted. Besides, the sharp-sighted servant would be the first to detect the inconsistency of one law of right for the parlor and another for the kitchen. So she took-refuge in silence and in the apple-pudding she was making.
But she resolved to seize the first opportunity of giving Ascott, by way of novelty, the severest lecture that tongue of aunt could bestow. And this chance occurred the same afternoon, when the other two aunts had gone out to tea, to a house which Ascott voted "slow," and declined going to. She remained to make tea for him, and in the mean time took him for a constitutional up and down the public walks hard by.
Ascott listened at first very good humoredly; once or twice calling her "a dear little prig," in his patronizing way—he was rather fond of patronizing his Aunt Hilary. But when she seriously spoke of his duties, as no longer a boy but a man, who ought now to assume the true, manly right of thinking for and taking care of other people, especially his aunts, Ascott began to flush up angrily.
"Now stop that, Aunt Hilary: I'll not have you coming Mr. Lyon over me."
"What do you mean?"
For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr. Lyon—not half so much as Mr. Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf, told her about her nephew Ascott.
"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman. It's bad enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow, who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary. Besides, he coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and then. But I won't let you; so just stop it; will you."
Something new in Ascott's tone—speaking more of the resentful fierceness of the man than the pettishness of the boy—frightened his little aunt, and silenced her. By-and-by she took comfort from the reflection that, as the lad had in his anger betrayed, he had beside him in London a monitor whose preaching would be so much wiser and more effectual than her own that she determined to say no more.
The rare hearing of Mr. Lyon's name—for, time and absence having produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was seldom talked about now—set Hilary thinking.
"Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last.
"Who?
