suggested Hilary.
"I say that greedy girl eats as much as any two of us. And as for her clothes—her mother does not keep her even decent."
"She would find it difficult upon three pounds a year."
"Hilary, how dare you contradict me! I am only stating a plain fact."
"And I another. But, indeed, I don't want to talk Selina."
"You never do except when you are wished to be silent; and then your tongue goes like any race horse."
"Does it? Well, like Gilpin's,
'It carries weight: it rides a race,
'Tis for a thousand pound?'
—and I only wish it were. Heigh ho! if I could but earn a thousand pounds!"
Selina was too vexed to reply and for five quiet minutes Hilary bent over her Homer which Mr. Lyon had taken such pleasure in teaching her, because he said, she learned it faster than any of his grammar school boys. She had forgotten all domestic grievances in a vision of Thetis and the water nymphs; and was repeating to herself, first in the sonorous Greek and then in Pope's small but sweet English, that catalogue of oceanic beauties ending with
"Black Janira and Janassa fair,
And Amatheia with her amber hair."
"Black, did you say? I'm sure she was as black as a chimney sweep all to-day. And her pinafore"
"Her what? Oh, Elizabeth, you mean—"
"Her pinafore had three rents in it, which she never thinks of mending though I gave her needles and thread myself a week ago. But she does not know how to use them any more than a baby."
"Possibly, nobody ever taught her."
"Yes; she went for a year to the National School, she says, and learned both marking and sewing."
"Perhaps she has never practiced them since. She could hardly have had time, with all the little Hands to look after, as her mother says she did. All the better for us. It makes her wonderfully patient with our troublesome brats. It was only to day, when that horrid little Jacky Smith hurt himself so, that I saw Elizabeth take him into the kitchen, wash his face and hands, and cuddle him up and comfort him, quite motherly. Her forte is certainly children."
"You always find something to say for her."
"I should be ashamed if I could not find something to say for any body who is always abused."
Another pause—and then Selina returned to the charge.
"Have you ever observed, my dear, the extraordinary way she has of fastening, or rather, not fastening her gown behind? She just hooks it together at the top and at the waist, while between there is a—"
"Hiatus valde deflendus. Oh dear me! what shall I do? Selina, how can I help it if a girl of fifteen years old is not a paragon of perfection? as of course we all are, if we only could find it out."
And Hilary, in despair, rose to carry her candle and books into the chilly but quiet bedroom, biting her lips the while lest she should be tempted to say something which Selina called "impertinent," which perhaps it was, from a younger sister to an elder. I do not set Hilary up as a perfect character. Through sorrow only do people go on to perfection; and sorrow, in its true meaning, the cherished girl had never known.
But that night, talking to Johanna before they went to sleep—they had always slept together since the time when the elder sister used to walk the room of nights with that pulling, motherless infant in her arms—Hilary anxiously started the question of the little servant.
"I am afraid I vexed Selina greatly about her to-night, and yet what can one do? Selina is so very unjust—always expecting impossibilities. She would like to have Elizabeth at once a first rate cook, a finished house-maid, and an attentive lady's maid, and all without being taught! She gives her things to do, neither waiting to see if they are comprehended by her, nor showing her how to do them. Of course the girl stands gaping and staring and does not do them, or does them so badly, that she gets a thorough scolding."
"Is she very stupid, do you think?" asked Johanna, in unconscious appeal to her pet's stronger judgment.
"No, I don't. Far from stupid; only very ignorant, and—you would hardly believe it—very nervous. Selina frightens her. She gets on extremely well with me."
"Any one would, my dear. That is," added the conscientious elder sister, still afraid of making the "child" vain, "any one whom you took pain with. But do you think you can ever make any thing out of Elizabeth? Her month ends to-morrow. Shall we let her go?"
"And perhaps get in her place a story-teller—a tale-bearer—even a thief. No, no; let us
'Rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of;'
and a thief would be worse than even a South Sea Islander."
"Oh yes, my dear," said Johanna, with a shiver.
"By-the-by, the first step in the civilization of the Polynesians was giving them clothes. And I have heard say that crime and rags often go together; that a man unconsciously feels that he owes something to himself and society in the way of virtue when he has a clean face and clean shirt, and a decent coat on. Suppose we try the experiment of dressing Elizabeth. How many old gowns have we?"
The number was few. Nothing in the Leaf family was ever cast off till its very last extremity of decay; the talent that
"Gars auld claes look amaist as gude's the new"
being specially possessed by Hilary. She counted over her own wardrobe and Johanna's but found nothing that could be spared.
"Yes, my love, there is one thing. You certainly shall never put on that old brown merino again; though you have laid it so carefully by, as if you meant it to come out as fresh as ever next winter. No, Hilary, you must have a new gown, and you must give Elizabeth your brown merino."
Hilary laughed, and replied not.
Now it might be a pathetic indication of a girl who had very few clothes, but Hilary had a superstitious weakness concerning hers.—Every dress had its own peculiar chronicle of the scenes where it had been, the enjoyments she had shared in it. Particular dresses were special memorials of her loves, her pleasures, her little passing pains; as long as a bit remained of the poor old fabric the sight of it recalled them all.
This brown merino—in which she had sat two whole winters over her Greek and Latin by Robert Lyon's side, which he had once stopped to touch and notice, saying what a pretty color it was, and how he liked soft-feeling dresses for women—to cut up this old brown merino seemed to hurt her so she could almost have cried.
Yet what would Johanna think if the refused? And there was Elizabeth absolutely in want of clothes. "I must be growing very wicked," thought poor Hilary.
She lay a good while silent in the dark, while Johanna planned and replanned—calculating how, even with the addition of an old cape of her own, which was out of the same piece, this hapless gown could
