To people who possess a large share of this rare—shall I say fatal?—characteristic of adhesiveness, living in lodgings is about the saddest life under the sun. Whether some dim foreboding of this fact crossed Elizabeth's mind as she stood at the window watching for her mistresses' first arrival at "home," it is impossible to say. She could feel, though she was not accustomed to analyze her feelings. But she looked dull and sad. Not cross, even Ascott could not have accused her of "savageness."

And yet she had been somewhat tried. First, in going out what she termed "marketing," she had traversed a waste of streets, got lost several times, and returned with light weight in her butter, and sand in her moist sugar; also with the conviction that London tradesmen were the greatest rogues alive. Secondly, a pottle of strawberries, which she had bought with her own money to grace the tea-table with the only fruit Miss Leaf cared for, had turned out a large delusion, big and beautiful at top, and all below small, crushed, and stale. She had thrown it indignantly, pottle and all, into the kitchen fire.

Thirdly, she had a war with the landlady, partly on the subject of their fire—which, with her Stowbury notions on the subject of coals, seemed wretchedly mean and small—and partly on the question of table cloths at tea, which Mrs. Jones had "never heard of," especially when the use of plate and lines was included in the rent. And the dinginess of the article produced at last out of an omnium-gatherum sort of kitchen cupboard, made an ominous impression upon the country girl, accustomed to clean, tidy, country ways—where the kitchen was kept as neat as the parlor, and the bedrooms were not a whit behind the sitting rooms in comfort and orderliness. Here it seemed as if, supposing people could show a few respectable living rooms, they were content to sleep any where, and cook any how, out of anything, in the midst of any quantity of confusion and dirt. Elizabeth set all this down as "London," and hated it accordingly.

She had tried to ease her mind by arranging and rearranging the furniture—regular lodging house furniture—table, six chairs, horse-hair sofa, a what not, and the chiffonnier, with a tea-caddy upon it, of which the respective keys had been solemnly presented to Miss Hilary. But still the parlor looked homeless and bare; and the yellowish paper on the walls, the large patterned, many colored Kidderminster on the floor, gave an involuntary sense of discomfort and dreariness. Besides, No. 15 was on the shady side of the street—cheap lodgings always are; and no one who has not lived in the like lodgings—not a house—can imagine what it is to inhabit perpetually one room where the sunshine just peeps in for an hour a day, and vanishes by eleven A. M.; leaving behind in winter a chill dampness, and in summer a heavy, dusty atmosphere, that weighs like lead on the spirits in spite of one's self. No wonder that, as is statistically known and proved, cholera stalks, fever rages, and the registrar's list is always swelled along the shady side of a London street.

Elizabeth felt this, though she had not the dimmest idea why. She stood watching the sunset light fade out of the topmost windows of the opposite house—ghostly reflection of some sunset over fields and trees far away; and she listened to the long monotonous cry melting away round the crescent, and beginning again at the other end of the street—"Straw-berries—straw-ber-ries!" Also, with an eye to tomorrow's Sunday dinner, she investigated the cart of the tired costermonger, who crawled along beside his equally tired donkey, reiterating at times, in tones hoarse with a day's bawling, his dreary "Cauli-flower! Cauli-flower!—Fine new pease, sixpence peck!"

But, alas! the pease were neither fine nor new; and the cauliflowers were regular Saturday night's cauliflowers. Besides, Elizabeth suddenly doubted whether she had any right, unordered, to buy these things which, from being common garden necessaries, had become luxuries. This thought, with some others that it occasioned, her unwonted state of Idleness and the dullness of every thing about her—what is so dull as a "quiet" London street on a summer evening?—actually made Elizabeth stand, motionless and meditative, for a quarter of an hour. Then she started to hear two cabs drive up to the door; the "family" had at length arrived.

Ascott was there too. Two new portmanteaus and a splendid hat-box east either ignominy or glory upon the poor Stowbury luggage; and—Elizabeth's sharp eye noticed—there was also his trunk which she had seen lying detained for rent in his Gower Street lodgings. But he looked quite easy and comfortable: handed out his Aunt Johanna, commanded the luggage about, and paid the cabmen with such a magnificent air, that they touched their bats to him, and winked at one another as much as to say. "That's a real gentleman!"

In which statement the landlady evidently coincided, and courtesied low when Miss Leaf introducing him as "my nephew," hoped that a room could be found for him. Which at last there was, by his appropriating Miss Leaf's, while she and Hilary took that at the top of the house. But they agreed, Ascott must have a good airy room to study in.

"You know, my dear boy," said his Aunt Johanna to him—and at her tender tone he looked a little downcast, as when he was a small fellow and had been forgiven something — "You know you will have to work very hard."

"All right, aunt! I'm your man for that! This will be a jolly room; and I can smoke up the chimney capitally!"

So they came down stairs quite cheerfully, and Ascott applied himself with the best of appetites to what he called a "hungry" tea. True, the ham, which Elizabeth had to fetch from an eating house some streets off, cost two shillings a pound, and the eggs, which caused her another war below over the relighting of a fire to boil them, were dismissed by the young gentleman as "horrid stale." Still, woman-like, when there is a man in the question, his aunts let him, have his why. It seemed as if they had resolved to try their utmost to make the new home to which he came, or rather was driven, a pleasant home, and to bind him to it with cords of love, the only cords worth any thing, though sometimes—Heaved knows why—even they fail, and are snapped and thrown aside like straws.

Whenever Elizabeth went in and out of the parlor she always heard lively talk going on among the family; Ascott making his jokes, telling about his college life, and planning his life to come as a surgeon in full practice, on the most extensive scale. And when she brought in the chamber candles, she saw him kiss his aunts affectionately, and even help his Aunt Johanna—who looked frightfully pale and tired, but smiling still—to her bed-room door.

"You'll not sit up long, my dear? No reading to night?" said she, anxiously.

"Not a bit of it. And I'll be up with the lark to-morrow morning. I really will auntie. I'm going to turn over a new leaf, you know."

She smiled again at the immemorial joke, kissed and blessed him, and the door shut up on her and Hilary.

Ascott descended to the parlor, threw himself on the sofa with an air of great relief, and an exclamation of satisfaction that "the women" were all gone. He did not perceive Elizabeth, who, hidden behind, was kneeling to arrange something in the chiffonnier, till she rose up and proceeded to fasten the parlor shutters.

"Hollo! are you there? Come, I'll do that when I go to bed. You may 'slope' if you like."

"Eh, Sir."

"Slope, mizzle, cut your stick; don't you understand. Any how, don't stop here, bothering me."

"I don't mean to," replied Elizabeth; gravely, rather than gruffly, as if she had made up her mind to things as they were, and was determined to be a belligerent party no longer. Besides, she was older now; too old to have things forgiven to her that might be overlooked in a child; and she had received a long lecture from Miss Hilary on the necessity of showing respect to Mr. Ascott, or Mr. Leaf, as it was now decided he was to be called, in his dignity and responsibility as the only masculine head of the family. As he lay and lounged there, with his eyes lazily shut, Elizabeth stood a minute gazing at him. Then, steadfast in her new good behavior, she inquired "if he wanted any thing more to-night?"

"Confound you! no! Yes; stop." And the young man took a furtive investigation of the plain, honest face, and not over-graceful, ultra-provincial figure, which still characterized his aunt's "South Sea Islander."

"I say, Elizabeth, I want you to do something for me." He spoke so civilly, almost coaxingly, that Elizabeth turned round surprised. "Would you just go and ask the landlady if she has got such thing as a latch key?"

"A what, Sir?"

"A latch-key—a—oh, she knows. Every London house has it. Tell her I'll take care of it, and lock the front door all right. She needn't be afraid of thieves."

"Very well, Sir."

Elizabeth went, but shortly reappeared with the information that Mrs. Jones had gone to bed: in the kitchen, she supposed, as she could not get in. But she laid on the table the large street door key.

"Perhaps that's what you wanted, Mr. Leaf. Though I think you needn't be the least afraid of robbers, for there's three bolts, and a chain besides."

"All right!" cried Ascott, smothering down a laugh. "Thank you! That's for you," throwing a half-crown across the table.

Elizabeth took it up demurely, and put it down again. Perhaps she did not like him enough to receive presents from him; perhaps she thought, being an honest minded girl, that a young man who could not pay his rent had no business to be giving away half-crowns; or else she herself had not been so much as many servants are, in the habit of taking them. For Miss Hilary had put into Elizabeth some of her own feeling as to this habit of paying an inferior with money for any little civility or kindness which, from an equal, would be accepted simply as kindness, and only requited with thanks. Any how, the coin remained on the table, and the door was just shutting upon Elizabeth, when the young gentleman turned round again.

"I say, since my aunts are so horridly timid of robbers and such like, you'd better not tell them any thing about the latch-key."

Elizabeth stood a minute perplexed, and then replied briefly: "Miss Hilary isn't a bit timid; and I always tells Miss Hilary every thing."

Nevertheless, though she was so ignorant as never to have heard of a latch-key, she had the wit to see that all was not right. She even lay awake, in her closet off Miss Leaf's room, whence she could hear the murmur of her two mistresses talking together, long after they retired—lay broad awake for an hour or more, trying to put things together—the sad things that she felt certain must have happened that day, and wondering what Mr. Ascott could possibly want with the key. Also, why he had asked her about it, instead of telling his aunts at once; and why he had treated her in the matter with such astonishing civility.

It may be said a servant had no business to think about these things, to criticize her young master's proceedings, or wonder why her mistresses were sad: that she had only to go about her work like an automaton, and take no interest in any thing. I can only answer to those who like such service, let them have it: and as they sow they will assuredly reap. But long after Elizabeth, young and hearty, was soundly snoring on her hard, cramped bed, Johanna and Hilary Leaf, after a brief mutual pretence of sleep, soon discovered by both, lay consulting together over ways and means. How could the family expenses, beginning with twenty-five shillings per week as rent, possibly be met by the only actual certain family income, their 50 per annum from a mortgage? For the Misses Leaf were or that old-fashioned stamp which believed that to reckon an income by mere probabilities is either insanity or dishonesty.

Common arithmetic soon proved that this 50 a year could not maintain them; in fact they must soon draw on the little sum—already dipped into to-day, for Ascott—which had been produced by the sale of the Stowbury furniture. That sale, they now found had been a mistake; and they half feared whether the whole change from Stowbury to London had not been a mistake—one of those sad errors in judgment which we all commit sometimes, and have to abide by, and make the best of, and learn from if we can. Happy those who "Dinna greet ower spilt milk"—a proverb wise as cheerful, which Hilary, knowing well who it came from, repeated to Johanna to comfort her—teaches a second brave lesson, how to avoid spilling the milk a second time. And then they consulted anxiously about what was to be done to earn money.

Teaching presented itself as the only resource. In those days women's work and women's rights had not been discussed so freely as at present. There was a strong feeling that the principal thing required was our duties—owed to ourselves, our home, our family and friends. There was a deep conviction—now, alas! slowly disappearing—that a woman, single or married, should never throw herself out of the safe circle of domestic life till the last extremity of necessity; that it is wiser to keep or help to keep a home, by learning how to expend its income, cook its dinners, make and mend its clothes, and, by the law that "prevention is better than cure," studying all those preservative means of holding a family together—as women, and women alone, can—than to dash into men's sphere of trades and professions, thereby, in most instances, fighting an unequal battle, and coming out of it maimed, broken, unsexed; turned into beings that are neither men nor women, with the faults and corresponding sufferings of both, and the compensations of neither.

"I don't see," said poor Hilary, "what I can do but teach. And oh, if I could only get daily pupils, so that I might come home or nights, and creep into the fireside; and have time to mend the stockings and look after Ascott's linen, that he need not be so awfully extravagant."



CHAPTER XI.

Aunt Hilary fixed her honest eyes on the lad's face—the lad, so little younger than herself, and yet who at tunes, when he let out sayings such as this, seemed so awfully, so pitifully old; and she felt thankful that, at all risks and costs, they had come to London to be beside him, to help him, to save him, if he needed saving, as women only can. For, after all, he was but a boy. And though as he walked by her side, stalwart and manly, the thought smote her painfully that many a young fellow of his age was the stay and bread winner of some widowed mother or sister, nay even of wife and child, still she repeated cheerfully. "What can one expect from him? He is only a boy."

God help the women who, for those belonging to them—husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons—have ever so tenderly to apologize.

When they came in sight of St. Pancras's Church, Ascott said, suddenly, "I think you'll knew your way now, Aunt Hilary."

"Certainly. Why?"

"Because—you wouldn't be vexed if I left you? I have an engagement; some fellows that I dine with, out at Hampstead, or Richmond, or Blackwell, every Sunday. Nothing wicked, I assure you. And you know it's capital for one's health to get a Sunday in fresh air."

"Yes; but Aunt Johanna will be sorry to miss you."

"Will she? Oh, you'll smooth her down. Stay! Tell her I shall be back to tea."

"We shall be having tea directly."

"I declare I had quite forgotten. Aunt Hilary, you must change your hours. They don't suit me at all. No men can ever stand early dinners. By, by! You are the very prettiest auntie. Be sure you get home safe. Hollo, there! That's my omnibus."

He jumped on the top of it, and was off.

Aunt Hilary stood quite confounded, and with one of those strange sinkings of the heart which had come over her several times this day. It was not that Ascott showed any unkindness—that there was any actual badness in his bright and handsome young face. Still there was a want there—want of earnestness, steadfastness, truthfulness, a something more discoverable as the lack of something else than as aught in itself tangibly and perceptibly wrong. It made her sad; it caused her to look forward to his future with an anxious heart. It was so different from the kind of anxiety, and yet settled repose, with which she thought of the only other man in whose future she felt the smallest interest. Of Robert Lyon, she was certain that whatever misfortune visited him he would bear it in the best way it could be borne; whatever temptation assailed him he would fight against it as a brave and good Christian should fight. But Ascott?

Ascott's life was as yet an unanswered query. She could but leave it in Omnipotent hands.

So she found her way home, asking it once or twice of civil policemen, and going a little distance round—dare I make this romantic confession about so sensible and practical a little woman?—that she might walk once up Burton Street and down again. But nobody knew the fact, and it did nobody any harm.

Meantime at No 15 the afternoon had passed heavily enough. Miss Selina had gone to lie down; she always did of Sundays, and Elizabeth, after making her comfortable, by the little attentions the lady always required, had descended to the dreary wash house, which had been appropriated to herself, under the name of a "private kitchen," in the which, after all the cleanings and improvements she could achieve, sat like Marius among the rains of Carthage, and sighed for the tidy bright house place at Stowbury. Already, from her brief experience, she had decided that London people were horrid shams, because they did not in the least care to have their kitchens comfortable. She wondered how she should ever exist in this one, and might have carried her sad and sullen face up stairs, if Miss Leaf had not come down stairs, and glancing about with that ever gentle smile of hers, said kindly, "Well, it is not very pleasant, but you have made the best of it, Elizabeth. We must all put up with something, you know. Now, as my eyes are not very good to-day, suppose you come up and read me a chapter."

So, in the quiet parlor, the maid sat down opposite her mistress, and read aloud out of that Book which says distinctly: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ: knowing, that whatsoever good thing a man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free."

And yet says immediately after: "Ye masters, to the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

And I think that Master whom Paul served, not in preaching only, but also in practice, when he sent back the slave Onesimus to Philemon, praying that he might be received, "no' now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved," that Divine Master must have looked tenderly upon these two women—both women, though of such different age and position, and taught them through His Spirit in His word, as only He can teach.

The reading was disturbed by a carriage driving up to the door, and a knock, a tremendously grand and forcible footman's knock, which made Miss Leaf start in her easy chair.

"But it can't be visitors to us. We know nobody. Sit still, Elizabeth."

It was a visitor, however, though by what ingenuity he found them out remained, when they came to think of it, a great puzzle. A card was sent in by the dirty servant of Mrs. Jones, speedily followed by a stout, bald headed, round faced man—I suppose I ought to write "gentleman"—in whom, though she had not seen him for years, Miss Leaf found no difficulty in recognizing the grocer's prentice boy, now Mr. Peter Ascott, of Russell Square.

She rose to receive him: there was always a stateliness in Miss Leaf's reception of strangers; a slight formality belonging to her own past generation, and to the time when the Leafs were a "county family." Perhaps this extra dignity, graceful as it was, overpowered the little man; or else, being a bachelor, he was unaccustomed to ladies' society: but he grew red in the face, twiddled his hat, and then cast a sharp inquisitive glance toward her.

"Miss Leaf, I presume, ma'am. The eldest?"

"I am the eldest Miss Leaf, and very glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for your long kindness to my nephew. Elizabeth, give Mr. Ascott a chair."

While doing so, and before her disappearance, Elizabeth took a rapid observation of the visitor, whose name and history were perfectly familiar to her. Most small towns have their hero, and Stowbury's was Peter Ascott, the grocer's boy, the little fellow who had gone up to London to seek his fortune, and had, strange to say, found it. Whether by industry or luck—except that industry is luck, and luck is only another word for industry—he had gradually risen to be a large city merchant, a dry-salter I conclude it would be called, with a handsome house, carriage, etc. He had never revisited his native place, which indeed could not be expected of him, as he had no relations, but, when asked, as was not seldom of course, he subscribed liberally to its charities.

Altogether he was a decided hero in the place, and though people really knew very little about him, the less they knew the more they gossiped, holding him up to the rising generation as a modern Dick Whittington, and reverencing him extremely as one who had shed glory on his native town. Even Elizabeth had conceived a great idea of Mr. Ascott. When she saw this little fat man, coarse and common looking in spite of his good clothes and diamond ring, and in manner a curious mixture of pomposity and awkwardness, she laughed to herself, thinking what a very uninteresting individual it was about whom Stowbury had told so many interesting stories. However, she went up to inform Miss Selina, and prevent her making her appearance before him in the usual Sunday dishabille in which she indulged when no visitors were expected.

After his first awkwardness, Mr. Peter Ascott became quite at his ease with Miss Leaf. He began to talk—not of Stowbury, that was tacitly ignored by both—but of London, and then of "my house in Russell Square," "my carriage," "my servants"—the inconvenience of keeping coachmen who would drink, and footmen who would not clean the plate properly; ending by what was a favorite moral axiom of his, that "wealth and position are heavy responsibilities."

He himself seemed, however, not to have been quite overwhelmed by them; he was fat and flourishing—with an acuteness and power in the upper half of his face which accounted for his having attained his present position. The lower half, somehow Miss Leaf did not like it, she hardly knew why, though a physiognomist might have known. For Peter Ascott had the underhanging, obstinate, sensual lip, the large throat—bull-necked, as it has been called—indications of that essentially animal nature which may be born with the nobleman as with the clown; which no education can refine, and no talent, though it may co-exist with it, can ever entirely remove. He reminded one, perforce, of the rough old proverb; "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

Still, Mr. Ascott was not a bad man, though something deeper than his glorious indifference to grammar, and his dropped h's—which, to steal some one's joke, might have been swept up in bushels from Miss Leaf's parlor—made it impossible for him ever to be, by any culture whatever, a gentleman.

They talked of Ascott, as being the most convenient mutual subject; and Miss Leaf expressed the gratitude which her nephew felt, and she earnestly hoped would ever show, toward his kind godfather.

Mr. Ascott looked pleased.

"Um—yes, Ascott's not a bad fellow—believe he means well: but weak, ma'am, I'm afraid he's weak. Knows nothing of business—has no business habits whatever. However, we must make the best of him; I don't repent any thing I've done for him."

"I hope not," said Miss Leaf, gravely.

And then there ensued an uncomfortable pause, which was happily broken by the opening of the door, and the sweeping in of a large, goodly figure.

"My sister, Mr. Ascott; my sister Selina."

The little stout man actually started, and, as he bowed, blushed up to the eyes.

Miss Selina was, as I have stated, the beauty of the family, and had once been an acknowledged Stowbury belle. Even now, though nigh upon forty, when carefully and becomingly dressed, her tall figure, and her well featured, fair complexioned, unwrinkled face, made her still appear a very personable woman. At any rate, she was not faded enough, nor the city magnate's heart cold enough to prevent a sudden revival of the vision which—in what now seemed an almost antediluvian stage of existence—had dazzled, Sunday after Sunday, the eyes of the grocer's lad. If there is one pure spot in a man's heart—oven the very worldliest of men—it is usually his boyish first love.

So Peter Ascott looked hard at Miss Selina, then into his hat, then, as good luck would have it, out of the window, where he caught sight of his carriage and horses. These revived his spirits, and made him recognize what he was—Mr. Ascott, of Russell Square, addressing himself in the character of a benevolent patron to the Leaf family.

"Glad to see you, Miss. Long time since we met—neither of us so young as we have been—but you do wear well, I must say."

Miss Selina drew back; she was within an inch of being highly offended, when she too happened to catch a glimpse of the carriage and horses. So she sat down and entered into conversation with him; and when she liked, nobody could be more polite and agreeable than Miss Selina. So it happened that the handsome equipage crawled round and round the Crescent, or stood pawing the silent Sunday street before No. 15, for very nearly an hour, even till Hilary came home. It was vexatious to have to make excuses for Ascott: particularly as his godfather said with a laugh, that "young fellows would be young fellows," they needn't expect to see the lad till midnight, or till to-morrow morning.

But though in this, and other things, he somewhat annoyed the ladies from Stowbury, no one could say he was not civil to them—exceedingly civil. He offered them Botanical Garden tickets—Zoological Garden tickets; he even, after some meditation and knitting of his shaggy grey eyebrows, bolted out with an invitation for the whole family to dinner at Russell Square the following Sunday.

"I always give my dinners on Sunday. I've no time any other day," said he, when Miss Leaf gently hesitated. "Come or not, just as you like."

Miss Selina, to whom the remark was chiefly addressed, bowed the most gracious acceptance. The visitor took very little notice of Miss Hilary. Probably, if asked, he would have described her as a small, shabbily-dressed person, looking very like a governess. Indeed, the fact of her governess-ship seemed suddenly to recur to him; he asked her if she meant to set up another school, and being informed that she rather wished private pupils, promised largely that she should have the full benefit of his "patronage" among his friends. Then he departed, leaving a message for Ascott to call next day, as he wished to speak to him.

"For you must be aware, Miss Leaf, that though your nephew's allowance is nothing—a mere drop in the bucket out of my large income—still, when it comes year after year, and no chance of his shifting for himself, the most benevolent man in the world feels inclined to stop the supplies. Not that I shall do that—at least not immediately: he is a fine young fellow, whom I'm rather proud to have helped a step up the ladder, and I've a great respect"—here he bowed to Miss Selina—"a great respect for your family. Still there must come a time when I shall be obliged to shut up my purse-strings. You understand, ma'am."

"I do," Miss Leaf answered, trying to speak with dignity, and yet with patience, for she saw Hilary's face beginning to flame. "And I trust, Mr. Ascott, my nephew will soon cease to be an expense to you. It was your own voluntary kindness that brought it upon yourself, and I hope you have not found, never will find, either him or us ungrateful."

"Oh, as to that, ma'am, I don't look for gratitude. Still, if Ascott does work his way into a good position—and he'll be the first of his family that ever did, I reckon—but I beg your pardon, Miss Leaf. Ladies, I'll bid you good day. Will your servant call my carriage?"

The instant he was gone Hilary burst forth—

"If I were Ascott, I'd rather starve in a garret, break stones in the high road, or buy a broom and sweep a crossing, than I'd be dependent on this man, this pompous, purse-proud, illiterate fool!"

"No, not a fool," reproved Johanna. "An acute, clear-headed, nor, I think, bad-hearted man. Coarse and common, certainly; but if we were to hate every thing coarse or common, we should find plenty to hate. Besides, though he does his kindness in an unpleasant way, think how very, very kind he has been to Ascott."

"Johanna, I think you would find a good word for the de'il himself, as we used to say," cried Hilary, laughing. "Well, Selina; and what is your opinion of our stout friend?"

Miss Selina, bridling a little, declared that she did not see so much to complain of in Mr. Ascott. He was not educated, certainly, but he was a most respectable person. And his calling upon them so soon was most civil and attentive. She thought, considering his present position, they should forget—indeed, as Christians they were bound to forget—that he was once their grocer's boy, and go to dine with him next Sunday.

"For my part, I shall go, though it is Sunday. I consider it quite a religious duty—my duty towards my neighbor."

"Which is to love him as yourself. I am sure, Selina, I have no objection. It would be a grand romantic wind-up to the story which Stowbury used to tell—of how the 'prentice boy stared his eyes out at the beautiful young lady; and you would get the advantage of 'my house in Russell Square,' 'my carriage and servants,' and be able to elevate your whole family. Do, now! set your cap at Peter Ascott." Here Hilary, breaking out into one of her childish fits of irrepressible laughter, was startled to see Selina's face in one blaze of indignation.

"Hold your tongue, you silly chit, and don't chatter about things you don't understand."

And she swept majestically out of the room.

"What have I done? Why she is really vexed. If I had thought she would have taken it in earnest I would never have said a word. Who would have thought it!"

But Miss Selina's fits of annoyance were so common that the sisters rarely troubled themselves long on the matter. And when at tea-time she came down in the best of spirits, they met her half-way, as they always did, thankful for these brief calms in the family atmosphere, which never lasted too long. It was a somewhat heavy evening. They waited supper till after ten; and yet Ascott did not appear. Miss Leaf read the chapter as usual; and Elizabeth was sent to bed, but still no sign of the absentee.

"I will sit up for him. He cannot be many minutes new," said his Aunt Hilary, and settled herself in the solitary parlor, which one candle and no fire made as cheerless as could possibly be. There she waited till midnight before the young man came in. Perhaps he was struck with compunction by her weary white face—by her silent lighting of his candle, for he made her a thousand apologies.

"'Pon my honor, Aunt Hilary, I'll never keep you up so late again. Poor dear auntie, how tired she looks!" and he kissed her affectionately. "But if you were a young fellow, and got among other young fellows, and they over-persuaded you."

"You should learn to say, No."

"Ah"—with a sigh—"so I ought, if I were as good as my Aunt Hilary."



CHAPTER XII.

Months slipped by; the trees in Burton Crescent had long been all bare; the summer cries of itinerant vegetable dealers and flower sellers had vanished out of the quiet street.—The three sisters almost missed them, sitting in that one dull parlor from morning till night, in the intense solitude of people who, having neither heart nor money to spend in gayeties, live forlorn in London lodgings, and knowing nobody, have nobody to visit, nobody to visit them.

Except Mr. Ascott, who still called, and occasionally stayed to tea. The hospitalities, however, were all on their side. The first entertainment—to which Selina insisted upon going, and Johanna thought Hilary and Ascott had better go too—was splendid enough, but they were the only ladies present; and though Mr. Ascott did the honors with great magnificence, putting Miss Selina at the head of his table, where she looked exceedingly well, still the sisters agreed it was better that all further invitations to Russell Square should be declined. Miss Selina herself said it would be more dignified and decorous.

Other visitors they had none. Ascott never offered to bring any of his friends; and gradually they saw very little of him. He was frequently out, especially at meal times, so that his aunts gave up the struggle to make the humble dinners better and more to his liking, and would even have hesitated to take the money which he was understood to pay for his board, had he ever offered it, which he did not. Yet still whenever he did happen to remain with them a day, or an evening, he was good and affectionate, and always entertained them with descriptions of all he would do as soon as he got into practice.

Meantime they kept house as economically as possible upon the little ready money they had, hoping that more would come in—that Hilary would get pupils.

But Hilary never did. To any body who knows London this will not be surprising.—The wonder was in the Misses Leaf being so simple as to imagine that a young country lady, settling herself in lodgings in an obscure metropolitan street, without friends or introduction, could ever expect such a thing. No thing but her own daring, and the irrepressible well-spring of hope that was in her healthy youth, could have sustained her in what, ten years after, would have appeared to her, as it certainty was, downright insanity. But Heaven takes care of the mad, the righteously and unselfishly mad, and Heaven took care of poor Hilary.

The hundred labors she went through—weariness of body and travail of soul, the risks she ran, the pitfalls she escaped—what need to record here? Many have recorded the like, many more have known them, and acknowledged that when such histories are reproduced in books how utterly imagination fades before reality. Hilary never looked back-upon that time herself without a shuddering wonder how she could have dared all and gone through all. Possibly she never could, but for the sweet old face, growing older yet sweeter every day, which smiled upon her the minute she opened the door of that dull parlor, and made even No. 15 look like home.

When she told, sometimes gayly, sometimes with burning, bursting tears, the tale of her day's efforts and day's failures, it was always comfort to feel Johanna's hand on her hair Johanna's voice whispering over her, "Never mind, my child, all will come right in time All happens for good."

And the face, withered and worn, yet calm as a summer sea, full of the "peace which passeth all understanding," was a living comment on the truth of these words.

Another comfort Hilary had—Elizabeth.—During her long days of absence, wandering from one end of London to the other, after advertisements that she had answered, or governess institutions that she had applied to the domestic affairs fell almost entirely into the hands of Elizabeth. It was she who bought in, and kept a jealous eye, not unneeded, over provisions; she who cooked and waited, and sometimes even put a helping hand, coarse, but willing, into the family sewing and mending. This had now become so vital a necessity that it was fortunate Miss Leaf had no other occupation, and Miss Selina no other entertainment, than stitch, stitch, stitch, at the ever-beginning, never-ending wardrobe wants which assail decent poverty every where, especially in London.

"Clothes seem to wear out frightfully fast," said Hilary one day, when she was putting on her oldest gown, to suit a damp, foggy day, when the streets were slippery with the mud of settled rain.

"I saw such beautiful merino dresses in a shop in Southampton Row," insinuated Elizabeth; but her mistress shook her head.

"No, no; my old black silk will do capitally, and I can easily put on two shawls. Nobody knows me; and people may wear what they like in London. Don't look so grave, Elizabeth. What does it signify if I can but keep myself warm? Now, run away."

Elizabeth obeyed, but shortly reappeared with a bundle—a large, old fashioned thick shawl.

"Mother gave it me; her mistress gave it her; but we've never worn it, and never shall. If only you didn't mind putting it on, just this once—this terrible soaking day!"

The scarlet face, the entreating tones—there was no resisting them. One natural pang Hilary felt—that in her sharp poverty she had fallen so low as to be indebted to her servant, and then she too blushed, less for shame at accepting the kindness than for her own pride that could not at once receive it as such.

"Thank you, Elizabeth," she said, gravely and gently, and let herself be wrapped in the thick shawl. Its gorgeous reds and yellows would, she knew, make her noticeable, even though "people might wear any thing in London." Still, she put it on with a good grace, and all through her peregrinations that day it warmed not only her shoulders, but her heart.

Coming home, she paused wistfully before a glittering shoe shop; her poor little feet were so soaked and cold. Could she possibly afford a new pair of boots? It was not a matter of vanity—she had passed that. She did not care now how ugly and shabby looked the "wee feet" that had once been praised; but she felt it might be a matter of health and prudence. Suppose she caught cold—fell ill—died: died, leaving Johanna to struggle alone; died before Robert Lyon came home. Both thoughts struck sharp. She was too young still, or had not suffered enough, calmly to think of death and dying.

"It will do no harm to inquire the price. I might stop it out in omnibuses."

For this was the way that every new article of dress had to be procured—"stopping it cut" of something else.

After trying several pairs-with a fierce, bitter blush at a small hole which the day's walking had worn in her well darned stockings, and which she was sure the shopman saw, as well as an old lady who sat opposite—Hilary bought the plainest and stoutest of boots. The bill overstepped her purse by six pence, but she promised that sum on delivery, and paid the rest. She had got into a nervous horror of letting any account stand over for a single day.

Look tenderly, reader, on this picture of struggles so small, of sufferings so uninteresting and mean. I paint it not because it is original, but because it is so awfully true. Thousands of women, well born, well reared, know it to be true—burned into them by the cruel conflict of their youth; happy they if it ended in their youth, while mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes made—especially by men—that women are naturally stingy. Possibly so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in spite of herself? It sometimes takes years of comparative ease and freedom from pecuniary cares to counteract the grinding, lowering effects of a youth of poverty.

And I paint this picture, too, literally, and not on its picturesque side—it, indeed, poverty has a picturesque side—in order to show another side which it really has—high, heroic, made up of dauntless endurance, self sacrifice, and self control Also, to indicate that blessing which narrow circumstances alone bestow, the habit of looking more to the realities than to the shows of things, and of finding pleasure in enjoyments mental rather than sensuous, inward rather than external. When people can truly recognize this they cease either to be afraid or ashamed of poverty.

Hilary was not ashamed:—not even now, when hers smote sharper and harder than it had ever done at Stowbury. She felt it a sore thing enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her. Either she was too proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world outside. She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who, though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name and address: still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat and listened to the transaction—apparently a well-to-do customer, clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs—of looking down upon her and despising her. She herself never despised any body, except for wickedness.

So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two thoughts, which in any brief space of rest always recurred, calming down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty pains—Johanna and Robert Lyon. Under the influence of these her tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old lady—apparently an acute old soul in her way—should watch her, as we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly interested.

There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which they give rise. Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as "romantic," "unnatural," "like a bit in a novel;" and yet they are facts continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition, observation, and sympathy. Nay, even the most ordinary people have known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves; firm friendships; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden revolutions of fortune and destiny: things utterly unaccountable for, except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which

"Shapes our ends, Rough-how them as we will."

When Hilary left the shop she was startled by a voice at her elbow.

"I beg your pardon, but if your way lies up Southampton Row, would you object to give an old woman a share of that capital umbrella of yours?"

"With pleasure," Hilary answered, though the oddness of the request amused her. And it was granted really with pleasure; for the old lady spoke with those "accents of the mountain tongue" which this foolish Hilary never recognized without a thrill at the heart.

"May be you think an old woman ought to take a cab, and not be intruding upon strangers; but I am hale and hearty, and being only a streets length from my own door, I dislike to waste unnecessary shillings."

"Certainly," acquiesced Hilary, with a half sigh: shillings were only too precious to her.

"I saw you in the boot shop, and you seemed the sort of young lady who would do a kindness to an old body like me; so I said to myself, 'Ill ask her.'"

"I am glad you did." Poor girl! she felt unconsciously pleased at finding herself still able to show a kindness to any body.

They walked on and on—it was certainly a long street's length—to the stranger's door, and it took Hilary a good way round from hers; but she said nothing of this, concluding, of course, that her companion was unaware of where she lived; in which she was mistaken. They stopped at last before a respectable house near Brunswick Square, bearing a brass plate, with the words "Miss Balquidder."

"That is my name, and very much obliged to you, my dear. How it rains! Ye're just drenched."

Hilary smiled and shook her damp shawl. "I shall take no harm. I am used to go out in all weathers."

"Are you a governess?" The question was so direct and kindly, that it hardly seemed an impertinence.

"Yes; but I have no pupils, and I fear I shall never get any."

"Why not?"

"I suppose, because I know nobody here. It seems so very hard to get teaching in London. But I beg your pardon."

"I beg yours," said Miss Balquidder—not without a certain dignity—"for asking questions of a stranger. But I was once a stranger here myself, and had a 'sair fecht,' as we say in Scotland, before I could earn even my daily bread. Though I wasn't a governess, still I know pretty well what the sort of life is, and if I had daughters who must work for their bread, the one thing I would urge upon them should be—'Never become a governess.' "

"Indeed. For what reason?"

"I'll not tell you now, my dear, standing with all your wet clothes on; but as I said, if you will do me the favor to call."

"Thank you!" said Hilary, not sufficiently initiated in London caution to dread making a new acquaintance. Besides, she liked the rough hewn, good natured face; and the Scotch accent was sweet to her ear.

Yet when she reached home she was half shy of telling her sisters the engagement she had made. Selina was extremely shocked, and considered it quite necessary that the London Directory, the nearest clergyman, or, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, who living in the parish, must know—should be consulted as to Miss Balquidder's respectability.

"She has much more reason to question ours," recollected Hilary, with some amusement; for I never told her my name or address. She does not know a single thing about me.

Which fact, arguing the matter energetic ally two days after, the young lady might not have been so sure of, could she have penetrated the ceiling overhead. In truth, Miss Balquidder, a prudent person, who never did things by halves, and, like most truly generous people, was cautious even in her extremist fits of generosity, at that very moment was sitting in Mrs. Jones's first floor, deliberately discovering every single thing possible to be learned about the Leaf family.

Nevertheless, owing to Selina's indignant pertinacity, Hilary's own hesitation, and a dim hope of a pupil which rose up and faded like the rest, the possible acquaintance lay dormant for two or three weeks; till, alas! the fabulous wolf actually came to the door; and the sisters, after paying their week's rent, looked aghast at one another, not knowing where in the wide world the next week's rent was to come from.

"Thank God, we don't owe any thing: not a penny!" gasped Hilary.

"No; there is comfort in that," said Johanna. And the expression of her folded hands and upward face was not despairing, even though that of the poor widow, when her barrel of meal was gone, and her cruse of oil spent, would hardly have been sadder.

"I am sure we have wasted nothing, and cheated nobody;—surely God will help us."

"I know He will, my child."

And the two sisters, elder and younger, kissed one another, cried a little, and then sat down to consider what was to be done.

Ascott must be told how things were with them. Hitherto they had not troubled him much with their affairs: indeed, he was so little at home. And after some private consultation, both Johanna and Hilary decided that it was wisest to let the lad come and go as he liked; not attempting—as he once indignantly expressed it—"to tie him to their apron strings." For instinctively these maiden ladies felt that with men, and, above all, young men, the only way to bind the wandering heart was to leave it free, except by trying their utmost that home should be always a pleasant home.

It was touching to see their efforts, when Ascott came in of evenings, to enliven for his sake the dull parlor at No. 15. How Johanna put away her mending, and Selina ceased to grumble, and Hilary began her lively chat, that never failed to brighten and amuse the household. Her nephew even sometimes acknowledged that wherever he went, he met nobody so "clever" as Aunt Hilary.

So, presuming upon her influence with him, on this night, after the rest were gone to bed, she, being always the boldest to do any unpleasant thing, said to him.

"Ascott, how are your business affairs progressing? When do you think you will be able to get into practice?"

"Oh, presently. There's no hurry."

"I am not so sure of that. Do you know, my dear boy"—and she opened her purse, which contained a few shillings—"this is all the money we have in the world."

"Nonsense," said Ascott, laughing. "I beg your pardon," he added, seeing it was with her no laughing matter; "but I am so accustomed to be hard up that I don't seem to care. It always comes right somehow—at least with me."

"How?"

"Oh, I don't exactly know; but it does. Don't fret, Aunt Hilary. I'll lend you a pound or two."

She drew back. These poor, proud, fond women, who, if their boy, instead of a fine gentleman, had been a helpless invalid, would have tended him, worked for him, nay, begged for him—cheerfully, oh, how cheerfully! wanting nothing in the whole world but his love—they could not ask him for his money. Even now, offered thus, Hilary felt as if to take it would be intolerable.

Still the thing must be done.

"I wish, Ascott"—and she nerved herself to say what somebody ought to say to him—"I would you would not lend but pay us the pound a week you said you could so easily spare."

"To be sure I will. What a thoughtless fellow I have been! But—but—I fancied you would have asked me if you wanted it. Never mind, you'll get it all in a lump. Let me see—how much will it come to? You are the best head going for arithmetic, Aunt Hilary. Do reckon it all up?" She did so; and the sum total made Ascott open his eyes wide.

"Upon my soul I had no idea it was so much. I'm very sorry, but I seem fairly cleaned out this quarter—only a few sovereigns left to keep the mill going. You shall have them, or half of them, and I'll owe you the rest. Here!"

He emptied on the table, without counting, four or five pounds. Hilary took two, asking him gravely "If he was sure he could spare so much? She did not wish to inconvenience him."

"Oh, not at all; and I wouldn't mind if it did; you have been good aunts to me."

He kissed her, with a sudden fit of compunction, and bade her good-night, looking as if he did not care to be "bothered" any more.

Hilary retired, more sad, more hopeless about him than if he had slammed the door in her face, or scolded her like a trooper. Had he met her seriousness in the same spirit, even though it had been a sullen or angry spirit—and little as she said he must have felt she wished him to feel—that his aunts were displeased with him; but that utterly unrepressible light-heartedness of his—there was no doing any thing with it. There was so to speak, "no catching hold" of Ascott. He meant no harm. She repeated over and over again that the lad meant no harm. He had no evil ways; was always pleasant, good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fashion; but was no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows hither and thither; or, to use a common simile, a butterfly that never sees any thing farther than the nearest flower. His was, in short, the pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and regarding what deeper natures call "duty," and find therein their strong-hold and consolation, as a mere bugbear or a sentimental theory, or an impossible folly.

Poor lad! and he had the world to fight with; how would it use him? Even if no heavy sorrows for himself or others smote him, his handsome face would have to grow old, his strong frame to meet sickness—death.—How would he do it? That is the thought which always recurs. What is the end of such men as these? Alas! the answer would come from hospital wards, alms-houses and work-houses, debtors' prisons and lunatic asylums.

To apprehensions like this—except the last, happily it was as yet too far off—Hilary had been slowly and sadly arriving about Ascott for weeks past; and her conversation with him to-night seemed to make them darken down upon her with added gloom. As she went up stairs she set her lips together hard.

"I see there is nobody to do any thing except me. But I must not tell Johanna."

She lay long awake, planning every conceivable scheme for saving money; till at length, her wits sharpened by the desperation of the circumstances, there flashed upon her an idea that came out of a talk she had had with Elizabeth that morning. True, it was a perfectly new and untried chance—and a mere chance; still it was right to overlook nothing. She would not have ventured to tell Selina of it for the world, and even to Johanna, she only said—finding her as wakeful as herself—said it in a careless manner, as if it had relation to nothing, and she expected nothing from it— "I think, as I have nothing else to do, I will go and see Miss Balquidder to-morrow morning."



CHAPTER XIII.

Miss Balquidder's house was a handsome one, handsomely furnished, and a neat little to aid-servant showed Hilary at once into the dining-parlor, where the mistress sat before a business-like writing-table, covered with letters, papers, etc., all arranged with that careful order in disorder which indicates, even in the smallest things, the possession of an accurate, methodical mind, than which there are few greater possessions, either to its owner or to the world at large.

Miss Balquidder was not a personable woman; she had never been so even in youth; and age had told its tale upon those large, strong features—"thoroughly Scotch features," they would have been called by those who think all Scotchwomen are necessarily big, raw-boned, and ugly; and have never seen that wonderfully noble beauty—not prettiness, but actual beauty in its highest physical as well as spiritual development—which is not seldom found across the Tweed.

But while there was nothing lovely, there was nothing unpleasant or uncomely in Miss Balquidder. Her large figure, in its plain black silk dress; her neat white cap, from under which peeped the little round curls of flaxen hair, neither gray nor snowy, but real "lint-white locks" still; and her good-humored, motherly look—motherly rather than old-maidish—gave an impression which may be best described by the word "comfortable."—She was a "comfortable" woman. She had that quality—too rarely, alas! in all people, and rarest in women going solitary down the hill of life—of being able, out of the deep content of her own nature, to make other people the same.

Hilary was cheered in spite of herself: it always conveys hope to the young, when in sore trouble, if they see the old looking happy.

"Welcome, my dear! I was afraid you had forgotten your promise."

"Oh no," said Hilary, responding heartily to the hearty clasp of a hand large as a man's, but soft as a woman's.

"Why did you not come sooner?"

More than one possible excuse flashed thro' Hilary's mind, but she was too honest to give it. She gave none at all. Nor did she like to leave the impression that this was merely a visit, when she knew she had only come from secondary and personal motives.

"May I tell you why I came to-day?—Because I want advice and help, and I think you can give it, from something I heard about you yesterday."

"Indeed! From whom?"

"In rather a roundabout way; from Mrs. Jones, who told our maid-servant."

"The same girl I met on the staircase at your bones? I beg your pardon, but I know where you live, Miss Leaf; your landlady happens to be an acquaintance of mine."

"So she said: and she told our Elizabeth that you were a rich and benevolent woman, who took a great interest in helping other women; not in money"—blushing scarlet at be idea—"I don't mean that, but in procuring them work. I want work—oh! so terribly. If you only knew—"

"Sit down, my dear;" for Hilary was rambling much, her voice breaking, and her eyes filling, in spite of all her self-command.

Miss Balquidder—who seemed accustomed to wait upon herself—went out of the room, and returned with cake and glasses; then she took the wine from the side-board, poured some oat for herself and Hilary, and began to talk.

"It is nearly my luncheon-time, and I am a great friend to regular eating and drinking. I never let any thing interfere with my own meals, or other folks' either, if I can help it. I would as soon expect that fire to keep itself up without coals, as my mind to go on working if I don't look after my body. You understand? You seem to have good health, Miss Leaf. I hope you are a prudent girl, and take care of it."

"I think I do;" and Hilary smiled. "At any rate my sister does for me, and also Elizabeth."

"Ah, I liked the look of that girl. If families did but know that the most useful patent of respectability they can carry about with them is their maid-servant! That is how I always judge my new acquaintances."

"There's reason in it, too," said Hilary, amused and drawn out of herself by the frank manner and the cordial voice—I use the adjective advisedly; none the less sweet because its good terse English had a decided Scotch accent, with here and there a Scotch word. Also there was about Miss Balquidder a certain dry humor essentially Scotch—neither Irish "wit" nor English "fun," but Scotch humor; a little ponderous perhaps, yet sparkling: like the sparkles from a large lump of coal, red-warm at the heart, and capable of warming a whole household. As many a time it had warmed the little household at Stowbury—for Robert Lyon had it in perfection. Like a waft as from old times, it made Hilary at once feel at home with Miss Balquidder. Equally, Miss Balquidder might have seen something in this girl's patient, heroic, forlorn youth which reminded her of her own. Unreasoning as these sudden attractions appear, there is often a hidden something beneath which in reality makes them both natural and probable, as was the case here. In half an hour these two women were sitting talking like old friends; and Hilary had explained her present position, needs and desires. They ended in the one cry—familiar to how many thousands more of helpless young women!—"I want work!"

Miss Balquidder listened thoughtfully. Not that it was a new story—alas! she heard it every day; but there was something new in the telling of it; such extreme directness and simplicity, such utter want of either false pride or false shame, No asking of favors, and yet no shrinking from well-means kindness; the poor woman speaking freely to the rich one, recognizing the common womanhood of both, and never supposing for an instant that mere money or position could make any difference between them.

The story ended, both turned, as was the character of both, to the practical application of it—what it was exactly that Hilary needed, and what Miss Balquidder could supply.

The latter said, after a turn or two up and down the room, with her hands behind her—the only masculine trick she had—

"My dear, before going further, I ought to tell you one thing—I am not a lady."

Hilary looked at her in no little bewilderment.

"That is," explained Miss Balquidder, laughing, "not an educated gentlewoman like you. I made my money myself—in trade. I kept an outfitter's shop."

"You must have kept it uncommonly well," was the involuntary reply, which, in its extreme honesty and naivete, was perhaps the best thing that Hilary could have said.

"Well, perhaps I did," and Miss Balquidder laughed her hearty laugh, betraying one of her few weaknesses—a consciousness of her own capabilities as a woman of business, and a pleasure at her own deserved success.

"Therefore, you see. I can not help you as a governess. Perhaps I would not if I could, for, so far as I see, a good clearance of one half the governesses into honest trades would be for their own benefit, and greatly to the benefit of the other half. But that's not my affair. I only meddle with things I understand. Miss Leaf, would you be ashamed of keeping a shop?"

It is no reflection upon Hilary to confess that this point-blank question startled her.—Her bringing up had been strictly among the professional class; and in the provinces sharper than even in London is drawn the line between the richest tradesman who "keeps a shop," and the poorest lawyer, doctor, or clergyman who ever starved in decent gentility. It had been often a struggle for Hilary Leaf's girlish pride to have to teach A B C to little boys and girls whose parents stood behind counters; but as she grew older she grew wiser, and intercourse with Robert Lyon had taught her much. She never forgot, one day, when Selina asked him something about his grandfather or great-grandfather, and he answered quickly, smiling, "Well, I suppose I had one, but I really never heard." Nevertheless it takes long to conquer entirely the class prejudices of years, nay, more, of generations. In spite of her will Hilary felt herself wince, and the color rush all over her face, at Miss Balquidder's question.

"Take time to answer, and speak out, my dear. Don't be afraid. You'll not offend me."

The kindly cheerful tone made Hilary recover her balance immediately.

"I never thought of it before; the possibility of such a thing did not occur to me; but I hope I should not be ashamed of any honest work for which I was competent. Only—to serve in a shop—to want upon strangers—I am so horribly shy of strangers." And again the sensitive color rushed in a perfect tide over checks and forehead.

Miss Balquidder looked, half amused, compassionately at her.

"No, my dear, you would not make a good shop-woman, at least there are many who are better fitted for it than you; and it is my maxim that people should try to find out, and to do, only that which they are best fitted for. If they did we might not have so many cases of proud despair and ambitious failure in the world. It looks very grand and interesting sometimes to try and do what you can't de, and then tear your hair, and think the world has ill-used you—very grand, but very silly: when all the while, perhaps, there is something else you can do thoroughly well; and the world will be exceedingly obliged to you for doing it, and not doing the other thing.—As doubtless the world was to me, when, instead of being a mediocre musician, as I once wished to be—it's true, my dear—I took to keeping one of the best ladies' outfitting warehouses in London."

While she talked her companion had quite recovered herself, and Miss Balquidder then went on to explain, what I will tell more briefly, if less graphically, than the good Scotchwoman, who, like all who have had a hard struggle in their youth, liked a little to dilate upon it in easy old age. Hard as it was, however, it had ended early, for at fifty she found herself a woman of independent property, without kith or kin, still active, energetic, and capable of enjoying life. She applied her mind to find out what she could best do with herself and her money.

"I might have bought a landed estate to be inherited by—nobody; or a house in Belgravia, and an opera-box, to be shared by—nobody. We all have our pet luxuries; none of these were exactly mine."

"No," assented Hilary, somewhat abstractedly. She was thinking—if she could make a fortune, and—and give it away!—if, by any means, any honorable, upright heart could be made to understand that it did not signify, in reality, which side the money came from; that it sometimes showed deeper, the very deepest attachment, when a proud, poor man had self-respect and courage enough to say to a woman, "I love you, and I will marry you; I am not such a coward as to be afraid of your gold."

But, oh! what a ridiculous dream!—and she sat there, the penniless Hilary Leaf, listening to Miss Balquidder, the rich lady, whose life seemed so easy. For the moment, perhaps, her own appeared hard. But she had hope, and she was young. She knew nothing of the years and years that had had to be lived through before those kind eyes looked as clear and cloudless as now; before the voice had gained the sweet evenness of tone which she liked to listen to, and felt that it made her quiet and "good," almost like Johanna's.

"You see, my dear," said Miss Balquidder, "when one has no duties, one must just make them; when we have nobody to care for us, we must take to caring for every body. I suppose"—here a slight pause indicated that this life, like all women's lives, had had its tale, now long, long told—"I suppose I was not meant to be a wife; but I am quite certain I was meant to be a mother. And"—with her peculiar, bright, humorous look—"you'd be astonished, Miss Leaf, if you knew what lots of 'children' I have in all parts of the world."

Miss Balquidder then went on to explain, that finding, from her own experience, how great was the number, and how sore the trial of young women who nowadays are obliged to work—obliged to forget that there is such a thing as the blessed privilege of being worked for—she had set herself, in her small way, to try and help them. Her pet project was to induce educated women to quit the genteel starvation of governesships for some good trade thereby bringing higher intelligence into a class which needed, not the elevation of the work itself, which was comparatively easy and refined, but of the workers. She had therefore invested sum after sum of her capital in setting up various small shops in the environs of London, in her own former line, and others—stationers, lace-shops, etc.—trades which could be well carried on by women.—Into the management of these she put as many young girls as she could find really fitted for it, or willing to learn, paying them regular salaries, large or small, according to their deserts.

"Fair work, fair pay; not one penny more or less; I never do it; it would not be honest. I overlook each business myself, and it is carried on in my name. Sometimes it brings me in a little profit; sometimes not. Of course," she added, smiling. "I would rather have profits than losses; still, I balance one against the other, and it leaves me generally a small interest for my money—two or three per cent., which is all I care about. Thus, you see. I and my young people make a fair bargain on both sides; it's no charity. I don't believe in charity."

"No," said Hilary, feeling her spirit rise. She was yet young enough, yet enough unworn by the fight to feel the deliciousness of work—honest work for honest pay. "I think I could do it," she added. "I think, with a little practice, I really could keep a shop."

"At all events, perhaps you could do what I find more difficult to get done, and well done, for it requires a far higher class of women than generally apply: you could keep the accounts of a shop; you should be the head, and it would be easy to find the hands, Let me see; there is a young lady, she has managed my stationer's business at Kensington these two years, and now she is going to be married. Are you good at figures; do you understand book-keeping?"

And suddenly changing into the woman of business, and one who was evidently quite accustomed both to arrange and command, Miss Balquidder put Hilary through a sort of extempore arithmetical catechism, from which she came off with flying colors.

"I only wish there were more like you. I wish there were more young ladies brought up like—"

"Like boys!" said Hilary, laughing, "for I always used to say that was my case."

"No, I never desire to see young women made into men." And Miss Balquidder seemed a little scandalized. "But I do wish girls were taught fewer accomplishments, and more reading, writing, and arithmetic; were made as accurate, orderly, and able to help themselves as boys are. But to business. Will you take the management of my stationer's shop?"

Hilary's breath came hard and fast. Much as she had longed for work, to get this sort of work—to keep a stationer's shop? What would her sisters say? what would he say! But she dared not think of that just now.

"How much should I be able to earn, do you think?"

Miss Balquidder considered a moment, and then said, rather shortly, for it was not exactly acting on her own principles; she knew the pay was above the work. "I will give you a hundred a year."

A hundred a year! actually certain, and over and above any other income. It seemed a fortune to poor Hilary.

"Will you give me a day or two to think about it and consult my sisters?"

She spoke quietly, but Miss Balquidder could see how agitated she was; how she evidently struggled with many feelings that would be best struggled with alone. The good old lady rose.

"Take your own time, my dear; I will keep the situation open for you for one week from this date. And now I must send you away, for I have a great deal to do."

They parted quite like friends; and Hilary went out, walking quickly, feeling neither the wind nor the rain. Yet when she reached No. 15 she could not bring herself to enter, but took another turn or two round the Crescent, trying to be quite sure of her own mind before she opened the matter to her sisters.—

And there was one little battle to be fought which the sisters did know.

It was perhaps foolish, seeing she did not belong to him in any open way, and he had no external right over her life or her actions, that she should go back and back to the question, "What would Robert Lyon say?"

He knew she earned her daily bread; sometimes this had seemed to vex and annoy him, but it must be done; and when a thing was inevitable, it was not Mr. Lyon's way to say much about it. But being a governess was an accredited and customary mode of a young lady's earning her livelihood. This was different. If he should think it too public, too unfeminine: he had such a horror of a woman's being any thing but a woman, as strong and brave as she could, but in a womanly way; doing any thing, however painful, that she was obliged to do, but never out of choice or bravado, or the excitement of stepping out of her own sphere into man's. Would Robert Lyon think less of her, Hilary, because she had to earn to take care of herself, to protect herself, and to act in so many ways for herself, contrary to the natural and right order of things? That old order—God forbid it should ever change!—which ordained that the women should be "keepers at home;" happy rulers of that happy little world, which seemed as far off as the next world from this poor Hilary.

"What if he should look down upon me? What if he should return and find me different from what he expected?"

And bitter tears burned in her eyes, as she walked rapidly and passionately along the deserted street. Then a revulsion came.

"No; love is worth nothing that is not worth every thing, and to be trusted through every thing. If he could forget me—could love any one better than me—me myself, no matter what I was—ugly or pretty, old or young, rich or poor—I would not care for his love. It would not be worth my having; I'd let it go. Robert, though it broke my heart, I'd let you go."

Her eyes flashed; her poor little hand clenched itself under her shawl; and then, as a half reproach, she heard in fancy the steady loving voice—which could have calmed her wildest paroxysm of passion and pain—"You must trust me, Hilary."

Yes, he was a man to be trusted. No doubt very much like other men, and by no means such a hero to the world at large as this fond girl made him out to be; but Robert Lyon had, with all people, and under all circumstances, the character of reliableness. He had also—you might read it in his face—a quality equally rare, faithfulness. Not merely sincerity, but faithfulness; the power of conceiving one clear purpose, or one strong love—in unity of strength—and of not only keeping true to it at the time, but of holding fast to it with a single-minded persistency that never even takes in the idea of voluntary change, as long as persistency is right or possible.

"Robert, Robert!" sobbed this forlorn girl, as if slowly waking up to a sense of her forlorness, and of the almost universal fickleness, not actual falseness, but fickleness, which prevails in the world and among mankind. "O Robert, be faithful! faithful to yourself—faithful to me!"



CHAPTER XIV.

When Miss Hilary reached home Elizabeth opened the door to her; the parlor was deserted.

Miss Leaf had gone to lie down, and Miss Selina was away to see the Lord Mayor's Show with Mr. Peter Ascott.

"With Mr. Peter Ascott!" Hilary was a little surprised; but on second thoughts she found it natural; Selina was glad of any amusement—to her, not only the narrowness but the dullness of their poverty was inexpressibly galling. "She will be back to dinner, I suppose?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth briefly.

Had Miss Hilary been less preoccupied, she would have noticed something not quite right about the girl—something that at any other time would have aroused the direct question, "What is the matter, Elizabeth?" For Miss Hilary did not consider it beneath her dignity to observe that things might occasionally go wrong with this solitary young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances of London lodgings; that many trifles might happen to worry and perplex her. If the mistress could not set them right, she could at least give the word of kindly sympathy, as precious to "a poor servant" as to the Queen on her throne.

This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below stairs immediately.

The girl was revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical question. To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not "told Miss Hilary every thing." Two things had happened, and she could not make up her mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.

Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and which, from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher sensitiveness than, alas! is common among her class, or, indeed, in any class. This, if an error, was Miss Hilary's doing; it probably caused Elizabeth a few more miseries, and vexations, and painful shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed only the ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her life, the Recording Angel would gravely smile.

The first trial had happened at breakfast time. Ascott, descending earlier than his wont, had asked her. Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?

Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr. Leaf's.

Ascott laughed. "So he is—a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here. Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town."

"Very well, sir. Shall you start before dinner?" said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint, always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.

He seemed excessively tickled. "Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind—hush! here's Aunt Hilary."

And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance which gave her much more perplexity.

During her young mistress's absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking. There, to her amazement, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing, in close conversation, over the fire. They were so engrossed that they did not notice her, and she shut door again immediately. But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!

Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.

Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be intending to marry, that horrid little man? For strange to say, this young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has not, or has lost forever—the true, pure, womanly creed, that loving and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to marry him for money or any thing else when you do not really love him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind. A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray nooks of the world; but thank God! it does exist. Hilary had it, and she had taught it to Elizabeth.

"I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of this? I wonder what she would say to it?"

And now arose the perplexing ethical question aforesaid, as to whether Elizabeth ought to tell her.

It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines—the same for the kitchen as for the parlor, nay, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed—that a secret accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually confided; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend.

"Miss Selina isn't my enemy," smiled Elizabeth: "but I'm not overfond of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex her if I can help it. Any how, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."

But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest heart felt a certain diminution of respect for Miss Selina. What could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation—

"Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman?"

He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference to going "out of town."

But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative, and did not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it nobody else would. So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's under shelter of the dim fire-light, "Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation. I have just received an offer."

"An offer!" repeated Miss Selina, with a visible start. "Oh, I forgot; you went to see your friend, Miss Balquidder, this morning. Did you get any thing out of her? Has she any nephews and nieces wanting a governess?"

"She has no relations at all. But I will just tell you the story of my visit."

"I hope it's interesting," said Ascott, who was lying on the sofa, half asleep, his general habit after dinner. He woke, however, during his Aunt Hilary's relation, and when she reached its climax, that the offer was for her to manage a stationer's shop, he burst out heartily laughing:

"Well, that is a rich idea. I'll come and buy of you. You'll look so pretty standing behind a counter."

But Selina said, angrily, "You cannot even think of such a thing. It would be a disgrace to the family."

"No," said Hilary, clasping tightly her eldest sister's hand—they two had already talked the matter over: "I can not see any disgrace. If our family is so poor that the women must earn their living as well as the men, all we have to see is that it should be honestly earned. What do you say, Ascott?"

She looked earnestly at him; she wanted sorely to find out what he really thought.

But Ascott took it, as he did every thing, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How horribly dark this room is!"

He started up, and gave the fire a fierce poke, which consumed in five minutes a large lump of coal that Hilary had hoped—oh, cruel, sordid economy—would have lasted half the evening.

She broke the uneasy silence which followed by asking Johanna to give her opinion.

Johanna roused herself and spoke:

"Ascott says right; he is the head of the family, and, by-and-by. I trust will take care of us all. But he is not able to do it now, and meantime we must live."

"To be sure, we must Auntie."

"I mean, my boy, we must live honestly; we must not run into debt:" and her voice sharpened as with the reflected horror of her young days—if, alas! there ever had been any youth for Henry Leaf's eldest daughter. "No, Ascott, out of debt out of danger. For myself"—she laid her thin old fingers on his arm, and looked up at him with a pitiful mixture of reliance and hopelessness—"I would rather see you breaking stones in the road than living like a gentleman, as you call it, and a swindler, as I call it, upon other people's money."

Ascott sprang up, coloring violently. "You use strong language, Aunt Johanna. Never mind. I dare say you are right. However, it's no business of mine. Good-night, for I have an engagement."

Hilary said, gravely, she wished he would stay and join in the family consultation.

"Oh no; I bate talking over things. Settle it among yourselves. As I said, it isn't my business."

"You don't care, then, what becomes of us all? I sometimes begin to think so."

Struck by the tone, Ascott stopped in the act of putting on his lilac kid gloves. "What have I done? I may be a very bad fellow, but I'm not quite so bad as that. Aunt Hilary."

"She didn't mean it, my boy," said Aunt Johanna, tenderly.

He was moved, more by the tenderness than the reproach. He came and kissed his eldest aunt in that warm-hearted, impulsive way, which had won him forgiveness for many a boyish fault. It did so now.

"I know I'm not half good enough to you, Auntie, but I mean to be. I mean to work hard, and be a rich man some day; and then you may be sure I shall not let my Aunt Hilary keep a shop. Now, good-night, for I must meet a fellow on business—really business—that may turn out good for us all, I assure you."

He went away whistling, with that air of untroubled, good-natured liveliness peculiar to Ascott Leaf, which made them say continually that he was "only a boy," living a boy's life, as thoughtless and as free. When his handsome face disappeared the three women sat down again round the fire.

They made no comments on him whatever; they were women, and he was their own. But—passing him over as if he had never existed—Hilary began to explain to her sisters all particulars of her new scheme for maintaining the family. She told these details in a matter of-fact way, as already arranged; and finally hoped Selina would make no more objections.

"It is a thing quite impossible," said Selina, with dignity.

"Why impossible? I can certainly do the work; and it can not make me less of a lady. Besides, we had better not be ladies if we can not be honest ones. And, Selina, where is the money to come from? We have none in the house; we can not get any till Christmas."

"Opportunities might occur. We have friends."

"Not one in London; except, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, and I would not ask him for a farthing. You don't see, Selina, how horrible it would be to be helped, unless by some one dearly loved. I couldn't bear it! I'd rather beg, starve: almost steal!"

"Don't be violent, child."

"Oh, but it's hard!" and the cry of long-smothered pain burst out. "Hard enough to have to earn one's bread in a way one doesn't like; harder still to have to be parted from Johanna from Monday morning till Saturday night. But it must be, I'll go. It's a case between hunger, debt, and work: the first is unpleasant, the second impossible, the third is my only alternative. You must consent, Selina, for I will do it."

"Don't!" Selina spoke more gently, and not without some natural emotion. "Don't disgrace me, child; for I may as well tell you—I meant to do so to-night—Mr. Ascott has made me an offer of marriage, and I—I have accepted it." Had a thunder-bolt fallen in the middle of the parlor at No. 15, its inmates—that is, two of them—could not have been more astounded.

No doubt this surprise was a great instance of simplicity on their part. Many women would have prognosticated, planned the thing from the first; thought it a most excellent match; seen glorious visions of the house in Russell Square, of the wealth and luxury that would be the portion of "dear Selina," and the general benefit that the marriage would be to the whole Leaf family.