“And I’m two-and-twenty.  How aged we are growing!” said Elizabeth, with a smile.

Then she asked after Mrs. Cliffe, but got only the brief answer, “Mother’s dead,” given in a tone as if no more inquiries would be welcome.  His two sisters, also, had died of typhus in one week, and Tom had been “on his own hook,” as he expressed it, for the last three years.

He was extremely frank and confidential; told how he had begun life as a printer’s “devil,” afterward become a compositor, and his health failing, had left the trade, and gone as servant to a literary gentleman.

“An uncommon clever fellow is master; keeps his carriage, and has dukes to dinner, all out of his books.  Maybe you’ve heard of them, Elizabeth?” and he named a few, in a patronizing way; at which Elizabeth smiled, for she knew them well.  But she nevertheless regarded with a certain awe the servant of so great a man, and “little Tommy Cliffe” took a new importance in her eyes.

Also, as he walked with her along the street to find an omnibus, she could not help perceiving what a sharp little fellow he had grown into; how, like many another printer’s boy, he had caught the influence of the atmosphere of letters, and was educated, self-educated, of course, to a degree far beyond his position.  When she looked at him, and listened to him, Elizabeth involuntarily thought of Benjamin Franklin, and of many more who had raised themselves from the ink-pot and the compositor’s desk to fame and eminence, and she fancied that such might be the lot of “little Tommy Cliffe.”  Why not?  If so, how excessively proud she should be!

For the moment she had forgotten her errand; forgotten even Miss Hilary.  It was not till Tom Cliffe asked her where she lived, that she suddenly recollected her mistress might not like, under present circumstances, that their abode or any thing concerning them should be known to a Stowbury person.

It was a struggle.  She would have liked to see the lad again; have liked to talk over with him Stowbury things and Stowbury people; but she felt she ought not, and she would not.

“Tell me where you live, Tom, and that will do just as well; at least till I speak to my mistress.  I never had a visitor before, and my mistress might not like it.”

“No followers allowed, eh?”

Elizabeth laughed.  The idea of little Tommy Clifie as her “follower,” seemed so very funny.

So she bade him good-by; having, thanks to his gay frankness, been made acquainted with all about him, but leaving him in perfect ignorance concerning herself and her mistress.  She only smiled when he declared contemptuously, and with rather a romantic emphasis, that he would hunt her out, though it were half over London.

This was all her adventure.  When she came to tell it, it seemed very little to tell, and Miss Hilary listened to it rather indifferently, trying hard to remember who Tommy Cliffe was, and to take an interest in him because he came from Stowbury.  But Stowbury days were so far off now—­with such a gulf or pain between.