“He has been kind enough, though he has done it in such a patronizing way,” observed Selina.  “I suppose that’s the real reason of his doing it.  He thinks it fine to patronize us, and show kindness to our family; he, the stout, bullet-headed grocer’s boy, who used to sit and stare at us all church time.”

“At you—­you mean.  Wasn’t he called your beau?” said Hilary mischievously, upon which Selina drew herself up in great indignation.

And then they fell to talking of that anxious question—­Ascott’s future.  A little they reproached themselves that they had left the lad so long in London—­so long out of the influence that might have counteracted the evil, sharply hinted in his godfather’s letter.  But once away—­to lure him back to their poor home was impossible.

“Suppose we were to go to him,” suggested Hilary.

The poor and friendless possess one great advantage—­they have nobody to ask advice of; nobody to whom it matters much what they do or where they go.  The family mind has but to make itself up, and act accordingly.  Thus within an hour or two of the receipt of Mr. Ascott’s letter Hilary went into the kitchen, and told Elizabeth that as soon as her work was done Miss Leaf wished to have a little talk with her.

“Eh! what’s wrong?  Has Miss Selina been a-grumbling at me?”

Elizabeth was in one of her bad humors, which, though of course they never ought to have, servants do have as well as their superiors.  Hilary perceived this by the way she threw the coals on and tossed the chairs about.  But to-day her heart was full of far more serious cares than Elizabeth’s ill temper.  She replied, composedly—­

“I have not heard that either of my sisters is displeased with you.  What they want to talk to you about is for your own good.  We are thinking of making a great change.  We intend to leave Stowbury and going to live in London.”

“Going to live in London!”

Now, quick as her tact and observation were—­her heart taught her these things—­Elizabeth’s head was a thorough Saxon one, slow to receive impressions.  It was a family saying, that nothing was so hard as to put a new idea into Elizabeth except to get it out again.

For this reason Hilary preferred paving the way quietly, before startling her with the sudden intelligence of their contemplated change.

“Well, what do you say to the plan?” asked she, good-humoredly.

“I dunnot like it at all,” was the brief gruff answer of Elizabeth Hand.

Now it was one of Miss Hilary’s doctrines that no human being is good for much unless he or she has what is called “a will of one’s own.”  Perhaps this, like many another creed, was with her the result of circumstances.  But she held it firmly, and with that exaggerated one-sidedness of feeling which any bitter family or personal experience is sure to leave behind—­a strong will was her first attraction to every body.  It had been so in the case of Robert Lyon, and not less in Elizabeth’s.