But this quality has its inconveniences.  When the maid began sweeping up her hearth with a noisy, angry gesture, the mistress did the wisest and most dignified thing a mistress could do under the circumstances and which she knew was the sharpest rebuke she could administer to the sensitive Elizabeth—­she immediately quitted the kitchen.

For an hour after the parlor bell did not ring; and though it was washing day, no Miss Hilary appeared to help in folding up the clothes.  Elizabeth, subdued and wretched, waited till she could wait no longer; then knocked at the door, and asked humbly if she should bring in supper?

The extreme kindness of the answer, to the effect that she must come in, as they wanted to speak to her, crushed the lingering fragments of ill humor out of the girl.

“Miss Hilary has told you our future plans, Elizabeth; now we wish to have a little talk with you about yours.”

“Eh?”

“We conclude you will not wish to go with us to London; and it would be hardly advisable you should.  You can get higher wages now than any we can afford to give you; indeed, we have more than once thought of telling you so, and offering you your choice of trying for a better place.”

“You’re very kind,” was the answer, stolid rather than grateful.

“No; I think we are merely honest.  We should never think of keeping a girl upon lower wages than she was worth.  Hitherto, however, the arrangement has been quite fair you know, Elizabeth, you have given us a deal of trouble in the teaching of you.”  And Miss Leaf smiled, half sadly, as if this, the first of the coming changes, hurt her more than she liked to express.  “Come, my girl,” she added, “you needn’t look so serious.  We are not in the least vexed with you; we shall be very sorry to lose you, and we will give you the best of characters when you leave.”

“I dunnot—­mean—­to leave.”

Elizabeth threw out the words like pellets, in a choked fashion, and disappeared suddenly from the parlor.

“Who would have thought it!” exclaimed Selina; “I declare the girl was crying.”

No mistake about that; though when, a few minutes after, Miss Hilary entered the kitchen, Elizabeth tried in a hurried, shamefaced way to hide her tears by being very busy over something.  Her mistress took no notice, but began, as usual on washing days, to assist in various domestic matters, in the midst of which she said, quietly, “And so, Elizabeth, you would really like to go to London?”

“No!  I shouldn’t like it at all; never said I should.  But if you go, I shall go too; though Missis is so ready to get shut o’ me.”

“It was for your own good, you know.”

“You always said it was for a girl’s good to stop in one place; and if you think I’m going to another.  I aren’t that’s all.”

Rude as the form of the speech was—­almost the first rude speech that Elizabeth had ever made to Miss Hilary, and which, under other circumstances she would have felt bound severely to reprove—­the mistress passed it over.  That which lay beneath it, the sharpness of wounded love, touched her heart.  She felt that, for all the girl’s rough manner, it would have been hard to go into her London kitchen and meet a strange London face, instead of that fond homely one of Elizabeth Hand’s.