“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.