Dixon had been so much accustomed to comment upon Mr. Hale’s proceedings to her mistress (who listened to her, or not, as she was in the humour), that she never noticed Margaret’s flashing eye and dilating nostril.  To hear her father talked of in this way by a servant to her face!

‘Dixon,’ she said, in the low tone she always used when much excited, which had a sound in it as of some distant turmoil, or threatening storm breaking far away.  ’Dixon! you forget to whom you are speaking.’  She stood upright and firm on her feet now, confronting the waiting-maid, and fixing her with her steady discerning eye.  ’I am Mr. Hale’s daughter.  Go!  You have made a strange mistake, and one that I am sure your own good feeling will make you sorry for when you think about it.’

Dixon hung irresolutely about the room for a minute or two.  Margaret repeated, ‘You may leave me, Dixon.  I wish you to go.’  Dixon did not know whether to resent these decided words or to cry; either course would have done with her mistress:  but, as she said to herself, ’Miss Margaret has a touch of the old gentleman about her, as well as poor Master Frederick; I wonder where they get it from?’ and she, who would have resented such words from any one less haughty and determined in manner, was subdued enough to say, in a half humble, half injured tone: 

‘Mayn’t I unfasten your gown, miss, and do your hair?’

‘No! not to-night, thank you.’  And Margaret gravely lighted her out of the room, and bolted the door.  From henceforth Dixon obeyed and admired Margaret.  She said it was because she was so like poor Master Frederick; but the truth was, that Dixon, as do many others, liked to feel herself ruled by a powerful and decided nature.

Margaret needed all Dixon’s help in action, and silence in words; for, for some time, the latter thought it her duty to show her sense of affront by saying as little as possible to her young lady; so the energy came out in doing rather than in speaking A fortnight was a very short time to make arrangements for so serious a removal; as Dixon said, ’Any one but a gentleman—­indeed almost any other gentleman—­’ but catching a look at Margaret’s straight, stern brow just here, she coughed the remainder of the sentence away, and meekly took the horehound drop that Margaret offered her, to stop the ’little tickling at my chest, miss.’  But almost any one but Mr. Hale would have had practical knowledge enough to see, that in so short a time it would be difficult to fix on any house in Milton-Northern, or indeed elsewhere, to which they could remove the furniture that had of necessity to be taken out of Helstone vicarage.  Mrs. Hale, overpowered by all the troubles and necessities for immediate household decisions that seemed to come upon her at once, became really ill, and Margaret almost felt it as a relief when her mother fairly took to her bed, and left the management of affairs to her.  Dixon, true to