All was in order; at least in as much order as was to be expected the hour before dinner.  The bowl of half-peeled potatoes stood on the back kitchen “sink;” the roast was down before the fire; the knives were ready for cleaning.  Evidently Elizabeth flight had not been premeditated.

“It’s all nonsense about her going mad.  She has as sound a head as I have,” said Hilary to Johanna, who began to look seriously uneasy.  “She might have run away in a fit of passion, certainly; and yet that is improbable; her temper is more sullen than furious.  And having no lack of common sense she must know that doing a thing like this is enough to make her lose her place at once.”

“Yes,” said Johanna, mournfully, “I’m afraid after this she must go.”

“Wait and see what she has to say for herself.” pleaded Hilary.  “She will surely be back in two or three minutes.”

But she was not, nor even in two or three hours.

Her mistresses’ annoyance became displeasure, and that again subsided into serious apprehension.  Even Selina ceased talking over and over the incident which gave the sole information to be arrived at; rose, dressed, and came down to the kitchen.  There, after long and anxious consultation, Hilary, observing that “Somebody had better do something,” began to prepare the dinner as in pre-Elizabethan days; but the three ladies’ appetites were small.

About three in the afternoon, Hilary, giving utterance to the hidden alarm of all, said—­

“I think, sisters, I had better go down as quickly as I can to Mrs. Hand’s.”

This agreed, she stood consulting with Johanna as to what could possibly be said to the mother in case that unfortunate child had not gone home, when the kitchen door opened, and the culprit appeared.

Not, however, with the least look of a culprit.  Hot she was, and breathless; and with her hair down about her ears, and her apron rolled up round her waist, presented a most forlorn and untidy aspect; but her eyes were bright, and her countenance glowing.

She took a towel from under her arm.—­“There’s one on ’em—­and you’ll get back—­the other—­when it’s washed.”

Having blurted out this, she leaned against the wall, trying to recover her breath.

“Elizabeth!  Where have you been?  How dared you go?  Your behavior is disgraceful—­most disgraceful, I say.  Johanna, why don’t you speak to your servant?” (When, for remissness in reproving others, the elder sister herself fell under reproof, it was always emphatically “your sister—­“your nephew”—­“your servant.”)

But, for once, Miss Selina’s sharp voice failed to bring the customary sullen look to Elizabeth’s face, and when Miss Leaf, in her milder tones, asked where she had been, she answered unhesitatingly—­

“I’ve been down the town.”

“Down the town!” the three ladies cried, in one chorus of astonishment.

“I’ve been as quick as I could, missis.  I runned all the way there and back; but it was a good step, and he was some’at heavy, though he is but a little’un,”