Utter amazement, beaming gratitude, succeeded one another, plain as light, in Elizabeth’s eyes, but she only said, “Thank you, Miss Hilary.”

“Very well.  I have brought you an old gown of mine, and was going to show you how to make it up for yourself, but I’ll look over your writing instead.  Sit down and let me see what you can do.”

In a state of nervous trepidation, pitiful to behold, Elizabeth took the pen.  Terrible scratches resulted; blots innumerable; and one fatal deluge of ink, which startled from their seats both mistress and maid, and made Hilary thankful that she had taken off her better gown for a common one, as, with sad thriftiness, the Misses Leaf always did of evenings.

When Elizabeth saw the mischief she had done, her contrition and humility were unbounded.  “No, Miss Hilary, you can’t make nothin’ of me.  I be too stupid, I’ll give it up.”

“Nonsense!” And the bright active little lady looked steadily into the heavy face of this undeveloped girl, half child, half woman, until some of her own spirit seemed to be reflected there.  Whether the excitement of the morning had roused her, or her mistresses’ kindness had touched Elizabeth’s heart, and—­as in most women—­the heart was the key to the intellect; or whether the gradual daily influence of her changed life during the last month had been taking effect, now for the first time to appear—­certain it is that Hilary had never perceived before what an extremely intelligent face it was; what good sense was indicated in the well shaped head and forehead; what tenderness and feeling in the deep-set grey eyes.

“Nonsense,” repeated she.  “Never give up any thing; I never would.  We’ll try a different plan, and begin from the beginning, as I do with my little scholars.  Wait, while I fetch a copy book out of the parlor press.”

She highly amused her sisters with a description of what she called her “newly instituted Polynesian Academy;” returned, and set to work to guide the rough, coarse hand through the mysteries of calligraphy.

To say this was an easy task would not be true.  Nature’s own laws and limits make the using of faculties which have been unused for generations very difficult at first.  To suppose that a working man, the son of working men, who applies himself to study, does it with as little trouble as your upper-class children, who have been unconsciously undergoing education ever since the cradle, is a great mistake.  All honor, therefore, to those who do attempt, and to ever so small a degree succeed in, the best and wisest culture of all, self-culture.

Of this honor Elizabeth deserved her share.

“She is stupid enough,” Hilary confessed, after the lesson was over; “but there is a dogged perseverance about the girl which I actually admire.  She blots her fingers, her nose, her apron, but she never gives in; and she sticks to the grand principle of one thing at a time.  I think she did two whole pages of a’s, and really performed them satisfactorily, before she asked to go on to b’s.  Yes!  I believe she will do.”