“I mean that if I did not respect a servant I would be very sorry to keep her one day in any house of mine.”

“Wait till you’ve a house of your own to keep, Miss,” said Selina, crossly.  “I never heard such nonsense.  Is that the way you mean to behave to Elizabeth? leave every thing open to her—­clothes, books, money; trust her with all your secrets; treat her as your most particular friend?”

“A girl of fifteen would be rather an inconvenient particular friend!  And I have happily few secrets to trust her with.  But if I could not trust her with our coffee, tea, sugar, and so on, and bring her up from the very first in the habit of being trusted, I would recommend her being sent away to-morrow.”

“Very fine talking; and what do you say, Johanna?—­if that is not an unnecessary question after Hilary has given her opinion.”

“I think,” replied the elder sister, taking no notice of the long familiar innuendo, “that in this case Hilary is right.  How people ought to manage in great houses I can not say; but in our small house it will be easier and better not to alter our simple ways.  Trusting the girl—­if she is a good girl—­will only make her more trustworthy; if she is bad, we shall the sooner find it out and let her go.”

But Elizabeth did not go.  A year passed; two years; her wages were raised, and with them her domestic position.  From a “girl” she was converted into a regular servant; her pinafores gave place to grown-up gowns and aprons; and her rough head, at Miss Selina’s incessant instance, was concealed by a cap—­caps being considered by that lady as the proper and indispensable badge of servant-hood.

To say that during her transition state, or even now that she had reached the cap era, Elizabeth gave her mistresses no trouble, would be stating a self-evident improbability.  What young lass under seventeen, of any rank, does not cause plenty of trouble to her natural guardians?  Who can “put an old head on young shoulders?” or expect from girls at the most unformed and unsatisfactory period of life that complete moral and mental discipline, that unfailing self-control, that perfection of temper, and every thing else which, of course, all mistresses always have?

I am obliged to confess that Elizabeth had a few—­nay, not a few—­most obstinate faults; that no child tries its parents, no pupil its school teachers, more than she tried her three mistresses at intervals.  She was often thoughtless and careless, brusque in her manner, slovenly, in her dress; sometimes she was down-right “bad,” filled full—­as some of her elders and betters are, at all ages—­with absolute naughtiness; when she would sulk for hours and days together, and make the whole family uncomfortable, as many a servant can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.