Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was wiping.  The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford at the door of the shady kitchen.  Twice she had disappeared towards Eliza’s table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

“Ah, girls,” she now cried, “Sophia is always giving you credit for more sense than I’m afraid you possess.  No giggling, now, if this young fellow should happen to say ‘good morning.’  Just ‘good morning’ in return, and pass on—­nothing more.”

The father’s leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little babble.

“Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man’s salutation with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk—­that, I should think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate.”

“It strikes me,” said Harold, the eldest son, “a good deal depends on what he did say to Eliza.  Eliza!”

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza standing quite quietly and at ease.

“Yes, my son,” responded Captain Rexford, “it does depend a good deal on what he did say to Eliza.  Now, Eliza” (this was the beginning of a judicial inquiry), “I understand from Mrs. Rexford that——­”

“I’ve heard all that you have said,” said Eliza.  “I’ve been just here.”

“Ah!  Then without any preface” (he gave a wave of his hand, as if putting aside the preface), “I might just ask you, Eliza, what this young—­Harkness, I believe his name is—­what——­”

“He’s just too chatty, that’s all that’s the matter with him,” said Eliza.  “He took off his hat and talked, and he’d have been talking yet if I hadn’t come away.  There was no sense in what he said, good or bad.”

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold established themselves there.  Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room.  It was their habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction.  Harold very often read aloud to them.  It was astonishing how quickly, not imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing in herself much of Sophia’s refinement.