Mistress and Maid Part 5

"You have the best head in the world, my love. I don't know whatever I should do without you."

"Luckily you are never likely to be tried. So give me a kiss; and good night, Johanna."

I mis...o...b.. many will say I am writing about small, ridiculously small, things. Yet is not the whole of life made up of infinitesimally small things? And in its strange and solemn mosaic, the full pattern of which we never see clearly till looking back on it from far away, dare we say of any thing which the hand of Eternal Wisdom has put together, that it is too common or too small?

CHAPTER IV.

While her anxious mistresses were thus talking her over the servant lay on her humble bed and slept. They knew she did, for they heard her heavy breathing through the thin part.i.tion wall. Whether, as Hilary suggested, she was too ignorant to notice the days of the week, or month, or, as Selina thought, too stupid to care for any thing beyond eating, drinking, and sleeping. Elizabeth manifested no anxiety about herself or her destiny.

She went about her work just as usual; a little quicker and readier, now she was becoming familiarized to it; but she said nothing. She was undoubtedly a girl of silent and undemonstrative nature.

"Sometimes still waters run deep," said Miss Hilary.

"Nevertheless. there are such things as ca.n.a.ls," replied Johanna.

"When do you mean to have your little talk with her?"

Hilary did not know. She was sitting, rather more tired than usual, by the school-room fire, the little people having just departed for their Sat.u.r.day half-holiday. Before clearing off the debris which they always left behind, she stood a minute at the window, refres.h.i.+ng her eyes with the green field opposite, and the far-away wood, crowned by a dim white monument, visible in fair weather, on which those bright brown eyes had a trick of lingering, even in the middle of school hours. For the wood and the hill beyond belonged to a n.o.bleman's "show" estate, five miles off--the only bit of real landscape beauty that Hilary had ever beheld. There, during the last holidays but one, she, her sisters, her nephew, and, by his own special request, Mr. Lyon, had spent a whole long, merry, midsummer day. She wondered whether such a day would ever come again!

But spring was coming again, any how; the field looked smiling and green, specked here and there with white dots which, she opined.

might possibly be daisies. She half wished she was not too old and dignified to dart across the road, leap the sunk fence, and run to see.

"I think, Johanna--Hark, what can that be?"

For at this instant somebody came tearing down the stairs, opened the front door, and did--exactly what Hilary had just been wis.h.i.+ng to do.

"It's Elizabeth, without her bonnet or shawl, with something white flying behind her. How she is das.h.i.+ng across the field! What can she be after? Just look."

But loud screams from Selina's room, the front, one, where she had been lying in bed all morning, quite obliterated the little servant from their minds. The two sisters ran hastily up stairs.

Selina was sitting up, in undisguised terror and agitation.

"Stop her! Hold her! I'm sure she has gone mad. Lock the door, or she'll come back and murder us all."

"Who? Elizabeth! Was she here? What has been the matter?"

But it was some time before they could make out any thing. At last they gathered that Elizabeth had been waiting upon Miss Selina, putting vinegar cloths on her head, and doing various things about the room. "She is very handy when one is ill." even Selina allowed.

"And I a.s.sure you I was talking most kindly to her; about the duties of her position, and how she ought to dress better, and be more civil behaved, or else she never could except to keep any place. And she stood in her usual sulky way of listening, never answering a word--with her back to me, staring right out of window. And I had just said, Elizabeth, my girl'--indeed, Hilary, I was talking to her in my very kindest way--"

"I've no doubt of it--but do get on."

"When she suddenly turned round, s.n.a.t.c.hed a clean towel from a chair back, and another from my head--actually from my very head, Johanna--and out she ran. I called after her, but she took no more notice than if I had been a stone. And she left the door wide open--blowing upon me. Oh, dear; she has given me my death of cold."

And Selina broke out into piteous complainings.

Her elder sister soothed her as well as she could, while Hilary ran down to the front door and looked, and enquired every where for Elizabeth. She was not to be seen on field or road; and along that quiet terrace not a soul had even perceived her quit the house.

"It's a very odd thing." said Hilary, returning. "What can have come over the girl? You are sure, Selina, that you said nothing which--"

"Now I know what you are going to say, You are going to blame me.

Whatever happens in this house you always blame me. And perhaps you're right. Perhaps I am a nuisance--a burden--would be far better dead and buried. I wish I were!"

When Selina took this tack, of course her sisters were silenced. They quited her a little, and then went down and searched the house all over.

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 pa.s.sion, 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' appet.i.tes 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 ap.r.o.n 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,"

"He! who on earth is he?"

"Deary me! I never thought of axing; but his mother lives in Hall street. Somebody saw me carrying him to the doctor, and went and told her. Oh! he was welly killed, Miss Leaf--the doctor said so; but he'll do now, and you'll get your towel clean washed tomorrow."

While Elizabeth spoke so incoherently, and with such unwonted energy and excitement, Johanna looked as if she thought her sister's fears were true, and the girl had really gone mad; but Hilary's quicker perceptions jumped at a different conclusion.

"Quiet yourself, Elizabeth," said she, taking a firm hold of her shoulder, and making her sit down, when the rolled-up ap.r.o.n dropped, and showed itself all covered with blood spots. Selina screamed outright.