domestic matters, in the midst of which she said, quietly, "And so,
Elizabeth, you would really like to go to London?"

"No! I shouldn't like it at all; never said I should. But if you go,
I shall go too; though Missis is so ready to get shut o' me."

"It was for your own good, you know."

"You always said it was for a girl's good to stop in one place; and
if you think I'm going to another. I aren't that's all."

Rude as the form of the speech was--almost the first rude speech that
Elizabeth had ever made to Miss Hilary, and which, under other
circumstances she would have felt bound severely to reprove--the
mistress passed it over. That which lay beneath it, the sharpness of
wounded love, touched her heart. She felt that, for all the girl's
rough manner, it would have been hard to go into her London kitchen
and meet a strange London face, instead of that fond homely one of
Elizabeth Hand's.

Still, she thought it right to explain to her that London life might
have many difficulties, that; for the present at least, her wages
could not be raised, and the family might at first be in even more
straitened circumstances than they were at Stowbury.

"Only at first, though, for I hope to find plenty of pupils, and
by-and-by our nephew will get into practice."

"Is it on account of him you're going, Miss Hilary?"