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Mistress and Maid by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
page 113 of 418 (27%)
began to sink. Johanna grew very white and worn, Selina became, to
use Ascott's phrase, "as cross as two sticks," and even Hilary,
turning her eyes from the gray sodden looking landscape without,
could find no spot of comfort to rest on within the carriage, except
that round rosy face of Elizabeth Hand's.

Whether it was from the spirit of contradiction existing in most such
natures, which, especially in youth, are more strong than sweet, or
from a better feeling, the fact was noticeable, that when every one
else's spirits went down Elizabeth's went up. Nothing could bring her
out of a "grumpy" fit so satisfactorily as her mistresses falling
into one. When Miss Selina now began to fidget hither and thither,
each tone of her fretful voice seeming to go through her eldest
sister's every nerve, till even Hilary said, impatiently, "Oh,
Selina, can't you be quiet?" then Elizabeth rose from the depth of
her gloomy discontent up to the surface immediately.

She was only a servant; but Nature bestows that strange vague thing
that we term "force of character" independently of position. Hilary
often remembered afterward, how much more comfortable the end of the
journey was than she had expected--how Johanna lay at ease, with her
feet in Elizabeth's lap, wrapped in Elizabeth's best woolen shawl;
and how, when Selina's whole attention was turned to an ingenious
contrivance with a towel and fork and Elizabeth's basket, for
stopping the rain out of the carriage roof--she became far less
disagreeable, and even a little proud of her own cleverness. And so
there was a temporary lull in Hilary's cares, and she could sit
quiet, with her eyes fixed on the rainy landscape, which she did not
see, and her thoughts wandering toward that unknown place and unknown
life into which they were sweeping, as we all sweep, ignorantly,
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