can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.

But still they never lost what Hilary termed their "respect" for
Elizabeth; they never found her out in a lie, a meanness, or an act
of deception or dishonesty. They took her faults as we must take the
surface faults of all connected with us--patiently rather than
resentfully, seeking to correct rather than to punish. And though
there were difficult elements in the household, such as their being
three mistresses to be obeyed the youngest mistress a thought too lax
and the second one undoubtedly too severe, still no girl could live
with these high-principled, much-enduring women without being
impressed with two things which the serving class are slowest to
understand--the dignity of poverty, and the beauty of that which is
the only effectual law to bring out good and restrain evil--the law
of loving-kindness.

Two fracas, however, must be chronicled, for after both, the girl's
dismissal hung on a thread. The first was when Mrs. Cliffe, mother of
Tommy Cliffe, who was nearly killed in the field, being discovered to
be an ill sort of woman, and in the habit of borrowing from Elizabeth
stray shillings, which were never returned, was forbidden the house,
Elizabeth resented it so fiercely that she sulked for a whole week
afterward.

The other and still more dangerous crisis in Elizabeth's destiny was
when a volume of Scott's novels, having been missing for some days,
was found hidden in her bed, and she lying awake reading it was thus
ignominiously discovered at eleven P. M. by Miss Selina, in
consequence of the gleam of candle light from under her door.