This fact was the first which struck the unsophisticated Elizabeth. She, who had been brought up in a sort of feudal relationship to her dear mistresses, was astonished to find the domestics of Russell Square banded together into a community which, in spite of their personal bickerings and jealousies, ended in alliance offensive and defensive against the superior powers, whom they looked upon as their natural enemies. Invisible enemies, certainly; for "master" they hardly ever saw; and, excepting the ladys' maid, were mostly as ignorant of "missis." The housekeeper was the middle link between the two estates--the person with whom all business was transacted, and to whom all complaints had to be made. Beyond being sometimes talked over, generally in a quizzical, depreciatory, or condemnatory way, the heads of the establishment were no more to their domestics than the people who paid wages, and exacted in return certain duties, which most of them made as small as possible, and escaped whenever they could. If this be an exaggerated picture of a state of things perhaps in degree inevitable--and yet it should not be, for it is the source of incalculable evil, this dividing of a house against itself--if I have in any way said what is not true, I would that some intelligent "voice from the kitchen" would rise up and tell us what is true, and whether it be possible on either side to find means of amending what so sorely needs reformation. Elizabeth sometimes wanted Tom Cliffe to do this--to "write a book," which he, eager young malcontent, was always threatening to do, upon the evils of society, and especially the tyranny of the upper classes. Tom Cliffe was the only person to whom she imparted her troubles and perplexities: how different her life was from that she had been used to; how among her fellow-servants there was not one who did not seem to think and act in a manner totally opposed to every thing she had learned from Miss Hilary. How consequently she herself was teased, bullied, threatened, or at best "sent to Coventry," from morning till night. "I am quite alone, Tom--I am, indeed," said she, almost crying, the first Sunday night when she met him accidentally in going to church, and, in her dreary state of mind, was exceedingly glad to see him. He consoled her, and even went to church with her, half promising to do the same next Sunday, and calling her "a good little Christian, who almost inclined him to be a Christian too." And so, with the vague feeling that she was doing him good and keeping him out of harm--that lad who had so much that was kindly and nice about him--Elizabeth consented, not exactly to an appointment, but she told him what were her "Sundays out," and the church she usually attended, if he liked to take the chance of her being there.