Then Elizabeth seemed to become half conscious that she had done something blamable, or was at least a suspected character. Her warmth of manner faded; the sullen cloud of dogged resistance to authority was rising in her poor dirty face, when Hilary, beginning with, "Now, we are not going to scold you; but we must hear the reason of this," contrived by adroit questions, and not a few of them, to elicit the whole story. It appeared that, while standing at Miss Selina's window, Elizabeth had watched three little boys, apparently engaged in a very favorite amusement of little boys in that field, going quickly behind a horse, and pulling out the longest and handsomest hairs in his tail to make fishing lines of. She saw the animal give a kick, and two of the boys ran away; the other did not stir. For a minute or so she noticed a black lump lying in the grass; then, with the quick instinct for which nobody had ever given her credit, she guessed what had happened, and did immediately the wisest and only thing possible under the circumstances, namely, to snatch up a towel, run across the field, bind up the child's head as well as she could, and carry it, bleeding and insensible, to the nearest doctor, who lived nearly a mile off. She did not tell--and they only found it out afterward--how she had held the boy while under the doctor's hands, the skull being so badly fractured that the frightened mother fainted at the sight; how she had finally carried him home, and left him comfortably settled in bed, his senses returned, and his life saved. "Ay, my arms do ache above a bit," she said, in answer to Miss Leaf's questions. "He wasn't quite a baby--nigh upon twelve, I reckon; but then he was very small of his age. And he looked just as if he was dead--and he bled so." Here, just for a second or two, the color left the big girl's lips, and she trembled a little. Miss Leaf went to the kitchen cupboard, and took out their only bottle of wine--administered in rare doses, exclusively as medicine. "Drink this, Elizabeth; and then go and wash your face and eat your dinner. We will talk to you by-and-by." Elizabeth looked up with a long, wistfull stare of intense surprise, and then added, "Have I done any thing wrong, missis?" "I did not say so. But drink this; and don't talk, child." She was obeyed. By-and-by Elizabeth disappeared into the back kitchen, emerged thence with a clean face, hands, and apron; and went about her afternoon business as if nothing had happened.