The poor and friendless possess one great advantage--they have nobody to ask advice of; nobody to whom it matters much what they do or where they go. The family mind has but to make itself up, and act accordingly. Thus within an hour or two of the receipt of Mr. Ascott's letter Hilary went into the kitchen, and told Elizabeth that as soon as her work was done Miss Leaf wished to have a little talk with her. "Eh! what's wrong? Has Miss Selina been a-grumbling at me?" Elizabeth was in one of her bad humors, which, though of course they never ought to have, servants do have as well as their superiors. Hilary perceived this by the way she threw the coals on and tossed the chairs about. But to-day her heart was full of far more serious cares than Elizabeth's ill temper. She replied, composedly-- "I have not heard that either of my sisters is displeased with you. What they want to talk to you about is for your own good. We are thinking of making a great change. We intend to leave Stowbury and going to live in London." "Going to live in London!" Now, quick as her tact and observation were--her heart taught her these things--Elizabeth's head was a thorough Saxon one, slow to receive impressions. It was a family saying, that nothing was so hard as to put a new idea into Elizabeth except to get it out again. For this reason Hilary preferred paving the way quietly, before startling her with the sudden intelligence of their contemplated change. "Well, what do you say to the plan?" asked she, good-humoredly. "I dunnot like it at all," was the brief gruff answer of Elizabeth Hand. Now it was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines that no human being is good for much unless he or she has what is called "a will of one's own." Perhaps this, like many another creed, was with her the result of circumstances. But she held it firmly, and with that exaggerated one-sidedness of feeling which any bitter family or personal experience is sure to leave behind--a strong will was her first attraction to every body. It had been so in the case of Robert Lyon, and not less in Elizabeth's. But this quality has its inconveniences. When the maid began sweeping up her hearth with a noisy, angry gesture, the mistress did the wisest and most dignified thing a mistress could do under the circumstances and which she knew was the sharpest rebuke she could administer to the sensitive Elizabeth--she immediately quitted the kitchen. For an hour after the parlor bell did not ring; and though it was washing day, no Miss Hilary appeared to help in folding up the clothes. Elizabeth, subdued and wretched, waited till she could wait no longer; then knocked at the door, and asked humbly if she should bring in supper? The extreme kindness of the answer, to the effect that she must come in, as they wanted to speak to her, crushed the lingering fragments of ill humor out of the girl.