Also, why he had asked her about it, instead of telling his aunts at once; and why he had treated her in the matter with such astonishing civility.
It may be said a servant had no business to think about these things, to criticize her young master's proceedings, or wonder why her mistresses were sad: that she had only to go about her work like an automaton, and take no interest in any thing.

I can only answer to those who like such service, let them have it: and as they sow they will assuredly reap.

But long after Elizabeth, young and hearty, was soundly snoring on her hard, cramped bed, Johanna and Hilary Leaf, after a brief mutual pretence of sleep, soon discovered by both, lay consulting together over ways and means.

How could the family expenses, beginning with twenty-five shillings per week as rent, possibly be met by the only actual certain family income, their ｣50 per annum from a mortgage?
For the Misses Leaf were or that old-fashioned stamp which believed that to reckon an income by mere probabilities is either insanity or dishonesty.
Common arithmetic soon proved that this ｣50 a year could not maintain them; in fact they must soon draw on the little sum--already dipped into to-day, for Ascott--which had been produced by the sale of the Stowbury furniture.

That sale, they now found had been a mistake; and they half feared whether the whole change from Stowbury to London had not been a mistake--one of those sad errors in judgment which we all commit sometimes, and have to abide by, and make the best of, and learn from if we can.