My advice is--keep her." This settled the matter, since it was a curious fact that the "advice" of the youngest Miss Leaf was, whether they knew it or not, almost equivalent to a family ukase.
When Elizabeth had brought in the tea-things, which she did with especial care, apparently wishing to blot out the memory of the morning's escapade by astonishingly good behavior for the rest of the day, Miss Leaf called her, and asked if she knew that her month of trial ended this day?
"Yes, ma'am," with the strict normal courtesy, something between that of the old-world family domestic--as her mother might have been to the Miss Elizabeth Something she was named after--and the abrupt "dip" of the modern National school girl; which constituted Elizabeth Hand's sole experience of manners.
"If you had not been absent I should have gone to speak with your mother to-day.

Indeed Miss Hilary was going when you came in; but it would have been with a very different intention from what we had in the morning.

However, that is not likely to happen again." "Eh ?" said Elizabeth, inquiringly.
Miss Leaf hesitated, and looked uneasily at her two sisters.

It was always a trial to her shy nature to find herself the mouth-piece of the family; and this same shyness made it still more difficult to break through the stiff barriers which seemed to rise up between her, a gentlewoman well on in years, and this coarse working girl.

She felt, as she often complained, that with the-kindest intentions, she did not quite know how to talk to Elizabeth.
"My sister means," said Hilary, "that as we are not likely to have little boys half killed in the field every day, she trusts you will not be running away again as you did this morning.