From a "girl" she was converted into a regular servant; her pinafores gave place to grown-up gowns and aprons; and her rough head, at Miss Selina's incessant instance, was concealed by a cap--caps being considered by that lady as the proper and indispensable badge of servant-hood.
To say that during her transition state, or even now that she had reached the cap era, Elizabeth gave her mistresses no trouble, would be stating a self-evident improbability.

What young lass under seventeen, of any rank, does not cause plenty of trouble to her natural guardians?
Who can "put an old head on young shoulders ?" or expect from girls at the most unformed and unsatisfactory period of life that complete moral and mental discipline, that unfailing self-control, that perfection of temper, and every thing else which, of course, all mistresses always have?
I am obliged to confess that Elizabeth had a few--nay, not a few--most obstinate faults; that no child tries its parents, no pupil its school teachers, more than she tried her three mistresses at intervals.

She was often thoughtless and careless, brusque in her manner, slovenly, in her dress; sometimes she was down-right "bad," filled full--as some of her elders and betters are, at all ages--with absolute naughtiness; when she would sulk for hours and days together, and make the whole family uncomfortable, as many a servant can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.
But still they never lost what Hilary termed their "respect" for Elizabeth; they never found her out in a lie, a meanness, or an act of deception or dishonesty.

They took her faults as we must take the surface faults of all connected with us--patiently rather than resentfully, seeking to correct rather than to punish.

And though there were difficult elements in the household, such as their being three mistresses to be obeyed the youngest mistress a thought too lax and the second one undoubtedly too severe, still no girl could live with these high-principled, much-enduring women without being impressed with two things which the serving class are slowest to understand--the dignity of poverty, and the beauty of that which is the only effectual law to bring out good and restrain evil--the law of loving-kindness.
Two fracas, however, must be chronicled, for after both, the girl's dismissal hung on a thread.