Even Mrs.Hand seemed to be pleased thereat, her only doubt being lest her daughter should meet and be led astray by that bad woman, Mrs.Cliffe, Tommy Cliffe's mother, who was reported to have gone to London.

But Miss Hilary explained that this meeting was about as probable as the rencontre of two needles in a hay-rick; and besides, Elizabeth was not the sort of girl to be easily "led astray" by any body.
"No, no; her's a good wench, though I says it," replied the mother, who was too hard worked to have much sentiment to spare.

"I wish the little 'uns may take pattern by our Elizabeth.

You'll send her home, may be, in two or three years' time, to let us have a look at her ?" Miss Hilary promised, and then took her way back through the familiar old town--so soon to be familiar no more--thinking anxiously, in spite of herself, upon those two or three years, and what they might bring.
It happened to be a notable day--that sunshiny 28th of June--when the little, round-cheeked damsel, who is a grandmother now, had the crown of three kingdoms first set upon her youthful head; and Stowbury, like every other town in the land, was a perfect bower of green arches, garlands, banners; white covered tables were spread in the open air down almost every street, where poor men dined, or poor women drank tea; and every body was out and abroad, looking at or sharing in the holiday' making, wild with merriment, and brimming over with passionate loyalty to the Maiden Queen.
That day is now twenty-four years ago; but all those who remember it must own there never has been a day like it, when, all over the country, every man's heart throbbed with chivalrous devotion, every woman's with womanly tenderness, toward this one royal girl, who, God bless her! has lived to retain and deserve it all.
Hilary called for, and protected through the crowd, the little, timid, widow lady who had taken off the Misses Leaf's hands their house and furniture, and whom they had made very happy--as the poor often can make those still poorer than themselves--by refusing to accept any thing for the "good will" of the school.

Then she was fetched by Elizabeth, who had been given a whole afternoon's holiday; and mistress and maid went together home, watching the last of the festivities, the chattering groups that still lingered in the twilight streets, and listening to the merry notes of the "Triumph" which came down through the lighted windows of the Town Hall, where the open-air tea drinkers had adjourned to dance country dances, by civic permission, and in perfectly respectable jollity.
"I wonder," said Hilary--while, despite some natural regret, her spirit stretched itself out eagerly from the narrowness of the place where she was born into the great wide world; the world where so many grand things were thought and written and done; the world Robert Lyon had so long fought with, and was fighting bravely still--"I wonder, Elizabeth, what sort of place London is, and what our life will be in it ?" Elizabeth said nothing.