she saw everyone at work but herself. She tried to help her father
with his township affairs, but he met all her offers of assistance with
his indulgent smile, and the remark that little girls could not
understand business, and she must not bother her head.

Neither could she find any regular occupation about the house. Sarah
Emily, who had conceived a great respect for Elizabeth since she had
been living in the town, refused to let her soil her hands in the
kitchen. It was too much of a come-downer, she declared, for a lady
educated away up high the way Lizzie was to be sloppin' round with an
apron on. Why didn't she sit still and read books, the way Jean did?

And Sarah Emily's will was not to be disputed. She was even more than
usually independent these days, for without doubt a real suitor for her
hand had appeared at The Dale kitchen. He was none of those "finest
young gents as ever was seen," that existed only in Sarah Emily's
imagination; but a real, solid, flesh-and-blood young farmer, none less
than Wully Johnstone's Peter, now the eldest son at home, and to whom
the farm was to eventually fall. Since Peter had openly avowed his
intentions, Sarah Emily had been thrown into alternate fits of ecstasy
over her good fortune,--which she strove to hide under a mask of
haughty indifference--and spasms of dismay over the wreck she was
making of poor Tom Teeter's life. That Tom was in a frightful way, she
could not but see; for, as she confided to Elizabeth, it fairly made
her nerves all scrunch up to hear him sing that awful doleful song
about wishin' she would marry him.

Elizabeth suggested to her aunt, that as Sarah Emily was likely soon to
give notice finally and forever, that she should be the one to take up
the burden of the housekeeping. But Miss Gordon seemed unwilling that
Elizabeth should find any settled place in the household. Mary was
quite sufficient help, she said, and when Sarah Emily left of course
another maid must succeed her. There really was nothing for Elizabeth
to do, she added, with a grieved sigh.

She was equally averse to any proposition on the part of the girl to go
away and earn her own living. Now that there was no hope of her ever
becoming a school-teacher, Miss Gordon said, with a heavier sigh than
usual, there was really no other avenue open for a young lady that was
quite genteel.

And then Elizabeth would sigh too, very deeply, and wish with all her
soul that she had